How Decline of Indian Vultures Led To 500,000 Human Deaths (bbc.com) 49
An anonymous reader shares a report: Once upon a time, the vulture was an abundant and ubiquitous bird in India. The scavenging birds hovered over sprawling landfills, looking for cattle carcasses. Sometimes they would alarm pilots by getting sucked into jet engines during airport take-offs. But more than two decades ago, India's vultures began dying because of a drug used to treat sick cows. By the mid-1990s, the 50 million-strong vulture population had plummeted to near zero because of diclofenac, a cheap non-steroidal painkiller for cattle that is fatal to vultures. Birds that fed on carcasses of livestock treated with the drug suffered from kidney failure and died.
Since the 2006 ban on veterinary use of diclofenac, the decline has slowed in some areas, but at least three species have suffered long-term losses of 91-98%, according to the latest State of India's Birds report. And that's not all, according to a new peer-reviewed study. The unintentional decimation of these heavy, scavenging birds allowed deadly bacteria and infections to proliferate, leading to the deaths of about half a million people over five years, says the study [PDF] published in the American Economic Association journal.
"Vultures are considered nature's sanitation service because of the important role they play in removing dead animals that contain bacteria and pathogens from our environment - without them, disease can spread," says the study's co-author, Eyal Frank, an assistant professor at University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. "Understanding the role vultures play in human health underscores the importance of protecting wildlife, and not just the cute and cuddly. They all have a job to do in our ecosystems that impacts our lives."
Since the 2006 ban on veterinary use of diclofenac, the decline has slowed in some areas, but at least three species have suffered long-term losses of 91-98%, according to the latest State of India's Birds report. And that's not all, according to a new peer-reviewed study. The unintentional decimation of these heavy, scavenging birds allowed deadly bacteria and infections to proliferate, leading to the deaths of about half a million people over five years, says the study [PDF] published in the American Economic Association journal.
"Vultures are considered nature's sanitation service because of the important role they play in removing dead animals that contain bacteria and pathogens from our environment - without them, disease can spread," says the study's co-author, Eyal Frank, an assistant professor at University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. "Understanding the role vultures play in human health underscores the importance of protecting wildlife, and not just the cute and cuddly. They all have a job to do in our ecosystems that impacts our lives."
Nature.... (Score:3)
Nature...uh....finds a way....
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Nature...uh....finds a way....
Condors! Condors are on the verge of extinction. If I was to create a flock of condors on this island, you wouldn't have anything to say!
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Rabies... (Score:5, Informative)
A particularly deadly effect was the resulting rabies epidemic. The decline in vultures (the typical "first responders" to unattended wild animal corpses and predator leftovers) led to a population surge in other scavengers such as jackals and wild dogs. Unlike the vultures, mammals are rabies vectors, and both their increased population and their ability to be infected by contact with a rabies-infected corpse kicked the number of virus cases into a steep exponential growth.
Not Nature, Religion (Score:4, Informative)
An old stereotype? (Score:2)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
Everybody in the West knows that people in India won't kill cattle and eat beef because of religious reasons.
What if this religious prohibition is not applied by non-Hindus or even required of every Hindu person?
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What if this religious prohibition is not applied by non-Hindus or even required of every Hindu person?
Well, looks like what happens is you get mobbed [wikipedia.org].
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*ducks*
No, Modern Reality (Score:3)
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However, if there weren't wild cattle, other wildlife would be more abundant and you'd have the same problem only a different species.
No, you wouldn't.
India happens to have a large wild cow population but the problem would be the same with wild buffalo or anything else.
No, it wouldn't.
There are lots of people starving in India, what makes you think they wouldn't eat those other animals?
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There are lots of people starving in India, what makes you think they wouldn't eat those other animals?
There are people starving just about everywhere in the world. There are also wildlife and ecosystems everywhere in the world. Even in major cities, you have people starving and an abundance of pigeons. By your logic, every homeless person would just start harvesting pigeons and there wouldn't be a problem.
Wildlife will always exist. Wildlife will die of natural causes sometimes. Decomposing wildlife is a health hazard to humans. That's why you need carrion eaters in the ecosystem for human health.
Re:Not Nature, Religion (Score:5, Informative)
Ironically, the decline of vulture populations was noticed first by Parsi community, zoroastrians, whos burial rites involved leaving bodies on mountain tops for vultures. Relative would be surprised to find that their loved ones were rotting instead of being eaten since vultures were rare. But it took time to find out why the vultures were dying. Meanwhile the pills for cattle were routinely prescribed as the miracle cure, without knowing the side effects.
But to your point, you're a bit off base. Most of the cattle are owned, not wandering wild, and used for milk or meat or farm labor. Milk is used all over, and there are plenty of non-Hindus in India that will eat meat (though recently there are riots of this in some states).
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Most of the cattle are owned, not wandering wild, and used for milk or meat or farm labor.
I never said the cattle were wild nor that they did not work or provide milk, that was your assumption but regardless it is not germaine to the discussion. The problem is specifically about rotting carcasses lying around and spreading disease so what metters is what happens after the animal is dead.. In most countries a beef carcass is a valuable source of meat and would be butchered. Clearly that is not happening in these regions of India since they are left to rot so how do you explain that difference co
If they need some vulture, they can borrow ours (Score:3)
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What do you have against turkey vultures?
Yeah, up close they are ugly as all get-out-of-here, but I think they are kind of cool.
