I almost feel sorry for Don Thompson and his colleagues at the Hillsborough Animal Health Foundation. After all, it can’t be easy to recruit others in the local veterinary community when you’re essentially asking them to alienate themselves from a large segment of their clientele—and the public in general. The sharp distinction that HAHF draws [...]
Browsing the archives for the Public Health Threats category
19 Oct 12
12 Oct 12
A recently published paper describing free-roaming cats as “a significant public health threat” fails to deliver convincing evidence. In fact, the very work the authors cite undermines, time and time again, their claims.
“Domestic cats are a potential source of numerous infectious disease agents,” write Rick Gerhold and David Jessup, in their paper, “Zoonotic Diseases [...]
28 Sep 12
Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and CDC/Jim Gathany.
“This is a significant study that documents serious wildlife and public health issues associated with 125 million outdoor cats in the United States,” explained the American Bird Conservancy’s vice president for conservation advocacy, Darin Schroeder, in a September 18 press release. [1] Schroeder was [...]
21 Sep 12
Is it possible I’ve been banned from posting comments on the Mother Jones website—the online home of “smart, fearless journalism”? It certainly looks that way.
Despite several attempts throughout the day Wednesday, my response to senior editor Kiera Butler’s “Kitties, Rabies, the Plague, and You” has yet to appear in the comments. Meanwhile, the conversation continues. [...]
29 Aug 12
Complaining of the impacts of free-roaming cats on wildlife and the environment, along with a range of public health threats, dozens of veterinarians in Hillsborough County, Florida, have banded together to fight TNR. Evidence suggests, however, that their real concern has nothing to do with the community, native wildlife, or, indeed, with cats. What the [...]
27 Aug 12
Complaining of the impacts of free-roaming cats on wildlife and the environment, along with a range of public health threats, dozens of veterinarians in Hillsborough County, Florida, have banded together to fight TNR. Evidence suggests, however, that their real concern has nothing to do with the community, native wildlife, or, indeed, with cats. What the [...]
4 Aug 12
“A rabies alert was posted Tuesday by the Westchester County Department of Health,” reported the Tarrytown Daily Voice earlier this week, “after a police officer shot a stray cat who attacked him after trying to attack a man and woman in Elmsford.”
“When Elmsford Police Department responded, the cat chased the officer into a neighbor’s yard [...]
3 Jul 12
“There’s fresh evidence that cats can be a threat to your mental health,” according to a post on yesterday’s NPR health blog, Shots. The threat, reporter Jon Hamilton explains, is not the cats themselves by the Toxoplasma gondii parasite that some cats pass in their feces.*
“A study of more than 45,000 Danish women found that [...]
0 Comments
Posted in In the News, Toxoplasma
Tagged mental illness, NPR, schizophrenia, suicide, Toxoplasma gondii, Toxoplasmosis
Tagged mental illness, NPR, schizophrenia, suicide, Toxoplasma gondii, Toxoplasmosis
23 Jun 12
According to last Friday’s USA Today, “Health officials have confirmed that an Oregon man has the plague after he was bitten while trying to take a dead rodent from the mouth of a stray cat.”
“State public health veterinarian Dr. Emilio DeBess said the man was infected when he was bitten by the stray his family [...]
2 Jun 12
The protest originally planned for tomorrow morning has been cancelled following news that the traps have been removed from Willard Intermediate School and El Sol Science and Arts Academy. According to today’s Orange County Register:
“Traps to catch feral cats have been removed from two Santa Ana school campuses, where public health officials have been [...]
1 Jun 12
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones [...]
30 May 12
A few follow-up items related to my past couple of posts: the first sheds some additional light on the Santa Ana typhus scare, while the second provides a little historical context to The Sacramento Bee’s recent reporting on Wildlife Services.
1. Typhus, Fleas, and Cats
Somehow I missed press releases from both Stray Cat Alliance and Alley [...]
