• A woman from Arizona may be forced to fly more than 300 miles away from her hometown to give birth, because her local hospital insists she must have a c-section. Joy Szabo had a c-section for her last child, and the hospital claims that doing a vaginal birth after a c-section is too risky. •  According to a British study, less than 33% of men wash their hands with soap after going to the bathroom. In order to increase the number of hand-washers, researchers suggest placing messages above bathroom sinks, which either shame the person into washing, or gross them out ("Soap it off or eat it later"). •  A man from the UK - who the Daily Mail dubs "Cruel Graeme Conroy" - has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for forcing a 3-year-old girl to smoke cigarettes. Conroy had a 14-year-old girl film him while he forced the young child to chain smoke five cigarettes, "as a joke." •  A Missouri ninth-grader has been arrested for making a website that called a classmate a "slut" and said she "would be better off if she just died." Missouri is cracking down on cyber-bullying after Megan Meier's suicide. • A woman who was raped as a 13-year-old is speaking out against rape kit backlogs after her kit sat untested for twenty years, much longer than the statute of limitations for her case. • A Berlin brothel is offering an "eco discount" to johns who walk or bike there. • PUMA Amy Siskind says "President Obama seems largely tone-deaf to women and women's issues," and praises the Republican party for "promising stars" like Sarah Palin. • But Jimmy Carter is bullish on Obama, saying that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize "as much as anyone who's ever gotten it for his achievement already," and that "he's spelled out an agenda that can be adopted by others in Europe and around the world to lead toward increased peace and human rights and the alleviation of suffering. Those are all tangible contributions - even though the fulfillment of all of them has got to require time to realize." •

Dawn Thompson, of Dawn's Canine Rescue in upstate New York, "spends about $16,000 a year of her $24,000 salary on veterinarian bills, licensing costs and dog food, among other expenses," says the Post. When she began the rescue 19 years ago, she planned to take in 8-10 dogs at a time. When the reporters visited, she had 37 dogs, 14 puppies, and 17 cats. Since the recession began, more and more people have been giving up pets they can't afford, sometimes just leaving them in Thompson's yard for her to find. She doesn't have a heart to declare the inn full — nor does she have the money and energy to keep on like this.

Tammy Cross, on the other hand, who's profiled in the NYT's Real Estate section, has a fabulous, rent-controlled apartment and a team of volunteers to help take care of the 6-18 kittens she's fostering at any given time. She seems to have little in common with Dawn Thompson except a love of needy animals and the ability to shock reporters with the cleanliness of her home. Cross has recently completed nursing school and is concerned that the new paint job on her walls is more salmon than coral. Thompson is going broke and couldn't accompany her husband to the hospital after he was stung by bees recently, because someone had to stay behind and take care of the dogs.

It's tempting to ask why Thompson doesn't just put a cap on the number of animals she'll accept at one time — but then, if you can imagine yourself doing animal rescue at all, you can imagine how heart-wrenching it would be to say no, knowing that euthansia is the likely alternative. At some point, it seems, you must refuse. But how? Thompson still hasn't been able to answer that. "You can't with all that's going on in the world today," she says. "I mean, I could, but how many would die?"

Cross's story is much more typical of how we usually see pet rescue presented: as noble, fun, enjoyably dirty work done by slightly nutty, big-hearted people. But recession or no recession, it's good to remember that a lot of animal rescues always look more like Thompson's operation than Cross's. I bristle a bit at the implied judgment of people who abandoned dogs because of the economy — "Dogs that had been cherished suddenly became a burden, disposable" — as I sincerely doubt anyone forced to choose between feeding their family and feeding their dogs is sanguine about the decision. But it's absolutely true that every day, people buy or adopt animals without fully considering what caring for them will entail. Every day, people neglect to spay or neuter animals they never intend to breed. And every day, pets are abandoned, with their best hope being that someone like Dawn Thompson will make room for one more — regardless of the financial, emotional, or psychological cost. I hope for the sake of their sanity that she and her husband will find a way to cut themselves some slack and put a manageable limit on their rescue work, but it's so sad that they need to make that decision, for a lot of reasons.

