Dear friends,
The story below is one of many I have published on the subject of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (otherwise known as M-tuberculosis) in elephants and its transference to humans. I have studied this topic for 5 years.
I have always approached the M-tuberculosis stories with a desire to protect both the elephants and the unsuspecting people sitting in closed arenas who are exposed to the M-TB.
There are a few elephants sanctuaries in the United States, and if the USDA finally did it's job by taking performing elephants exposed and sick with M-tuberculosis out of circuses, the obvious question is where would these elephants go? I would like to get people thinking about elephant sanctuaries funded by the circuses who have risked spreading a communicable disease by using these sick animals. But, as you know, billionaires do not like to part with the golden goose. Kenneth Feld, the sole owner of Ringling Bros.Barnum & Baily circus has been quoted as saying, " The circus would not be the circus without the elephants." But there is a federal law-suit in session in Washington D.C. right now in part because Kenneth Feld was forced to release the elephants health records. it took the plaintiff's council years of fighting to them...most of the health memos on the M-tb in the elephants are written to private investigators...not veterinarians in hopes of saving the herds. Ringling Bros. cared only about hiding the M-tb in its elephants, not protecting them or the circus patrons they profess to care for.
Before the ruling that would finally release the elephants health record, Kenneth Feld's famous attorneys told the judge they shouldn't be made public because reckless journalists would use them to send the wrong message. Like that journalist (me) in San Francisco.
The judge threatened to throw the whole bunch of lawyers and the owner of Ringling Bros in jail if the records were not turned over. finally, they were. Ringling understands threats, they are masters of intimidation themselves. Ringling has a manual explaining how to use threats against reporters to maximum advantage. The M-tuberculosis was even more wide spread than i imagined and the lengths to which Kenneth Feld tried to hide the Asian elephants illnesses I hope will someday be judged by a jury. What was in those health records was proof that most of Ringling's herd was infected with M-tuberculosis and had been for years as they traveled across the country.But, also revealed where lies and deceit used to cover up that fact. Kenneth Feld knew how dangerous his elephants were to the public---emails prove it. He just did not seem to care.
I reported this story to anyone who would listen. Ringling came at me hard with rumors that i was no longer a journalist but a PETA member posing as a journalist. To this day, i have had respected reporters repeat that propaganda. P.T. Barnum knew how to spread a rumor and make it stick.
But, there is no denying the documentation of infected elephants ...many of whom took several drugs in an effort to cure them. Even today as the circus travels across the country, the problem is, there is no way to know if they are ever cured. Their lungs cannot be x-rayed. There is now a DNA test, but i doubt too many circus's will spend the money to use it. On Ringling's stud service website. An elephant named Shirley is mentioned. Shirley has active tuberculosis like so many other elephants at Ringling's "Center for Conservation." Shirley can barely stand and is nursing a baby named Mable who will undoubtedly get TB from her mother ...its likely she already has it. Even so, expect to see Mable on the road. Ringling patrons love those baby elephants.
Mabel, like the rest of them will be used to perform with a communicable and transmittable disease until she too dies. i have counted 30 of the elephants that have died in the last 15 years...many were very young. ironically, the only reason the animals are allowed to be used as entertainment for humans is because Ringling Bros. promises to propagate the species. In 2005, there were so few young baby elephants the circus brochures featured several babies already dead. The brochure was surrounded by other elephants, and more then 70 percent of those elephants were infected with TB. too.
Perhaps someday the spreading of this disease from humans to elephants and back again will cease. Perhaps a judge will rule testing is needed to prove what scientists have written: that fifty percent of all elephant handlers exposed to M-tuberculosis come down with it themselves. They then, of course, carry it home to families,homeless shelters...etc.There is a circus in Oakland now, performing with two elephants who have tested positive for M-tb. The elephant in the picture to the left is one of them.Does this elephant look healthy to you? would you let your child ride this elephant? Is our government so distracted that no one is looking...and no one cares?The USDA is clearly working in Ringling's interest. Money talks, the truth walks.