30 May 12
“In an effort to combat a potential typhus outbreak,” reports today’s Los Angeles Times, “city officials zeroed in on two schools in [a] densely packed [Santa Ana] neighborhood and set a dozen traps to catch feral cats and other animals that might carry disease-bearing fleas.” [1]
“The hope is that by trapping and testing animals caught [...]
0 Comments
Posted in In the News, Public Health Threats
Tagged fleas, Michael Hutchins, rats, Santa Ana, typhus
Tagged fleas, Michael Hutchins, rats, Santa Ana, typhus
25 May 12
Common Raccoon (Procyon lotor). Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Darkone.
According to a recent story in The Charleston Gazette, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has, in recent years, made great strides in stopping the westward spread of the raccoon variant of the rabies virus. And a promising new vaccine, typically distributed in packets dropped [...]
7 Mar 12
“As human populations continue to expand farther out into natural areas,” warns The Wildlife Society in a February 17 blog post, “domesticated animals will continue to be at risk for exposure to diseases carried by their wild relatives.” Considering the domesticated animals in question are cats, the organization’s apparent concern is almost touching. Almost.
Actually, TWS [...]
0 Comments
Posted in In the News, Toxoplasma
Tagged bobcat, feral cats, puma, T. gonddi, The Wildlife Society, Toxoplasma gondii
Tagged bobcat, feral cats, puma, T. gonddi, The Wildlife Society, Toxoplasma gondii
24 Sep 11
Once again, the American Bird Conservancy is using scare tactics to gain support for their long-standing witch-hunt against free-roaming cats, this time suggesting a connection between TNR and rabies exposure. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrate no such connection.
Maybe the folks at the American Bird Conservancy were simply feeling left out, [...]
28 Jul 11
“Evidence continues to pile up,” writes Michael Hutchins, Executive Director and CEO of The Wildlife Society, in yesterday’s blog post, “that Toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by a parasite (Toxoplasma gondii) that lives in the guts of cats, may be responsible for serious human health problems.”
Hutchins was referring to a recent study in which researchers found “Infection [...]
0 Comments
Posted in In the News, Toxoplasma
Tagged brain cancer, Kevin Lafferty, Michael Hutchins, Proofiness, T. gonddi, The Wildlife Society, Toxoplasma gondii, Toxoplasmosis, USGS
Tagged brain cancer, Kevin Lafferty, Michael Hutchins, Proofiness, T. gonddi, The Wildlife Society, Toxoplasma gondii, Toxoplasmosis, USGS
17 Jun 11
North American Opossum with winter coat. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Cody Pope.
A study published last month in the online open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases suggests a new twist in the relationship between free-roaming cats, Toxoplasma gondii, and toxoplasmosis infections in marine mammals.
“The most remarkable finding of our study,” notes co-author Dr. Michael [...]
17 May 11
Among the findings of a recent study:
Five of 18 cats trapped “between the spring and fall of 2008 and 2009” in central Illinois’ 1,500-acre Robert Allerton Park tested positive for Toxoplasma gondii antibodies. Five of the seropositive cats were trapped at the same site; there, one white-footed mouse (of 21 trapped) also tested positive, and [...]
0 Comments
Posted in In the News, Research Protocol, Toxoplasma
Tagged congenital transmission, David Jessup, Melissa Miller, Michael Hutchins, Nohra Mateus-Pinilla, oocysts, Robert Allerton Park, Shannon Fredebaugh, T. gonddi, The Wildlife Society, Toxoplasma gondii, Toxoplasmosis, University of Illinois Prairie Research Institute
Tagged congenital transmission, David Jessup, Melissa Miller, Michael Hutchins, Nohra Mateus-Pinilla, oocysts, Robert Allerton Park, Shannon Fredebaugh, T. gonddi, The Wildlife Society, Toxoplasma gondii, Toxoplasmosis, University of Illinois Prairie Research Institute
-
Get updates via email
-
