I have had the pleasure of working with Tierra Wilson for a couple years at the Gorilla Foundation. Since then, she’s moved off to veterinary school and I to graduate school. We’ve kept in touch and I was elated to hear that she’s going to Rwanda earlier this summer to study the mountain gorillas there. [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Medicine’
May 26, 2007
U.S. stops breeding chimps for future research
Remember when I talked about the current state of using chimpanzee’s in biomedical research? If not, let me refresh your memory. About five months ago, I over-viewed the reasons as to why the United States is not using chimps as a model organism in biomedical research. At the core of it all, the issue for [...]
May 22, 2007
Using Macaques to treat Parkinson’s Disease
I consider Pakinson’s a very devastating neurodegenerative disease because the affected individuals are fully aware of their degeneration. Unlike Alzheimer’s, where individuals become jaded as the disease progresses, individuals with Parkinson’s are very conscious of what’s happening or actually what’s not functioning correctly — and they can’t do a thing about it!
So some new findings from [...]
April 12, 2007
Science magazine unveils the Macaque Genome
Science just published a whole slew of papers, posters, news articles, and the like on the Rhesus Macaque because the macaque genome, the first monkey genome to be sequenced, has been unveiled today.
I haven’t read all of the content in this special issue, but from what I have skimmed so far it’s all focused on [...]
March 17, 2007
The Curse of the Monkey’s Paw
Did you know that between October 2005 to September 2006, US airport inspectors “reported 50 incidents of discovered bushmeat, with each shipment averaging about 9 pounds? That works out to about one shipment being caught every week!”
That is what the CDC has reported in an article over at ABC News. The article, “Bushmeat: Curse [...]
March 7, 2007
Guess where humans got crabs from?
The science blogosphere has been buzzing about new published research that has focused studying the origins of a sexually transmitted disease, crabs which also known as pubic lice.
Before I talk about this paper I wanna thank Carl Zimmer, who opened up a public discussion with a question of the day: How Do You Get Crabs [...]
February 21, 2007
Questioning the ethics of using a monkey to control a robotic arm
I’m opening this post to a discussion of using primates in research as seen in the following video.
Feel free to throw in your two cents… but let’s lay down some rules. In order to participate, first watch the video and then I’ll subjugate you to kindly read my previous posts on this subject matter. But [...]
February 16, 2007
Ireland joins Canada in rejection of blood donors who work(ed) with monkeys
Late in 2006 we posted about a new question on Canada’s blood donor questionnaire and now it turns out that Ireland is following suit. Anyone who has handled monkeys or their bodily fluids will not be able to donate blood.
The reason is the same: the Simian Foamy virus.
It is noted that while the virus is [...]
February 13, 2007
A new baby for Tolkein: Howler monkey with restored sight gives birth
We’ve heard of modern medicine helping zoo animals in many ways (including Salome, a western lowland gorilla at the Bristol Zoo reproducing with the help of fertility drugs) and the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park adds another success to the list: cataract surgery. A howler monkey named Tolkein relied on the help of her caregivers [...]
February 11, 2007
Yaws disease among gorillas and the affect it has on reproductive success
In the past, we have covered how pathogens like Ebola virus and Anthrax bacteria are causing thousands of deaths among great ape populations in Africa. In this post I will introduce another pathogen, one that causes Yaws disease, that is having severe affect on the reproductive success of gorillas, as reported by Florence Levréro et [...]
