Vulture update....

 Photo credit: Radio Sai

Previous blog entries mentioning vultures:

Update - May 25th, 2011

Quick update - Dec 17th, 2009

International Vulture Awareness Day - Sep 5th, 2009

Misc updates: vultures needed - Jul 26th, 2009

Science and side effects... - Oct 29th, 2008

Earlier blog entries, see above, discussed the die-off of vultures in India and the consequences, from the proliferation of packs of wild dogs to the difficulties faced by Parsees in their burial practices... Well, apparently vultures and eagles in Europe are now dying from the same causes. And Bombay's Parsees are still struggling with the dearth of vultures...

When Dinshaw Tamboly was about eight years old, he attended a Parsi funeral for the first time. His grandfather had passed away and his body was taken to Doongerwadi, Mumbai’s Towers of Silence, as the community’s traditional funeral site is known...  

As a trustee, Tamboly had been given charge of the upkeep of the area, a 54-acre patch of land on the eastern slope of uptown Malabar Hills that is often described as a mini-forest. Despite the rule that no one but corpse-bearers can visit the three wells where cadavers are left for vultures, Tamboly visited them to investigate the matter. “What I saw was horrible,” he says. “There were piles of hundreds of corpses in different stages of decomposition, rotting in the open. When I looked around, there was not a single vulture around,” he says. Asked, the corpse-bearers there told him that rather few vultures ever descended to the wells, leaving corpses uneaten for long periods of time. Other avian visitors such as crows and kites would sometimes fly off with and drop pieces of flesh on the terraces of nearby houses and balconies of buildings...

The issue has created a deep rift within the community. Zoroastrian high priests have strictly forbidden cremation and burial, branding all those who choose or advocate these as ‘renegades’; fire and earth are holy under the tenets of the faith and are not to be defiled..."  Read on.

Quick update

The October 29th, 2008 blog entry, Science and side effects, related that the use of the drug diclofenac in livestock was responsible for almost wiping out the Indian vulture population, with attendant ill effects... Well, in 2006 diclofenac was banned and the "safe" drug ketoprofen started to be used instead.

Fast forward to today. It turns out that ketoprofen is also fatal to the vultures, and has also been killing them! Now they're moving on to using meloxicam...

Misc updates...

Needed: vultures...

Photo credit: Radio Sai

The October 29th, 2008 blog entry, Science and side effects..., discussed a couple of the side effects of the massive vulture die-off in Bombay and India. One example was a huge surge in the population of wild dogs, resulting in an increase in rabies deaths among the population. According to this article, Is Decline in India’s Vulture Population Linked to Spread of Rabies in Humans? the Indian government has launched a plan to sterilize eight million stray dogs over the next ten years...

Needed: new legislation...

Picture source: Wikipedia

The March 29th, 2008 blog entry, Medellin, covered the SCOTUS decision in Medellin v. Texas, which allowed the state to go ahead and execute Jose Ernesto Medellin (who had been convicted of the rape and subsequent murder of two girls). Medellin had argued that the police had not informed him of his right (pursuant to the Vienna Convention) to have the Mexican consulate notified of his arrest. In an oped last week in the New York Times, "Lawlessness North of the Border", John B. Bellinger III (a lawyer, was the legal adviser to the State Department from April 2005 to January 2009) argues that the Obama administration should "seek narrowly tailored legislation that would authorize the president to order review of these cases and override, if necessary, any state criminal laws limiting further appeals, in order to comply with the United Nations Charter." Good luck with that! It is unlikely that the Obama administration will move on this issue - although it may be the right thing to do, you know that the "soft on crime" attacks would immediately begin, and the administration is unlikely to risk political capital on this issue...