Meow Spoken Here [NY Times]
One Woman's Dogged Effort [Washington Post]

[Cologne, September 15. Image via Getty]

A hippopotamus sitting in a pond in its enclosure shows its jaw on September 15, 2009 at the zoo in Cologne, western Germany. AFP PHOTO DDP / HENNING KAISER GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read HENNING KAISER/AFP/Getty Images)

I know you think it's super cute to put Bella in a romper and bring her to Stop & Shop in your giant purse, but Bella is not a child, nor is she an American Girl doll to be accessorized with seasonal attire from an overpriced catalog. She is an animal. A living, breathing thing. If you want to put something in a ridiculous tutu, buy a damn Fashionista Barbie. If your dog needs a warm coat for the winter, that's one thing, but can we all just stop putting our animals in stupid costumes for our own amusement? They deserve a bit better. They at least deserve better than Bud Light and cardboard. Ugh. No wonder that dog looks like it hates you. My dog hates you, too, and he doesn't even know you. We're about to come walking in your neighborhood without a stack of poop bags, and whoever you are, you deserve it.

To Boldly Wear What No Dog Wants To Wear [Wag Reflex] via [Neatorama]

• Orobator was sentenced to life in prison for smuggling heroin and returned to Britain to serve her sentence of life in prison in Britain a few weeks ago. She was originally facing a firing squad but was spared after she mysteriously became pregnant while in an all-women's prison. Her child is due next month. • Almost 4,000 women in England were forced to give birth outside of maternity wards last year. The number of women who gave birth in other hospital wards, hallways, waiting rooms, or in hospital parking lots increased by about 500 since 2007 and Conservatives are blaming hospital overcrowding and overextended midwives. • The Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations will sue Judge J. William Callahan, for forcing Raneen Albaghdady to remove her head scarf in June, saying "no hats in the courtroom." A lawyer for the council says, "This judge targeted a Muslim woman's religious attire, but he could just as easily have demanded the removal of a Sikh turban, a Jewish yarmulke or a Catholic nun's habit." Callahan's spokesman says he would have left her keep the scarf on if she had told him it had religious significance to her. • Sad irony? A 16-year-old blind and deaf dog belonging to Robin Starr, the CEO of the Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, died after he was left in a hot car for four hours. Starr's husband put the "Louie" in the car as she was getting ready because she often took him to work, but he forgot to tell Starr. By the time she realized Louie was in the car it was too late and he died of kidney failure. • NCSU's Women's Center and other campus advocacy groups were not able to stop a showing of the film based on Tucker Max's book I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell or an appearance by Max taking place tonight on the campus. The groups say the film contains sexist and racist phrases and promotes rape culture. Though they couldn't shut down the event they'll be protesting, "everything about Tucker Max and what he stands for." • Canadian researchers say visiting grandparents may prevent toddlers from forming negative stereotypes about old people. "We've been able to show really early on that kids, when they're just starting to talk, have established beliefs about older people," said one researcher. "We're seeing what we could call ageism by about age three." • Florida's appeals court will review the state's ban on adoptions by homosexuals. In 2008 a Miami-Dade County judge ruled that a law banning Martin Gill and his partner from adopting two young boys is unconstitutional, but state attorneys say the judge was legislating from the bench and the decision should be make by lawmakers. • A Sydney, Australia couple is being sued by Roseville College for $20,000 in unpaid tuition, but the parents say they shouldn't have to pay because the school failed to stop bullying which led one of their four daughters hurting herself. The parents say teachers were aware that their daughter was being harassed in 7th and 8th grade but did nothing and the girl's adviser told her to "simply ignore the bullies." After more bullying, the girl cut herself several times with a razor. • Ronald Douglas McGowan of Southern California will stand trial for the rapes of four women, including one who prosecutors say bit off part of his tongue in self-defense during an attack in her apartment. He was arrested in the emergency room where he went for treatment. His tongue couldn't' be reattached. • Researchers have found that Runaway Intervention Program, a program in which nurses help sexually exploited runaway girls reconnect to family, school, and healthcare effectively reduces trauma. "Remarkably, by six and 12 months into the program, the girls had improved so much that in most areas they were indistinguishable from girls in school who had never been abused," said a researcher. • In a revised edition of her biography, Veronica Lario says she wants a divorce from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has been involved in several sex scandals, because "I cannot condemn myself to be his wetnurse and I cannot stop him from making himself ridiculous before the world." •

