A few days ago I saw the fallout shelter sign above still hanging on the outside of an old brick apartment building on Lee near Euclid in Cleveland Heights.  Fallout Shelters were a massive US goverment hoax - the signs and the buildings were just placebos for public nervousness.
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Merck/Sanofi-Adventis Recombinant DNA loose at a Cuyahoga County Park Near you!

Walking with Tucker (the dog) on Wednesday 9/06/07 in a local park I noticed pick up truck or car tracks in the dust at the edge of the woods – that was strange because no vehicles ever drive along the edge of those woods.   Then Tucker   picked up something (upper left bait in photo) in his mouth.  Lightbulb!  Raccoon baiting was in gear as it had been last spring too. 

I got the bait out of Tucker’s mouth with my hand – the bait had a few of Tucker’s teeth marks on it but fortunately did not appear to have been broken open.   I had been told about the bait last spring because Tucker had found one of the baits then and a friend had pulled it out of Tucker’s mouth.  The bait smelled like fish. 

I smelled my hand.   Fish.   I was, frankly, a little freaked out.  I had handled the bait – but if I hadn’t grabbed it Tucker would have eaten it (or maybe not). 

 Using Tucker’s  extremely sensitive nose-on-a-leash, I quickly found four more bait cubes within a few dozen yards of the first bait Tucker had picked up.   With sticks used like chop-sticks I put 3 in a plastic sack to photograph later (doing photography with a dog on a leash wanting to smell more, more, more is usually pretty jerky).

Back home I went into Google Gear.   Here’s what I found out:

The Cuyahoga County Board of Health fall raccoon ORV rabies bait distribution went into action after Labor Day.

The Cuyahoga oral raccoon rabies bait distribution is part of the United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services National Rabies Management Program.

The National Rabies Management Program describes  the oral bait:

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“V-RG is a recombinant vaccine made from a living pox virus vector, vaccinia (V), that carries the rabies antigen in the form of rabies glycoprotein (RG). The rabies glycoprotein is the protective sheath that surrounds the rabies virus and elicits an immune response when swallowed by raccoons, gray foxes, or coyotes. The vaccine cannot cause rabies because it contains only the non-infective surface proteins of the rabies virus, not the viral nuclear material which would be necessary for the virus to replicate and cause an infection.”

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Now I was hoping to get this news up on the web on Wednesday, but didn’t have the time.   On Friday, September 7, 2007 the Plain Dealer scooped me.  You can read Plain Dealer Reporter John Horton’s news release here (until the PD pulls down the link in 14 days, rude – then they charge  for the full article after that).  The PD front page read “Raccoon vaccine halts spread of rabies in Ohio” .   The Chagrin Herald Sun news blog isn’t as matter of fact  about the results of the baiting,   The Chagrin Poster (is this different that a “reporter”? Are “reporters” union newspaper employees and a“poster” non-union?)   Kim Wendell says the program is to “try and vaccinate raccoons”  and goes on to say that 5 racoons have tested positive for rabies during the last year in Cuyahoga and Lake Counties.

Since the ORV campaign has apparently been ongoing for 10 years in the North Eastern United States - with the Merial vaccine – and yet raccoon rabies has been steadily moving west during those years – I question the PD headline “vaccine halts  spread of rabies in Ohio”  Merial is owned by pharma giants Merck and Sanofi-Aventis. 

Here’s what I have observed since last Wednesday. 

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With Tucker’s nose I went back into the park/woods and found a bait cube whose outer fish-dog food cube had been nibbled – perhaps by mice – but the paraffin core with the plastic vaccine sachet in it had not been touched (upper right corner of photo). 

I continued to walk around the park with my eyes out for worm middens, imaginative play structures built by kids in the park, monarchs who had painted tracking marks on their wings, and for bait.  

Then, right in the middle of the asphalt street sidewalk,  I saw paraffin chips, and a pinkish plastic sachet.  If this was the core of the bait (it is – lower right photo),  then it wasn’t being ingested by raccoons nor for that matter by any  animal.  Instead, the fishy dog food surrounding was being eaten, and the wax and plastic sachet neatly avoided. 

So much for the fishy delivery method.

That means the recombinant DNA will end up in the local stream for the fish to eat – but I’m sure that the Merck/Sanofi lab personnel have thought of this possibility.  Right?  

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 Does this program even work? 

Who came up with the bait distribution design and strategy?  How many $1.52 cubes of bait should be distributed per square kilometer?  How do we know raccoons even eat the crazy wax encased plastic sachet?  Does it really provide immunity if it is eaten?  What about Tucker?  What about me? (and what about you?)

I have to admit that what came to my mind was that this entire rabies chase and bait was a corrupt boondoggle  - - Putting cash  into some politically connected pharma pockets.  Because from my experience that’s how our tax money is stolen.  Not straight out of the bank, but via a convoluted, technically plausible but unproven (or false) scheme.  The proverbial snake oil salesman.  The Dr. Good.  The Charlatan. 

That’s how Bush sold us down the war river into Iraq.  Plausible (but false) technicalities about WMD.  Neither the public nor the press (I stopped taking/reading the NYTimes because of their lack of reasonable cynical inquiry) delved into the quirky technical FOG – and were critically mislead because they ate Bush’s bait.   

 Merial labs  (In North America, Merial  operates five sites (including vaccine production in Athens and Gainesville, GA))  is the same company which is apparently responsible for the recent outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in England near Pirbright.

And of course there is the question of safety to humans and to Tucker and other animals. 

Illegibly Printed in minute letters with black ink on the very dark rectangular fish meal sleeve are the words

LIVE VACCINE VECTOR

DO NOT DISTURB

But of course in order to even vaguely be able to read the fine print you must “disturb” the bait. 

Then there is the safety double speak.   Merial and the agencies distributing the bait all say it is safe, and dogs won’t be harmed by eating it, BUT, in the same breath, they say don’t handle it, if you handle it wear gloves, wash your hands immediately, keep your dogs penned up for five days,   Telephone the County Health Department if you touch it.

“if your child brings you a broken bait, wash the exposed skin and call the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services office at 1-866-4 USDA-WS (1-866-487-3297), for further instructions and referral”

Clearly there are serious safety questions in the "minds" of those agencies distributing the bait. 

Meanwhile,  Canine Rabies has recently been claimed to have been eradicated in the United States.   That program was administered through rabies shots given to domestic dogs. 

It is now Monday, September 10th, 2007 and I have walked in the wooded parkland and found 3 more plastic sachets in the leaves.   No sachet appeared to have been broken open, the paraffin was nibbled and visible nearby, or was still intact around the folded sachet.   The fish meal blocks were gone – eaten by a wild animal I assumed.

So who is doing the quality control and follow up data collection on this expensive raccoon rabies program?  Has anyone demonstrated that raccoons gulp the entire block down their throats?  (and also breaking the plastic open on the way down?)   Clearly raccoons are dexterous creatures and I’ll bet that they neatly avoid the paraffin and the queer little recombinant DNA sachet. 

Even if the raccoons do eat the sachet and rupture it in their mouths – where is the study data that shows that this immunizes the raccoon against rabies?

I am very suspicious that this tax funded Merck – Government “health” program has the same effectiveness for improvement of public health as the Fallout Shelters were purported to offer the nuke scared public in the 1950’s and 60’s  -   ZERO