Needed: outrage leading to action... (and a sense of perspective)

Photo source: Let's See Change

Apparently the "Skip Gates affair" has shocked... shocked... some, who are lamenting that the U.S. apparently is not post-racial, the election of Barack Obama as President notwithstanding... An example is one Lawrence Bobo... Now this blogger can't say that he has any idea at all who this gentleman is, other than that he has written an article on the incident, What Do You Call a Black Man With a Ph.D.? This blogger, for one, was not shocked that racism still exists in the United States. What he is shocked about, nay appalled, is that the folks like Bobo and many others are surprised, and acting as if this is a revelation! Are they so oblivious, wrapped in their academic coccoons? Almost four years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans the truth about what appears to be a series of racially motivated killings that occurred in the area at that time has not been full uncovered... and in fact is not even seriously being investigated.
Mr. Bobo, please read this article, "Katrina's Hidden Race War', find a true sense of outrage, write opeds, and petition the administration to do something to have this seriously investigated! Skip Gates is an erudite and well-spoken person, who is listened to and who has a friend in the White House. Please also get him engaged in this effort. Oh, and bye the bye, how about an explanation re why this does not outrage you as much as your friend's minor (in comparison) inconvenience...

Mumbai nuttiness

The reported Mumbai death tally has risen to 150, including fifteen foreigners... Some of the coverage is chimerical and this blogger wonders about the credulousness of the media that prints some of the more silly and/or fanciful statements. A few random examples include:

• From 'Highly trained and motivated,' we learn that apparently Indian commandos are trained to resist sleep deprivation and can last a week without problems - "... Sleep deprivation training is sophisticated. Commandos are taught the art of keeping their eyes open for as long as a week without any visible signs of mental fatigue ..." Hah! Other articles have revealed that the terrorists were prepared because they carried packs of almonds to help fight fatigue!
• Apparently this blogger is off the mark in thinking that firing indiscriminately and throwing grenades does not reveal great sophistication, at least according to an Indian commando, who said "... Not everybody can fire the AK series of weapons; not everybody can throw a grenade like that, it is obvious that they were trained somewhere ..."
• MSNBC reports that at the Taj, on Friday "... at dusk, Indian forces began launching grenades at the building ..." Huh? Much more likely is the CNN version, that Indian commando were using flash-bang devices...
• Hemant Karkare, head of the state's Anti-Terrorism Squad was killed during the rampage. According to CNN "... Footage from CNN's sister network, CNN-IBN, showed Karkare donning a helmet and putting a bulletproof vest over his light blue shirt as uniformed police officers with firearms and walkie-talkies surrounded him. It would be the last video taken of Karkare before terrorists shot him three times in the chest near Cama hospital ..." Hmm, something doesn't add up here.

Oh well, I guess there are column-inches and broadcast minutes to fill...

Quick thoughts on Mumbai

Following news coverage on the events in Mumbai this blogger really doesn't 'get' a couple of things. First, many of those providing commentary go on ad nauseam re the sophistication of the attacks, and how they must have been very well-planned and practiced (example)... Huh? How hard could it have been to pick the public targets they chose? To randomly open fire with automatic weapons at everyone while throwing grenades? Apparently the terrorists had also schlepped in, but then never used, a large quantity of RDX high explosive! This doesn't seem very clever or sophisticated... And asking potential victims if they have British or American passports? Doesn't seems like a very useful tactic! Second, were the terrorists really targeting British and Americans? One has to say that if this was a major goal of theirs then they failed rather spectacularly, at least based on the information released thus far re their victims. So far 125 declared dead, of which only six are foreigners (including a Briton, a Japanese, a German, and an Australian, and an Italian). In this blogger's mind both of these assumptions seem very suspect.

Mumbai mayhem

Terrorism strikes India again, in Mumbai, as multiple attacks occurred yesterday. The targets included some locations where foreigners are usually present (the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, a cafe popular with tourists, etc.) as well as "local" spots such as a movie theater, a train station, hospital, etc. Many casualties are reported...

This blogger happened to tune into a couple of reports of this on television, and was appalled at some of the coverage, which was incredibly shoddy... In the first the news show was reporting on the violence, and the tone of the coverage was of the 'tsk, tsk, isn't this terrible' variety. Then a report came that perhaps British and American tourists were being specifically targeted in the attacks, and suddenly the tone changed radically, to a this is a 'grotesque, unacceptable example of terrorism' type coverage...

