Leslie Griffith

Circus Elephants and Tuberculosis

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.

Experienced Reporters Unwanted

Published  in The Huffington Post April 7th.

Several experienced Bay Area reporters were "let go" this week.

This is a national trend in local television news that can only hurt a democracy.

Wake up, dear friends.

Your local news has the money to buy a helicopter and install expensive high definition, but not the money to hire experienced investigative reporters to help protect your community? Shame on those handful of money-grubbing corporations who own the air waves these days. They have sold out the citizens who once depended on them.

News is now considered just another sales "product." That is a direct quote I heard from one local television executive.

If you think the corporations don't have the money to hire experienced reporters to protect you -- what ARE they buying? I can name two things: Helicopters and High Definition: One supplies empty calories, the other distracts with pretty pictures intended to look like news.

I recently published an op-ed called. "Switch Channels When the Helicopter Arrives!" The helicopter provides nothing but filler. It's truly mind-molesting to consider the logic of these mega-media-corporations. They begin losing money on newscasts, so they add more! What kind of stinkin-thinkin is that? Instead of making one newscast great, they have 10 mediocre ones! Then they have to fill the endless hours with cheap enfotainment a la helicopter shots of traffic jams, car chases, and grass fires.

Consider how many times anchors sound like third graders and look even sillier by tossing to endless helicopter shots that do nothing but distract viewers by taking up time. I suppose they think that if it is a grass fire on high definition it will look like news!

The money they spend on toys could be spent on experienced investigative reporters instead.

High definition also cost a fortune, and it too insures some destructive results. Inexpensive, and inexperienced anchors and reporters are guaranteed after high definition is installed. Why you ask? It's simple really -- only 20- and 30-years-olds look good on high definition. Wrinkles, thinning hair and age spots don't. Even though the seasoned reporter might deliver invaluable information, some idiot from some focus group tells the corporations " I just hate her hair!" The corporations next move? An ad -- fresh meat wanted.

This new "fresh meat' rarely has the experience once required to sit in that chair or report on a community they hardly know. They look and sound good, but what about protecting the citizens in their communities? Do they understand that's their job? More importantly, the corporations don't want them too smart or asking too many questions. That's why the investigative reporters are out...the naive and beautiful are in. I call this a form of censorship, the viewers are the victims.

If the public does not understand that experienced reporters are fired because they complain about what journalism has become, and they don't look good on high def., the corporations will continue adding cheap broadcasts with inexpensive and inexperienced anchors and reporters, many of whom have never walked outside the studio to learn about the communities they are supposed to protect. They can, however, ad-lib beautifully when it comes to car chases, grass fires and traffic jams. "Man oh man, look at chopper threes pictures of that grass fire-- the wind is certainly blowing!"

How can journalists protect you, and help you put events in perspective with a sense of context without understanding events themselves? They simply cannot. I have become convinced the leaders of many media corporations get confused if they try. They too have been dumbed down and fear questions might lose corporate sponsors.

At least now, viewers are speaking with their remotes. Local television news has gone from Chez Panisse to McDonalds. It is self-destructing by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Once great broadcasts have become tabloid provocateurs. Did any local broadcast lead with the Scooter Libby trial over Anna Nicole Smith? If they did, I did not see it. One involved treason that reached the highest levels of government, the other involved a sad little girl whose lack of self-reflection and self-esteem led to her death. Her story was perverse, Libby's story revealed a government out-of-control.

Rupert Murdoch and Fox News seem to be the media corporate icon and network all other corporations appear determined to imitate -- dumb down the audience, and they won't notice their own well being is compromised.

I understand a news anchor "reporting" from The San Francisco Bay Area does not live in the community he claims to inform. How can that be? It's much like a police officer refusing to patrol his or her beat. Without understanding the community, how can journalists keep its citizens safe? Reporters and anchors have to understand what's happening outside the studio door in order to ask the right questions and provide perspective and context. Side note: that same anchor, I am told, flies "home" every weekend and does commercials in his spare time. Holy smokes! How sad for the viewers who need a news organization to trust.

Remember when Tom Brokaw refused to do commercials years ago? He said his network might need to expose wrongdoing by those corporations someday, and the conflict of interest would stand in his way. Now the bar is so low, a snail with limbo skills would have trouble sliding under it.

I have written many articles on the media. There are some fine people still working within the corporate system hoping they can change it. I am very proud to know them. But, lets face it, the real free exchange of ideas is happening online and outside the mainstream media.

Soldiers do what reporters should---lift the cam-cords, press the button and record reality.

Published  in The Huffington Post and The Bay Guardian April 1st.

Tomorrow night you can watch the mother lode of reality shows. It’s called “Bad Voodoo War,” and it airs on PBS’ Frontline. “Bad voodoo War” is the story of a platoon of thirty soldiers in Iraq armed with both military might and cam-corders.  Cameras are attached to their humvees and carried in their hands as they take us on a mind-molesting mine-field of monotony that turns into an eruption of violence and leaves viewers sitting as anxious as nervous fingers on a loaded gun.

Director Deborah Scranton (The War Tapes) uses her brilliant “subject as reporter” theme to tell “Bad Voodoo’s War.”  With very few “embeds,” (journalists reporting from Iraq ) Scranton jars us into the reality of war by forcing us to see through the eyes of the soldiers.

She chose a California based National Guard unit with seasoned soldiers.  Almost all of them have seen prior active duty. They are not wide-eyed “want to be” warriors. They know the ropes, and they know a meaningful mission when they see one. Viewers get the impression there are many reasons to doubt this mission is worth the lives of the extraordinary men Scranton ’s cameras introduce us to.

