Saturday, December 18, 2010

Uncontaminated bread

In about 1950 My first wife, Nancy and I were active in The Cooperative Consumers of New Haven. It has been from day one that our country was settled by those who helped one another be it with sickness or barn building or governing. The Coop movement is in keeping with that spirit and is alive and well here in Brattleboro. With the New Haven Coop the board listened to several members expound on a recipe developed by nutritionists at Cornell University for the best bread possible to make and urged us to have it baked locally and sold in our two stores. A local baker did bake it for us and we sold the best store-bought bread Dorothy and I had ever tasted. We soon found there was a problem with it. More than 24 hours on a store shelf fungi growth was obvious. At home at room temperature we had the same problem. A local bakery baked bread that did not show aging on a store shelf in a weeks time. We never did find what the ingredient was that kept the commercial bread from spoiling but if a blogger has an answer to that question I would like to look into it as a possible cause of health problems.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Hip Dysplasia in Dogs

The more I think of this subject the more amazed I become. Here we veterinarians have about 24 institutes of higher learning all with teachers teaching genetics that offer degrees in Veterinary Medicine. Also there are college level professors of some of the greatest human institutions of learning who apparently lived with genetics and many of whom must have had a dog of their own with Hip Dysplasia and no one I have heard of suggested that a problem that started with a reported dominate trait in a German Shepard dog spread as through the wind to all breeds of dogs. Unbelievable. I, too am in that designation of ridiculous ignorance.
Archeologists claim there were dogs in Mexico born without hair 6,000 years ago. Some interested parties went to Mexico and combing the villages found 10 hairless specimens and the result was a new bred. That's how a genetic trait spreads and not like some bacterial or virus disease. I want to shout it for all to hear and to cry over. I think of the sadness of veterinarians who had to euthanize so many thousands of cases of dogs in such pain that living with it was asking too much.
I recall one dog brought in for euthanasia and I asked if I might perform surgery as an experiment at my expense. The owners were willing. I went to work as a carpenter with hammer and wood chisel and removed the heads of the two femurs from both hind legs. I recall helping that huge St Bernard to his feet as he recovered from the anesthesia and that dog walked better with his back legs after that brutal surgery than before surgery. He lived out a normal life and when his end came the owners permitted me to perform a post mortum. That dog had two opposing flattened bony areas covered with cartilage with what appeared to me to be joint fluid.
It was as I have said elsewhere one breed that seemed not to be susceptible to Hip Dysplasia until years after all other dogs had had it reported and that was the Greyhound. The reason to me was that the breeders were for years only interested in breeding fast dogs and believed to do that the pregnant bitches had to be run while pregnant for the puppies to be fast. The exercise of running while pregnant flushed the toxic substances from their systems without affecting their puppies as the other breeds failed to do.
I believe we in my profession should be ashamed and immediately identify the substance(s) responsible. When that answer is found we will be ahead of the human medical people who may be permitting non-exercising pregnant humans to be bearing babies who will be born to suffer one or more of the problems without answers such as Autism.
In the veterinary field there are breeding programs to eliminate the problem which in actuality are programs to produce individuals resistant to the causative agent.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

The Sucklings

Yesterday the outstanding Senator from my State of Vermont spoke for 8 hours in the U. S. Senate on behalf of We the People. Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out the efforts to increase the incomes of people so wealthy and so few it is unlikely any average citizen will ever see one in person ever in our lives other than in the media. Please listen and watch Senator Sanders on your computer. The super wealthy are people who acquired fortunes that never would have been possible were they not citizens of our country. These super rich should appreciate their country to the extent that half of the money they own when alive should, after their deaths go to their country. I call it patriotism. Some of us go to war and are killed for patriotism but never the super rich. Some of the super rich have made fortunes from profits from war efforts.

Have you heard of any of the wealthy requesting tax brakes? Of course not. Can you imagine Bill Gates asking for tax brakes? Who then are asking for tax brakes for the wealthy? It is the sucklings of the super rich, conservative Republicans. Fat cat Republicans who have made it in wealth themselves who don't give a dam for either their country or the people in it. Unfortunately the people voted against bad times in the last election and no way did they vote in favor of the no, no, no leaches. It appears that among the lobbyists must be included most Republicans bought and paid for by those who want corporations to run our government and not our government. When they say, "get the government off our backs" they are saying clear the way for profit making corporations to run everything. It was Abraham Lincoln who said so many years ago, "With the advent of the corporation will be the end of the Republic."

I believe a wise man who sees the problems has been chosen by we the people to attempt to do something about it. We must all back President Obama and his efforts or the final struggles of our great Democracy will be ended. We should consider the fact that there are over one hundred thousand hired guns, armed and employed by our army to do what the army should be doing who are available to those who can pay for their services. We are at a cross roads and the choices are limited but the road taken soon will determine the life of the Republic. Get mad and get active or bury your head in the sand.