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Spain trying to execute pet dog of Nurse with ebola

Ren

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Messages
385
Just to reiterate, t The Excalibur petition was created by [correction: an animal welfare group who were asked by a nurse and friend of the Limon-Romero Ramos family to share Limon's request for help online. Limon gave permission for the petition to be started [mirror uk], and it includes a video plea by Limon.] Javier Limon's someone whose life has been very personally and significantly affected by ebola. It is likely that many people who personally know and love the Limon - Romero Ramos family signed Limon's Excalibur petition.

Limon is the husband of Teresa Romero Ramos, the Spanish nurse with ebola. Romero Ramos became ill with ebola after caring for a Spanish missionaries to/from Africa, (Manuel Garcia Viejo and Miguel Pajares* - to my understanding). (Perhaps people who knew this these missionaryies signed Limon's petition? We don't know. I'm sure many who knew the missionaryies are praying for Romero Ramos and are aware of her family's plight.) Limon is himself in quarantine, and he asked for public support for protecting the life of their dog until further information/evidence could be obtained.

The family's dog has now been controversially killed, without evidence or gained scientific knowledge/understanding, and Romero Ramos is gravely ill. Limon is using the change.org platform created by his initial petition to continue to send updates about his wife's condition, action on the decision to euthanize Excalibur, and news articles relevent to the ebola situation/history in Spain.

His actions have created awareness and connections which did not previously exist.

Limon has created a new petition calling for the resignation of those responsible for killing Excalibur, without evidence:
https://www.change.org/p/justiciaparaexcalibur-pedimos-la-dimisión-de-los-responsables-del-asesinato-del-perro-excalibur

As shared in post #31:
Change.org petitions involving ebola: http://www.change.org/search?utf8=✓&q=ebola
There are also change.org petitions for malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, borrelia (Lyme), and ME/CFS.

------
*Brother Manuel García Viejo was a 69-year-old Spanish missionary and medical director of a hospital in Sierra Leone. [WSJ] Father Miguel Pajares had been working in Liberia. [ibtimes uk]
 
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Ren

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Messages
385
"How Cutting-Edge Medicine Might Have Spared Us the Ebola Epidemic"

A brief overview of ebola's spread plus delayed resource development and access:

(I.) Social issues which contributed to the spread; rural vs urban; lack of resources; deep distrust of government and other authorities.

(II.) Diagnostic progress, with work now (finally) being done to further validate diagnostic methods developed in 2003 and 2007.

(III.) Research, since 2007, has supported successful antibody treatments. Additionally, at least one of the anti-virals now being studied for use with ebola has been around since 2002.

(IV.) In 2003, virologist Heinz Feldmann (now, at least, with NIH) and colleagues wrote that because ebola was rare and occured in remote locations, there had been no market to support vaccine development. However, this was no longer true in their opinion (in 2003) because ebola could be used as a bioweapon.

Successful animal testing for an ebola vaccine dates back to 2000.

"So all of the elements for plausibly stopping an Ebola epidemic existed years before the current outbreak: fast diagnostics, post-exposure treatments, and vaccines. Public health bureaucracies have now finally been panicked into getting their acts together..."

http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/10/how-cutting-edge-medicine-might-have-spa

(I don't know enough to have an opinion about where blame should most heavily lie.)
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
(I don't know enough to have an opinion about where blame should most heavily lie.)

I suspect the responsibility for these kinds of things is really all over the place ... so many different institutions, countries, professionals and yes the general public. I like to reserve "blame" for specific issues where clear culpability is present. Quite often those who are responsible are not to blame. For example, a government who fails to heed warnings, and prioritizes money to something else, can definitely share responsibility. However they did not make it happen, and so are not to blame.

Blaming things is often scapegoating anyway. Nice simple answers, finger pointing .... there, discussion closed.

Responsibility is more like they allowed something to happen, so share some responsibility, so should be part of the solution.
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
I see a lot of idealists around here. In the real world, people need more than ideals in order to act. Action comes through motivation, and there is nothing that motivates more than the thought of imminent death.

Humanity develops through crisis. Crises are opportunities. This one might actually turn out to leap frog science on virology forward.

Don't be so quick to judge others who didn't "spare" you this epidemic.
 
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Ren

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Messages
385
Two points:

Regarding the word blame, I tried to immediately edit it to "fault" but a storm knocked out my internet. It's a fine line, and I think the article itself in its conclusions was more oriented toward "blame", and so that's likely why that particular word first came to mind.

However, I thought "fault" worked better bc it seems to be more simply about identifying causes for why something didn't work - identifying breaks in the line so to speak. But all that said, maybe "fault" is even still too much a loaded term.

The article was published by a group that focuses on government failure in general, so in that sense it's expected that this is the angle they would illuminate.



And as far as "Don't be so quick to judge others who didn't "spare" you this epidemic." - I don't know if this was a general "you" or a "you" jab specific to me, but I cited the article I pulled the info from, and I included a note that said that I didn't necessarily agree with the conclusion//opinion drawn by the article's author.

The journalist who wrote the article is Ronald Bailey, and his contact info and bio are here: http://reason.com/people/ronald-bailey/all. Comments are also allowed on the article itself.



I shared this info because I had not known about the history of the development of tests, treatments, and vaccines, and I thought PR readers might be interested since these topics are often mentioned on PR. I thought these facts were of interest.

I included the quote about government failure because government failure is often mentioned in regard to ME/CFS, Lyme (borrelia), and HIV/AIDS, and so I felt like this could be part of a larger problematic pattern with health agencies, and infectious disease especially.


Again though, I added that I myself could not in good faith say that the heaviest weight (not sole weight) should be assigned to / carried by government agencies. This was one opinion in one paper. I'm sure other sources are focusing on pharma primarily or the history of Western intervention (better word??) in Africa or whatever, etc.

It's hard to find media that covers events from all possible angles - and maybe this topic is too complex for anything other than books. Imo, an article like this represents a piece of the information puzzle but is incomplete. Someone else could have written the same article but ended with very different conclusions/opinions.

In addition to the facts on social issues and the development history of tests/treatments/vaccines, I think the article is also of value in understanding or keeping tabs on how the media and/or varied political parties are handling/interpreting events.
 
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Gingergrrl

Senior Member
Messages
16,171
@golden thank you for posting this and hopefully the dog can actually be studied this time to see if he harbors the Ebola virus and science will learn something about transmission. I am hoping that US govt does the right thing.

If I were that nurse and were single and caught Ebola from tending to my patient, part of my will to live would be knowing that my dog was safe and needed me to take care of him/her.
 
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