Tuesday’s Horse

In an article entitled “Don’t tell Noddy he has big ears,” Annalise Walliker reports for the HeraldSun on the mammoth shire who may be the tallest horse in the world.

AT 20.1 hands - or 2.057 metres - and 1.3 tonnes, Noddy’s no baby, but tell that to doting “mum”, owner-trainer Jane Greenman.

The five-year-old shire horse, whose full name is Luscombe Nordram, was raised by Ms Greenman in Pakenham and is believed to be the world’s tallest.

Ms Greenman, who at 172cm is no shorty either, had no idea the foal she hand-reared from the age of six months would grow so big.

“The scary thing is he still hasn’t finished — shire horses aren’t fully grown until they’re about six or seven,” she said.

“We have to use a ladder to get on top of him, or swing off a tree. My friends once had a competition to see if anyone could get on him from the ground unassisted — no one could do it.”

An English-developed line of draught horses, shire horses date back to Roman times. Noddy will be among 1300 horses at the Royal Melbourne Horse Show at Werribee Park from March 12-15.

It could be the last chance to see him: Americans are showing great interest. The tallest known horse on record is one in Texas, at 20 hands.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23314097-2862,00.html

The death and destruction of the innocent lives of horses is laid out in grisly detail by Animal Angels in this report on their investigation of Natural Valley Farms in Saskatchewan, Canada.

It is in pdf format, and can be accessed at this link:

AA_report_natural_valley_farms_feb_2008.pdf

Please be warned there are numerous graphic images contained therein.

The atrocities related to horse slaughter seem to have no end. How anyone can defend it seems beyond the scope of any reasoning, and one has to closely question the motives of those who do.

The hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drugs Premarin and Prempro continues to be in the news. Most reports have been about the numerous lawsuits against Wyeth who produces the drugs. However, recently there have been some other interesting revelations.

Martha Rosenberg leads with this in her article for AlterNet:

Selling a product that causes cancer isn’t easy, but with help from a U.S. endocrinologist group, Wyeth is again obscuring the truth about HRT.

Rosenberg tells us:

Since HRT was found by the Women’s Health Initiative in 2002 to cause a 26 percent increased risk of breast cancer, 29 percent increased risk of heart attack, 41 percent increased risk of stroke and 100 percent increased risk of blood clots, a study in the January issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention found the cancers also move quickly.

Women who took combined estrogen/progestin hormone-replacement therapy for just three years had four times the usual risk of lobular breast cancer, which accounts for about 10 percent of invasive breast cancer.

The effect of millions of HRT users saying, “You want us to take WHAT?” after the WHI study — 75 percent quit — was also dramatic. There was an 8.6 percent reduction in overall breast cancer between 2001 and 2004 and 14.7 reduction for estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer.

But “studies” by doctors who don’t want to give up the HRT gravy train appear with increasing regularity, promoting results that seek to reverse or spin the WHI findings.

But “studies” by doctors who don’t want to give up the HRT gravy train appear with increasing regularity, promoting results that seek to reverse or spin the WHI findings.

HRT actually protects against heart disease and reduces calcification of the arteries — two original, disproved HRT selling points — say the authors of the new crop of “timing hypothesis/therapeutic window of opportunity” analyses, hoping the memory of the American public is as short as their practice’s funds without trumped up HRT profits.

Researchers even resuscitated the discredited claim that HRT protects against dementia at a meeting of the American Academy of Neurology last year. And there are rumblings that HRT’s ability to lower colon cancer could be of value. (HRT causes breast cancer, heart attack, stroke and blood clots but you might not get colon cancer!)

Of course some doctors have noted the creeping HRT revisionism.

Enthusiasm for the “Yes, but” studies “far exceeds the science” and does not “alter current recommendations that hormone therapy should never be used to prevent heart disease,” says Dr. Helen Roberts, senior lecturer in women’s health at Auckland University. For one thing, “the risk of stroke was elevated regardless of how many years had elapsed since menopause,” she says of the new studies.