[Sydney, August 20. Image via Getty]

<blockquote<Five painted members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Australia form a Canadian flag and hold a banner as they protest outside the Consulate General of Canada offices in Sydney on August 20, 2009. The protest was PETA's attempt to focus the world's attention on the annual killing of baby seals in Canada during the run-up to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. AFP PHOTO / Greg WOOD (Photo credit should read GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images)

[London, August 18. Image via Getty]

LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 18: Battersea Dogs and Cats Home employee Charlotte Fiarder holds Happy the 12 week old totoiseshell kitten on August 18, 2009 in London, England. Battersea Dogs and Cats Home is seeing a sharp rise in the number of cats requiring a home with 143 of the 145 shelter's pens full. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

She writes,

My answer to the question "If a treatment works on rodents, will it cure us?" is "probably not, based on the weight of evidence to date." Cancer is a good example: former director of the US National Cancer Institute, Dr Richard Klausner lamented: "We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn't work in humans." AIDS is another: while at least 80 vaccines work in animals, all 80 have failed in human trials. Similarly, every one of more than 150 stroke treatments successful in animals has failed in human testing. A study in the British Medical Journal found that animal tests accurately predict human response less than 50% of the time.

But while, as the Guardian's Alok Jha acknowledges, "using a mouse can never tell scientists everything they need to know," there are also compelling reasons to do experiments on animals. In an interview with Time last year, president of the nonprofit Foundation for Biomedical Research Frankie Trull said,

when you go back and look at how many compounds fail before they ever get to humans, [it's clear] animals do play a really important role in at least giving early signals - and it's a constantly evolving science.

Many experimental compounds are too uncertain to be legally tested on humans, and while many would say it's unethical to test these compounds on animals, these people also have to acknowledge that without animal testing we might not have many medicines we have today. Penicillin might never have been mass-produced without initial testing on mice, and many vaccines have their origin in mouse research. There are alternatives to animal testing, such as computer modeling. However, says Trull, "people in the research community will be the first to tell you they still don't know enough about how the complex living organism works in order to duplicate it."

Until we can make computerized humans, the most viable alternative to animal testing will be humans themselves, and anyone who wants all medical tests done on people should be prepared either to risk his or her life for others' health, or to accept that many disease that plague us today will not be cured. Is it ethical to value a mouse's life less than a human's? Not necessarily, but it's a tendency we all have, especially when our loved ones are sick and need treatment.

That said, much animal testing (one source claims 94%) is done for cosmetic and not medical purposes. According to Scientific American, the Draize Test, in which "rabbits are placed in restraining stocks and their eyelids are held open with clips-in some cases for days at a time-to keep them from blinking away the test solutions," is still in use by some companies. The rabbits are usually killed after experimentation. Animal-rights campaigns have reduced the popularity of this scary Clockwork-Orange-style test, but it seems reasonable to ask that no cosmetic testing be done on animals, especially now that "considerable information has already been yielded and recorded from past testing." It's one thing to kill a mouse to save a human — it's another to blind a rabbit with lipstick.

The Dead End Of Animal Research [Guardian]
Do Cosmetic Companies Still Test On Live Animals? [Scientific American]
Of Mice And Medicine: If A Treatment Works On Rodents, Will It Cure Us? [Guardian]