People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals suffered one of its worst public relations disasters after
running up against another popular non-profit – Mothers Against Drunk
Driving. PETA decided to run ads aimed at college students claiming that
beer is healthier than milk. A press release announcing the campaign even
noted \”PETA is giving away bottle openers that say, \”Drinking Responsibly
Means Not Drinking Milk – Save a Cow\’s Life.\”

    This quickly brought the wrath
of MADD and other anti-drunk driving activists. According to MADD, the
advertisements would likely encourage underage drinking. \”We\’re very concerned
and appalled with it for the simple fact that underage drinking is the
number one drug problem among American youths,\” said Teresa Hardt, spokeswoman
for MADD. Bruce Friederich and others tried to do some damage control.
\”College students are savvy,\” Friederich said. \”Nobody\’s going to put
beer on their Cheerios or get drunk and drive as a result of our campaign.\”

    For once I found myself on
Friedierich\’s side of the aisle, but it was hard to find too much sympathy
for his position. After all, MADD was successful by turning PETA\’s brand
of sanctimonious rhetoric back on that group. Were PETA\’s ads really likely
to increase drinking by college students? That is such a nonsensical claim
I can\’t believe MADD actually made it with a straight face (is MADD going
to rewrite history and ignore the fact that the precursor to beer first
came into widespread use precisely as an efficient store of calories?)
But MADD\’s anti-alcohol hysteria is no more bizarre than Friedrich trying
to convince us that Jesus was a vegetarian or Ingrid Newkirk likening
the killing of chickens for food to the Holocaust.

    Moreover there is a more serious
problem – why beer? The upshot of this controversy seems to be that serious
media attention and moral sanction from other public groups will occur
only when PETA makes the mistake of crossing some oddly placed line and
comes into conflict with another politically correct cause. Say beer is
better than milk and Newkirk and Friedrich incur the wrath of numerous
newspapers and television shows. Say that researchers sent razor blades
and death threats get what they deserve, and the silence is deafening.

    The fact that PETA was handing
out beer bottle-shaped bottle openers that said \”Drink responsibly. Don\’t
drink milk.\” was featured in a story on the controversy placed prominently
in my local paper. The March 13 torching of Kickapoo Fur Foods in Wisconsin
(just across the lake from here) by the Animal Liberation Front didn\’t
rate even a single sentence.

References:

    Whether or not
it will work in humans will require further study, but researchers have
managed to develop a vaccine that protects neurons in the brain from a
variety of injuries caused by strokes and epileptic seizures.

    The vaccine works by neutralizing
a protein called the NMDA receptor. The NMDA receptor has been shown to
increase brain damage after a stroke and appears to play a role in epileptic
seizures.

    In a study conducted at Thomas
Jefferson University in Philadelphia, a group of rats were vaccinated
with an anti-NMDA antibody. Both they and a control group of rats were
then exposed tot the neurotoxin, kainate, which causes epileptic-like
seizures. In the control group, 70 percent of the rats experienced seizures,
while in the vaccinated group only 20 percent suffered from any seizures.

    Additional toxicology studies
will have to be done on the anti-NMDA antibody used to better understand
any possible side effects before any human testing of the technique could
begin.

Reference:

Researchers
find promising brain injury vaccine in rat study. The Associated Press,
February 24, 2000.

    The 5th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals recently turned down an appeal by a Texas cattleman of Oprah
Winfrey\’s victory in the so-called \”veggie libel\” trial a couples years
ago.

    In that trial, the cattlemen
sued Winfrey over her April 16, 1996 show which featured animal rights
activist Howard Lyman discussing Mad Cow disease. Lyman went on with his
usual histrionics about Mad Cow disease, with flourishes claiming that
Mad Cow could possibly kill millions of people in the United States, prompting
Winfrey to say she\’d never eat another hamburger again.

    Beef sales, and prices, dropped
dramatically in the wake of the show (it is frightening to think that
so many Americans get dietary advice from a day-time talk show) , and
the cattlemen sued in Texas under a law that makes disparaging a food
product a tort. Unfortunately for the cattlemen, the trial judge ruled
that the law did not apply to meat (it had originally been written to
cover fruits and vegetables specifically) and the cattlemen had to sue
Winfrey under the much stricter libel laws.

    The appeal, initiated by Paul
Engler who has vowed to appeal the Winfrey verdict as far as possible,
argued that the trial judge erred in not allowing the suit to continue
under the veggie libel provision.

    Hopefully this will spell the
end of this ridiculous chapter-the lawsuit\’s main affect was to make the
cattlemen look like a bunch of whiners. As the Appeals Court put it,

Stripped to its essentials, the cattlemen\’s complaint is that
the \’Dangerous Food\’ show did not present the mad cow issue in the light
most favorable to United States beef. This argument cannot stand.

    Lyman might be a nut and Winfrey
a fool, but even nuts and fools are protected by the First Amendment (and
thankfully so — all Engler\’s vindictive legal tactics have done is further
legitimize Lyman\’s bizarre views).

Reference:

Oprah\’s
win over cattlemen upheld. Janet McConnaughey, Associated Press, February
9, 2000.

    Medical researchers studying
rotavirus in mice recently reported the disease appears to act by stimulating
nerves in the intestines. Rotavirus is the main cause of stomach problems
and diarrhea in infants. Worldwide the disease kills more than 600,000
infants and children annually, mostly in the developing world.

    The researchers infected baby
mice with the rotavirus and then treated the mice with lidocaine, which
numbs the nerves. The lidocaine treatment cut in half the number of diarrhea
infections in the mice suggesting that the virus indeed acts by stimulating
the nerves (one hypothesis is that the rotavirus activates the nervous
system in the intestinal wall resulting in the expression of intestinal
fluid and electrolytes, resulting in the diarrhea).

    Although this finding is unlikely
in itself to lead to any new treatment for rotavirus, it does provide
an important advance — if verified by further studies, this confirms
that all the major causes of acute diarrhea in infants and children, including
cholera and E. coli, work by stimulating the nerves in the intestines
and might be treatable by a single therapy that numbs those nerves.

Reference:

Baby killer disease \’explained\’. The BBC, January 22, 2000.