A little later this blogger tuned into the middle of the AC360 show on CNN.. (Ed. note: on the air was a guest host and not Anderson Cooper; this blogger didn't catch the name of the guests who were commenting on that section of the program; and while he jotted down a quick few quotes, they may not be one hundred percent accurate!). A guest was in the middle of saying "...India has joined the club of countries facing terrorism that is domestic with an international connection..." Huh? They've "just joined the club"? Hello!

The program and guests then blathered on and on about the United States - this is President-elect Obama's "first test"; what is he going to do?; his team is in close consultation with the Bush team; what might this mean to his Presidency; are the terrorists "sending a message" to Obama; etc., etc.

Listen up! As Doctor Phil might say, "It's not all about you!" This blogger understands that on a U.S. channel the coverage is fairly U.S.-centric. Hell, this blog is pretty U.S.-centric. But why do we have to act as if the US was the first to discover terrorism (on 9/11)? And why does the coverage have to be pitched as if it is all about the United States and our politics? This seems to be the norm...

So, when the bombs went off on the London underground on 7/7/2005, it was portrayed as "Britain's 9/11" and as if terrorism had just reached the U.K. Forget the fact that terrorism and bombs had hit the British for many years (e.g. killing royalty, the Queen's cousin Lord Mountbatten, in 1979; and narrowly missing killing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet in 1984 - both courtesy of the Provisional IRA). When bombs caused carnage in Spain just ahead of their elections on 3/11/2004, all of a sudden it was "Spain's 9/11" and terrorism had just reached Spain. Forget many years of ETA terrorism and bombings, etc. And now it's India's 9/11 and, like, wow, they've been hit by terrorism too!

From an AC360 blog entry by a CNN correspondent on the scene, "... Both President Bush and President-Elect Barack Obama issued statements, each strongly condemning the attack. Who’s behind this? Local reports say a group named the Deccan Mujahedeen claimed responsibility. Some officials say it bears all the hall marks of Al Qaeda. Mumbai is the mecca for western business men and women, many from America. It’s believed thousands of U.S. citizens own a city that is now under siege..." Huh? Is this implying that the attacks occurred here because of the thousands of U.S. citizens there (incidentally out of a population estimated at nineteen million!)

Wouldn't it be more instructive for their audience if CNN informed them not just of the current events, but also of the associated history stretching back several years - for example, the differences between India and Pakistan that contribute to the situation, of the role of the conflict in Kashmir in exacerbating relations between these two countries, of the inter-communitarian tensions that periodically flare up between Hindus and Muslims, etc., etc. No, that's apparently too much work, much simpler (and narcissistic) to act as if it is all about the United States and if the most important issues raised by this horrific occurrence are related to how a President-elect Obama will respond, if he will be strong, weak, blah blah blah...

Science and side effects...

Photo credit: Radio Sai

The above is an old picture of the Parsi towers of silence in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. You can tell it's an old photo by the number of vultures... Living there in the '70's and '80's you could always see a very large number of vultures riding the thermals. However, during the '90's the vulture population declined by over 95%. Scientist and ornithologists looking into this found that the cause of this die-off was the drug diclofenac.

The science:

Cheap diclofenac was widely used across the Indian subcontinent as a pain reliever for livestock. If the livestock died and were eaten by vultures (which was very likely, as vultures were the main "cleaners" of carrion) the diclofenac then caused renal failure in the vultures, leading to their deaths.

The side effects:

• Without the vultures to clean up, the carcasses of dead animals are left to rot, and the population of wild dogs has skyrocketed. "... A research programme led by Anil Markandya of the University of Bath, UK, has calculated that the decline of vultures made way for at least 5.5 million extra feral dogs in India between 1992 and 2006. During this period, these extra dogs would have been responsible for at least 38.5 million bites. National surveys show that in India 123 people die of rabies per 100,000 dog bites, suggesting that a minimum of 47,300 people may have died as a result of the vulture die-off. Taking account of the cost of treating bite victims and dealing with the extra deaths, the researchers calculate that the use of Diclofenac has indirectly cost India an unforeseen 34 BILLION US Dollars in extra health costs ..."
  