Life is sacred. Money is not. Corporations are big and powerful and sometimes nefarious, but they should not be allowed to put our lives at risk.
http://archive.truthout.org/article/leslie-griffith-the-elephant-room
Circus Elephants with Tuberculosis are a Real Threat.
Published in The Huffington Post April 24h.
A little girl wiggles uncontrollably as she waits for the elephants to come out while sitting in the stands under the big tent. A bow in her hair, and her new glittery shoes on her feet. She's in her Sunday finest because the self proclaimed, "Greatest Show on Earth" is about to begin. She jumps from her seat as the endangered Asian elephants enter the closed arena. Her hands are now lifted high above her head in some Pentecostal fashion she believes will bring her closer to the mammoth ten thousand pound performers.
She holds cotton candy in one hand and reaches out with the other as the Asian elephants pass by hoping to get some of the moisture blown from their trunks on her body and in her hair. She loves the smell of them, the way they thud-thud- as they walk, and she's studying dinosaurs in school, and she believes they look prehistoric.
But this is where the scene screeches to an end. This is where the film rips, and the colors merge into Rorschach- black- burns on the screen. The circus boasts of "death defying acts," but she is possibly sitting closer to heartbreak and disease than she has the capacity to imagine.
"That little girl could be in very real danger of catching a communicable disease that could make her very ill or even kill her."
World-renowned epidemiologist and head of the first HIV division for the Centers for Disease Control, Don Francis says. Never one to back away from a fight, Francis is the subject of a movie about his fight to make the world understand another communicable disease---AIDS. And the Band Played On is the movie, and he became one of my heroes when I viewed it almost twenty years ago. Francis is a man who has taken on giants with deep pockets at great risk to himself for the public good. He knows denial kills.
He fought to prove AIDS was ravenous. He wanted funding to try to stop it. We in the Bay Area were attending so many funerals a day the crematoriums could not get to all the bodies in time to display the Urns, and many funeral homes would not touch the bodies at all. Francis knows that in the face of a communicable disease, denial, politics and lack of research money can perpetuate a modern day plague.
After two years of researching the transference of M-tuberculosis from Asian elephants to humans, I took my documents to Don Francis--now in San Francisco running a bio lab called Global Solutions for infectious diseases. I knew if my evidence was solid, Francis would not lie, and he would not be afraid of repercussions if it meant protecting the public. The documents included e-mails affidavits, and depositions. All had to do with Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus and the fact that the majority of their elephants from 1993- 2007 had m-tuberculosis, the same kind of TB humans contract. Many of the documents revealed that the elephants had been given one or more of the treatment drugs and either could not tolerate them or had become drug resistant. These are the same drugs humans take for m-tuberculosis. I well remember the week of our meeting because that same week one man, on one passenger plane, was found to have drug resistant M-tuberculosis. A few days later, congress held acrimonious hearings trying to figure out how one passenger could have boarded the plane exposing everyone inside.
When elephants enter an arena they often spew mucus from their spouts. If circus patrons are within shot of the effluence and the animal is sick, it could spread M-tuberculosis to the patron or worse. It could spread a drug resistant form of tuberculosis.
Last Sunday I opened up the San Jose Mercury News and found this article on the front page.
The article used CDC figures which indicate that tuberculosis increased in four of the Bay Area's five largest counties and San Jose had the highest tuberculosis rate of any large American metro city." For the scientists among you, read "The Elephant in the Room."
After 15 years of denying it, the USDA finally admits Asian elephants can pass m-tuberculosis to humans and vice- versa. For more on that
See this article on the Global Action Network website: http://www.gan.ca/campaigns/circuses/factsheets/tuberculosis+in+elephants.en.html
Now ask yourself if you know anyone with M-tuberculosis. Then ask them whether they have been to the circus lately.
If you are tempted to believe the circus' family-friendly all-American image is real, consider this: every e-mail explaining the herds had m-tuberculosis is sent from Ringling's veterinarian to a private investigator or former CIA director. I have the documents. In other words hiding the TB was much more important than ever considering shutting down the circus while the elephants were treated.
Money or public health? Ringling chose money every time while our little boys and girls were sitting in their Sunday best excited as hell while becoming sitting ducks for a disease that could kill them.