Re: This is why ... (Score:1, Flamebait)
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Re:This is why ... (Score:5, Informative)
When you're not prostrating yourself before the altar of Angra Mainyu, go look up Zoroastrianism [wikipedia.org], of whom there are some 60,000 followers in India.
Put far too simply, Zoroastrianism is a dualistic theology modeled as an eternal battle between good and evil. One is encouraged to think good thoughts and do good deeds, and turn away from evil. Zoroastrianism has been around for thousands of years, and has had influences on most of the religions you've heard about.
Among its other tenets, one must not contaminate that which is sacred. When a person dies, their corpse is seen as a source of decay -- evil -- and must not be mingled with the earth, which is seen as sacred. Therefore, rather than bury their dead and contaminate the earth, Zoroastrians subject their dead to "ritual exposure," whereby the corpses are placed in an open-air building called a dakhma, or Tower of Silence [wikipedia.org], where their bodies are consumed by the regional scavengers, primarily vultures. It is also seen as a final act of charity, providing nourishment for the animals that consume their remains.
Now, you may think that's kooky. But you'd be hard pressed to argue convincingly whether it's more or less kooky than, say, believing a shrub on fire granted you and only you eternal, exclusive rights to a piece of real estate.
With the near-extinction of the vulture population, these bodies are no longer being consumed, leading to obvious health and disease problems. But it has also led to a theological crisis among Zoroastrians as to how to dispose of their dead without violating the other tenets of their faith (fire is considered sacred, too, so cremation is also problematic). It's very easy for us, sitting behind our shiny computers, to simply say, "Scrap it and adopt something better," but who's to say which is better, or even what "better" is for them? Certainly none of us.
(And the reason I know about this is because my sweetie wrote a paper on the subject about ten years ago while a graduate divinity student.)
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Wow. Racist much?
Uh, no. You're the one who put that particular spin on it, from your position of unusual, rare knowledge about a tiny little sect in India (60k people out of 1.4B is a tiny little sect). Often behavior like that is though of as projecting one's ethics to another in a colonialist, and therefore racist fashion. So, sorry, but you would be the one making those kinds of assumptions here.
In every culture I was aware of, prior to your posting, the dead are either buried or burned in some fashion or another, an
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INCORRECT. Your statement was racist, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
Because embroidered within your thoughtlessly glib, "This is why we bury our dead," is the subtext, "Only dumb/lazy brown people would leave corpses out in the open to rot."
H
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For those who do think it's kooky, compare to hiring someone to pump the body full of preservatives and apply heavy make-up (sometimes including fake eyes and pvc pipe in the event of severely broken bones. Hidden wires also figure in. All to make them look sorta kinda like they are just asleep and then put them in an expensive wooden box with pillows as if they would otherwise be uncomfortable. Then everyone looks at them and we put the box in a buried lined concrete vault.
So I'd say whatever floats your b
Clickbait headline inflation (Score:1)
Here's a more accurate one
How Decline of Indian Vultures may have contributed to roughly 500,000 Human Deaths according to some model of unknown accuracy
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Yeah...like insurance companies haven't used models like these for decades and produced results that bear scrutiny.
Are you a troll, or did you truly not know about actuarial tables and how they're used?
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ROFL! Thanks, I needed that.
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They looked at before-and-after death rate reports along with vaccination purchases for certain areas and concluded that's the cause. Is this the same as actuarial tables?
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The idea that removing rotting carrion reduces human and animal exposure to microbial pathogens is hardly a novel, speculative idea.
Reminds me of China (Score:4, Informative)
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And a monkey problem, and a hygiene problem... need I continue?
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show me the source (Score:3, Insightful)
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prove to me that 500,000 figure wasn't pulled right out of someone's ass.
It would take too many boxes of crayons to be worth explaining it to you.
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How much are you willing to pay?
Here's a thought ... (Score:2)
How about they try cleaning up after themselves?
Re: Here's a thought ... (Score:2)
Recently covered on a podcast (Score:3)
The 99% Invisible podcast recently covered this issue with their Towers of Silence [99percentinvisible.org] episode that specifically focused on an unexpected impact on the religious rites of a minority group in India. I'll admit that that sort of topic is normally out of my area of interest, but it was a fascinating episode about details you normally wouldn't consider when we talk about ecologic collapse (e.g. social norms, how dissimilar scavengers can be, how religion adapts to the modern world using technology, etc.). Highly recommended.
One tidbit I'll mention, however, is the symmetry present in the situation, in that a lot of the reason why the problem is ongoing is due to the religious beliefs of another group. It's fairly common knowledge that practicing Hindus are unwilling to kill a cow, so the best they can do for a sick or dying cow is to make the cow more comfortable. Therein lies the rub: Hindu farmers have continued using diclofenac—whether illegally due to its cheap cost and ease of availability from across the border or accidentally due to shady sellers labeling it as a different painkiller to cut costs—despite the ban on diclofenac. While the ban helped, numbers have continued dropping. The situation has no end in sight and is dire enough that conservationists now have sanctuaries dedicated to keeping the vultures alive so that they can reintroduce them once all of this is under control.
Why are they ... (Score:2)
diclofenac, a cheap non-steroidal painkiller for cattle
they esimate (Score:2)
Yeah, they estimated the number of deaths. I estimate the number of deaths directly attributable to 7, namely the times a vulture fell from the sky onto a windshield and the guy crashed.