Daily Archives: August 4, 2002

The First Successful Anti-Cancer Vaccine

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Has the world already seen the first successful anti-cancer vaccine? Probably, and all thanks to animal research.

The Daily Telegraph ran an interesting article on a luncheon to honor Prof. Baruch Lumberg. Lumberg was instrumental in the creation of a vaccine to fight Hepatitis B. In fact, Lumberg won the 1976 Nobel Prize for medicine and has recently written a book, Hepatitis B: The Hunt for a Killer Virus, about his efforts to find a vaccine for the disease.

But the Hepatitis B vaccine should be — and apparently is — an anti-cancer vaccine as well. Hepatitis B plays a major role in causing liver cancer. As many as 85 percent of liver cancer cases are believed to be caused by the virus.

So widespread use of the Hepatitis B vaccine should result in declining liver cancer incidence. And in places where Hepatitis B was a major problem, that in fact has happened. In Taiwan, for example, the incidence of liver cancer has declined by half since the introduction of the Hepatitis B vaccine.

Lumberg first isolated the Hepatitis B virus in 1967 with epidemiological studies in human beings, but it was animal research that relied largely on guinea pigs and non-human primates that led to the development and approval of a vaccine for the disease in the early 1980s.

Source:

The world’s first cancer vaccine. Roger Highfield, The Daily Telegraph (London), June 26, 2002.

U.S. Senate Unanimously Approves Bill to Restore Hunting at National Monument

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In November 2000, President Bill Clinton expanded the Craters of the Moon National Monument. Land that had been administered by the Bureau of Land Management was taken over by the National Park Service.

Although at the time , the Clinton administration said this would not affect whether or not hunting could occur in the new areas, in fact the National Park Service barred all hunting on the areas that it took over from BLM. Before the change, the Monument had been a popular site for hunting.

On August 2, 2002 the U.S. Senate unanimously approved a bill that would change the area’s designation from a Monument to a National Preserve and restore hunting to the site.

The bill had previously been approved on a voice vote by the House of Representatives in May 2001, and now heads to the president’s desk.

Source:

Bill would restore Craters hunting rights. Spokesmanreview.Com, August 3, 2002.

PCRM and Noah Wyle Just Keep the Hypocrisy Rolling

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Back in October 2000, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine not only criticized a milk ad that featured actor Noah Wyle, they filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission complaining that the ad was deceptive (see PCRM vs. Noah Wyle: Will the Real Physician Please Stand Up?).

So guess who PCRM is now using as a spokesman in an ad campaign — that’s right, Noah Wyle.

And, just by coincidence, PCRM removed from its web site its October 24, 2000 press release, “Physicians lodge complaint over misleading ad starring “ER” actor Noah Wyle.” What’s a little rewriting history between friends?

Wyle, by the way, is endorsing PCRM’s “cruelty-free charities” program and speaking out against animal research. At the same time, of course, he is also actively involved with a charity and a pharmaceutical company, neither of which meets PCRM’s definition of cruelty-free.

Wyle has been a prominent spokesman for the YWCA’s and Pfizer’s outreach efforts to combat post-traumatic stress disorder. A press release announcing the program last year announced, “Actor Noah Wyle Joins Pfizer and the YWCA of the U.S.A. to Launch PTSD Community Outreach Program.”

Why Pfizer? Because one of the common treatments for PTSD sufferers are drugs called serotonin reuptake inhibitors — drugs which were, of course, developed extensively with the sort of animal research that Wyle now says he opposes.

Apparently Wyle thinks that the pain suffered by a rape victim is severe, but not compared to what a mouse or rat in a laboratory has to go through (one has to wonder if Wyle also thinks that animal research used to develop emergency contraception drugs such as RU-486 was also immoral and improper).

Sources:

PCRM releases new PSA on cruelty-free charities. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, August 1, 2002.

Noah Wyle: There’s help for PTSD sufferers. W. Reed Moran, USA Today, August 3, 2002.

Actor Noah Wyle Joins Pfizer and the YWCA of the U.S.A. to Launch PTSD Community Outreach Program. YWCA/Pfizer Press Release, January 8, 2001.

Vegitan’s Unite!

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Over at VegSource.com, the debate among the “I’m more vegan than you are” crowd has become so intense that Jeff and Sabrina Nelson saw fit to try to coin a new term — vegitan. According to the Nelsons,

A vegan diet is always a vegitan diet, but a vegitan diet may not always be vegan, because a vegitan diet may or may not include honey.

Just when watching these folks debate back and forth over eating honey was getting so fascinating, the Nelsons go and try to change the terms of the debate. The new terminology is also supposed to be free of the political implications that supposedly come with “vegan”,

The key is that the word “vegitan” in and of itself connotes no political, ideological or philosophical ideals. It’s simply a word that describes a diet.

. . . Vegitan simply refers to what you eat, and does not signify any “whys” which may motivate someone to eat meat.”

And why would anyone possibly want to escape the political implications of “vegan”? Again, according to the Nelsons,

In our years of experience with running the largest and most popular vegetarian/vegan website in the world, we have seen some in the vegan community who resent another person calling herself “vegan” when she eats a “vegan diet” but does not embrace all the values, philosophies and precepts of veganism.

Vegans who are vocally intolerant of the dietary choices of others? Say it ain’t so, Jeff and Sabrina. That’s just really hard for this writer to image.

With the creation of the word “vegitan,” vegans no longer need be uncomfortable as such individuals can now refer to their “vegitan diet” and be totally clear what they mean.

Oh yeah, they really cleared that up. That will certainly placate the vegan food police.

Source:

Introducing the Vegitan Diet. Jeff and Sabrina Nelson, VegSource.Com, July 29, 2002.

Vegitan's Unite!

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Over at VegSource.com, the debate among the “I’m more vegan than you are” crowd has become so intense that Jeff and Sabrina Nelson saw fit to try to coin a new term — vegitan. According to the Nelsons,

A vegan diet is always a vegitan diet, but a vegitan diet may not always be vegan, because a vegitan diet may or may not include honey.

Just when watching these folks debate back and forth over eating honey was getting so fascinating, the Nelsons go and try to change the terms of the debate. The new terminology is also supposed to be free of the political implications that supposedly come with “vegan”,

The key is that the word “vegitan” in and of itself connotes no political, ideological or philosophical ideals. It’s simply a word that describes a diet.

. . . Vegitan simply refers to what you eat, and does not signify any “whys” which may motivate someone to eat meat.”

And why would anyone possibly want to escape the political implications of “vegan”? Again, according to the Nelsons,

In our years of experience with running the largest and most popular vegetarian/vegan website in the world, we have seen some in the vegan community who resent another person calling herself “vegan” when she eats a “vegan diet” but does not embrace all the values, philosophies and precepts of veganism.

Vegans who are vocally intolerant of the dietary choices of others? Say it ain’t so, Jeff and Sabrina. That’s just really hard for this writer to image.

With the creation of the word “vegitan,” vegans no longer need be uncomfortable as such individuals can now refer to their “vegitan diet” and be totally clear what they mean.

Oh yeah, they really cleared that up. That will certainly placate the vegan food police.

Source:

Introducing the Vegitan Diet. Jeff and Sabrina Nelson, VegSource.Com, July 29, 2002.