But others like the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) have jumped on the HRT bandwagon.

“This is an important and meaningful analysis for women who can benefit from Hormone Replacement Therapy,” said Richard Hellman, AACE President about a study which indicated HRT did not elevate cardiovascular disease risk in some women.

And a position paper on the AACE site says, “Given the powerful effects of estrogen therapy in relieving menopausal symptoms, we believe that physicians may safely counsel women to use estrogen for the relief of menopausal symptoms.”

Some suggest Wyeth money is behind the AACE position. (1)

The WHI recently revealed use of HRT also makes it harder to detect breast cancer.

Peggy Peck, Executive Editor, MedPage Today reports:

Use of estrogen plus progestin appears to make breast cancer more difficult to detect by both screening mammography and biopsy, according to a post hoc analysis of data from the Women’s Health Initiative study.

The authors concluded that combined hormone therapy not only increased the risk of breast cancer, but also “compromises the diagnostic performance of mammograms and breast biopsies.” (2)

Natural News says there is a safe alternative called Estriol. However, Wyeth is reportedly bullying the FDA into blocking its sales in the U.S.

Virginia Hopkins who wrote the piece reports:

The FDA has begun 2008 by forbidding compounding pharmacists to use estriol in their natural hormone formulations because the agency doesn’t have a specified approved use for it. They took this action because Wyeth complained about it. And yet, Wyeth-Pharma sells two types of estriol drugs in Europe, so we know this is not a safety and efficacy issue.

In case you’ve forgotten, Wyeth is the giant pharmaceutical company that makes Premarin and PremPro, synthetic hormones found to cause heart disease, strokes and cancer. If we do some rough calculations based on statistics from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), Wyeth’s hormone replacement drugs have killed tens of thousands of women over the past few decades. Sales of these dangerous drugs have plummeted since the WHI results were announced, and women who were injured by them and sued, are winning millions in damages in courtrooms around the U.S. (3)

What does this have to do with horses?

The name for Wyeth’s drug Premarin is derived from the phrase “pregnant mare’s urine.”

The makers of this drug are not only responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of women, but also for the mares incarcerated in stalls and milked for their urine, and their foals.

Read our Fact Sheet

Other Points of Interest

• The Madison, NJ-based Wyeth faces 5,300 Prempro- and Premarin-related law suits in addition to the one it just lost — but with damages reduced — in Reno, NV brought by three women with breast cancer.
• Jurors, who began deliberating last week, said on Monday that Wyeth inadequately warned Donna Scroggin that its drugs Premarin and Prempro carried an increased risk of breast cancer. The lawsuit, in Federal District Court in Little Rock, also named Upjohn, the maker of Provera.(4)
• In January, the drug giant announced it was selling the one million square-foot Rouses Point, NY plant, where it made its horse-urine derived drugs, and cut fully 10 percent of its work force.

Sources:

(1) http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/77906/
(2) http://www.medpagetoday.com/HematologyOncology/BreastCancer/tb/8496
(3) http://www.naturalnews.com/022751.html
(4) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/business/26wyeth.html?ref=business

If you are a member of the AQHA, and wonder how some of your registration fees are being spent, here is one example: lobbying against legislation that will ban horse slaughter and export for slaughter. The document is in pdf format.

http://www.aqha.com/association/publicpolicy/Myth_Fact_828Final_2.pdf

You will see in the so-called Myths and Facts document they are using that every single statement they make is a myth they created with the help and support of their partners, the AVMA and there are no real facts.

It is outrageous that an organization that encourages and supports massive overbreeding of Quarter Horses, then makes its living off the registration of these same horses endorses their deaths by slaughter.

Never mind the use of artificial insemination, how about the cloning of horses, such as is taking part in Texas at ViaGen. http://www.horsesdaily.com/news/health/2007/04-18-cloning.html.

We, among others, have taken apart these statements many, many times over the years. You can find solid arguments against this paper by searching AQHA on Tuesday’s Horse or at our website at www.fund4horses.org.