At 18 years old, when most of our sons are working to get into someone’s pants, Jason Shaw learned how to tie tourniquets around his pant legs to keep himself and his fellow soldiers from “bleeding out” during battle. While fighting for control of the Baghdad airport in 1993, the18 year old Shaw was awarded the military’s third highest award for valor, The Silver Star.

He lost six of his best friends during that tour, returned to the states and moved to California to help care for the child of one of those buddies killed in action. Shaw, suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome, lost his girlfriend and his religion and insisted on returning to die with his “brothers” if he had to. He did not want them in a fight he might be able to help them win. His fear of them dying on the battlefield without him was stronger than his fear of returning to Iraq . He is now 22 years old in “Bad Voodoo War.” I wonder if he understands the bravest people are always afraid.

By now you know, the group calls itself “Bad Voodoo,” taking the nickname of their trusted Sergeant First Class Toby Nunn. It shows incredible insight on Nunn’s part, the group’s father figure. Nunn adopted the name while in the Balkans where Muslims and Christians were arguing over religion and wanted to know his. He said he was “Bad Voodoo.” The name stuck. The message clear—religion is nothing to kill over.

In the PBS Frontline segment, to air Tuesday night, Nunn and his platoon’s mission on this tour is to “Secure military and non-military elements going into Iraq .” The 30 man platoon protects the convoys as they drive from Kuwait into Iraq in an area known as IED ally. (Improvised explosive devices) It is clearly one of the “worst stretches of theater,” Nunn explains. Toby Nunn is not one for hyperbole, so when he says the road is dangerous, his men believe him, and it did not take long for them to see for themselves.

“The (new) surge, he says, has brought so many forces and so much equipment.” What Sergeant Nunn does not say is his 30 men are road Kamikazes. They keep their eyes peeled day and night for road side bombs, many bombs on IED alley are not on the side of the road at all, but in the middle, and those are often the hardest to see in the dark even with night goggles because the bombs are buried and waiting for a tire to trigger an explosion. Nunn uses his tripod and camera to show shrapnel following an explosion and explains how it flies—Helter Skelter-- jagged and burning hot—cutting off legs and body parts and destroying what appear to be very vulnerable military vehicles. If an IED awaits the convoy, Nunn and his men will find it one way or another.

When they make it through a particularly stressful 48 hour convoy escort alive, Nunn resembles a doting father, walking past the men’s beds making sure they sleep before he considers closing his eyes himself. He wants to hug them for their bravery, he knows he cannot. He would gladly give his life for them, and after watching the documentary, is it clear they know this. As Sergeant First Class Nunn takes one last look at his men, before trying to sleep himself, he knows tomorrow will only bring another kamikaze trip down the most dangerous road in Iraq.  Lying awake alone—ever vigilant—he sometimes talks to the camera as it were his closest confidant.

The road “Bad Voodoo” is guarding is the only access road the Bush administration and private companies (supporting and benefiting from the war) have to bring supplies in. This was certainly not the battlefield Nunn and his men were trained to navigate.

It’s a strange coincidence that I know Toby Nunn. I met him after his tours in the Balkans, Afghanistan and then his first tour in Iraq .  We met through a friend of mine who was on Nunn’s striker team during one of Nunn’s first Iraqi tours. I was told by my friend that Toby Nunn was “one of the finest soldiers” he had ever met. My friend is brilliant in his own right, so I agreed to meet Toby Nunn. I am proud to know him. Just as the men he watches over in “Bad Voodoo war.”

Toby has a loving wife and a new baby girl as well as two sons. In Iraq , he now has thirty sons. They listen to his every word. They know he can help save their lives. When Toby got the call to return to Iraq , I remember thinking, “So much is given by so few in this country." They fight, so many of us can pretend there is no war.  Many Americans can’t wait to get home from work to watch reality shows, but this time Toby’s reality is scheduled to air. This is reality that teaches. Thank goodness for director Deborah Scranton.

There are many things disturbing about his film. Why are U.S. soldiers protecting private contractors on “death ally” when the contractors “Bad Voodoo” protects, clearly have the money to hire private security of their own?  It’s time for Toby Nunn and his men to come home. They have given enough.

Another question that haunts me that Toby Nunn and his men are not allowed to answer in this film is-- what are they risking their lives for? What is in those convoys of trucks and tankers going into and out of Iraq ? What they carry in them would give the country great insight into the bush administration’s agenda. I hope whatever they are risking their lives to transport is helping to protect America and not lining the pockets of multi- billion-dollar-corporations who care little for anything but profit. Toby Nunn---and his men should not be sacrificed for money. They are priceless.

In one segment of the film, Nunn tries to communicate to Iraqi police. It is an impossible situation, and clearly Iraqi police have no idea how to lead. At one point, an Iraqi police officer asks, “Who do we complain to when they (Iraqi police) disobey orders?” No infrastructure is in place. How can American soldiers teach Iraqi soldiers who lived under a dictatorship how to lead? They are trained to be followers.

One final note to Toby and his men if I may? Toby is seen talking late at night to the cameras. He wonders if anyone cares they are traveling the highway of death everyday. He wonders how long they can live with the uncertainty and monotony and sleep deprivation and IEDs. He wonders out loud and without judgment if anyone understands what this war has become.

This is for you “Bad Voodoo.”  It is a poem I recently put under the pillows of my children when they arrived for our latest family reunion. The poem is written by the poet e.e. cummings.

“…here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide—and this is the wonder keeping the stars apart.

I carry your heart—I carry it in my heart…”   

“Bad Voodoo,” take the personal pronouns and turn them into the collective.  WE carry you in our hearts. Come home safe to us.