• Additionally, this has played havoc with the way Parsis dispose of their dead. "...The Zoroastrian system for disposal of dead bodies is ... based on the principle that the elements, fire, water, and earth must never be defiled and be maintained pure. It is thus enjoined that after death, the body of the person must be disposed of in such a manner as not to defile the elements or to injure the living. Large voracious birds like vultures would eat the flesh and sinews, leaving only the skeleton. The bones remained exposed for a year until they became quite dry. They were then buried as “bone meal manure” in fields; no tombs were permitted on the spot. The distinguishing features of the system are: Speedy disposal of the fleshy parts. It takes about 25 minutes for the birds to finish the corpse, It is economical in the sense that disposal by birds costs nothing and is free, It has the element of charity in offering food to hungry birds, and it displays the ideal of equality. The remains of the rich and the poor lie side by side... In keeping with this ancient custom, the Parsis of India erected enclosures known as Towers of Silence, within which the bodies of the dead are disposed of in accordance with stipulated procedures. In the Towers, vultures come and eat the flesh ..." The dying off of the vultures has seriously disrupted this custom, and other scientific methods are being tried to maintain the custom e.g. using solar reflectors to speed decomposition, using ozone-generators to fight the smell, etc. Plans are also afoot to breed vultures in captivity for this purpose.

Bottom line: an unexpected side effect, and another example of the "tragedy of the commons" and externalities/spillover costs...

Frame of reference

Recently, while listening to the news and reading the papers, etc. (on the subject of offshore & ANWR drilling) this blogger was considering how people filter information based on their frame of reference, their prejudices, and their pre-conceived notions. Sometimes this results in both sides (in this case it was Obama- and McCain-supporters) talking past each other. While thinking about how this happens, this blogger suddenly remembered a small story that had occurred many, many years ago

At the time this blogger lived in Bombay (before it was renamed Mumbai). Every morning the garbage wallah would come to our front door on the fourth floor of our apartment building to pick up and physically cart away our garbage. He was a stooped and wizened figure, aged prematurely by what undoubtedly was a very harsh life. Occasionally his son, who looked to be between six and eight, would be with him - helping his father and learning the trade. The next generation of garbage wallah in the making, fated to be so by birth (see the blog entry "Caste" for some fulminations on the evils of this blight…) and by circumstance. We never really interacted in any meaningful way.

Then one day the garbage wallah rang our doorbell and hesitantly asked to speak to my father (note: he knew that my father worked for the national airline and had travelled abroad extensively). When my father arrived the garbage wallah apologized profusely for bothering him, but said that he had a very important question. With a hand trembling due to equal parts suppressed excitement and anticipation he pulled a piece of cloth out of an inner pocket, and cautiously unwrapped it to reveal a number of bills. Obviously he had found them in someone’s garbage, thought that Lady Luck had smiled upon him, and that he had hit the jackpot. He asked my father what they were worth. In vain my father tried to explain to him that this was Monopoly money, game money, play money, and not real currency. From his furrowed brow and demeanor it was obvious that he did not believe what he was hearing…. Slowly he re-wrapped the money, carefully tucked it away, and then with a final suspicious glance he left. I was left with the impression that he thought that we had tried to swindle him out of his good fortune!

The concept of ‘play money’ was not one that he could even conceive of. That some people might be so well off in life that they had ‘play money’ was something that he just couldn’t wrap his mind around, it was completely foreign to his frame of reference…

The lesson that this blogger took away from this is that one really should be well-read and well-informed, and that one should continuously strive to enlarge one’s frame of reference; and that if more people did this then perhaps we might talk to one other more often (rather than past one another).