Gina Spadafori
This is the Year of the Dragon. I don’t personally treat dragons, but if you should just happen to have one, your best bet would be to find a practicing veterinarian who’s a member of the Association of Reptile and Amphibian Veterinarians. With a firefighter to assist, in case things get a little hot in the exam room.
There’s nothing like a few days with your colleagues to reinforce your passion for your work. And while it was a little difficult to leave sunny Florida (where I attended the North American Veterinary Conference) to land in snow flurries at our home airport in Spokane, it’s always good to be back home in Idaho) Love the reception we get! Without further ado, here’s what I covered last week on Vetstreet: What to do when the veterinarian says, ‘feed this’: Therapeutic diets, available only on the order of a veterinarian, have been formulated to target specific metabolic processes to help prevent, reverse or manage an illness. I recommend them in practice — and so do other veterinarians — because they’ve …
Pulitzer-winning science writer Deborah Blum, author of the best-selling “The Poisoner’s Handbook,” puts pepper spray in perspective. Did you know it makes the blistering habanero pepper seem like milk by comparison? A must read, must-share post.
At 5pm, as my family and I left Davis so that I could attend the American Academy of Religion annual meetings in San Francisco, I received a call from Assistant Vice Chancellor Griselda Castro informing me that she, Chancellor Katehi and others were trapped inside Surge II. She asked if I could…
“They say that a picture says a thousand words. This is a picture of some words so it’s probably twice as powerful.” — Occupy Melbourne
It took less than 24 hours for the UC Davis Occupy protest to go wildly viral. In this age of super speedy social sharing, outrage, sympathy—any reaction really— can turn into a sort of global rage on steroids. By Sunday, two days after the incident, more than 800,000 views were logged on Youtube:…
Hundreds were injured and at least one person died Saturday in Cairo when police swept through a camp of protesters in Tahrir Square. A crackdown continues in Syria. Yemen’s oppressive government remains in place.
It’s always important to keep things in perspective.
Still, what happened Friday on the campus of the University of California Davis has struck a chord. In a demonstration of support for the Occupy movement, a small group of protesters was sitting, arms linked together. Campus police told them to move. The students didn’t. And that’s when an officer walked down the line of seated men and women, pepper-spraying them. Some took it straight in their faces. Many of the several hundred others who were there screamed in terror and frustration.
A video of the incident has been viewed more than half a million times so far and has spread the story.
Campus police said the officers had been surrounded by protesters and commanders have defended their actions. So did university Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi — which led to a call from the school’s faculty association for her resignation. Katehi has since said she wants an outside, independent panel to review what happened and that she doesn’t plan to step down.
There’s a second video related to this story that we want to share. In some ways it’s more powerful than the one that’s been going viral.
On Saturday, after a news conference she held, Katehi remained inside one of the university’s buildings for a couple hours. Outside, protesters regrouped. And when she emerged, there was one of the most amazing scenes so far related to the Occupy movement. As Katehi and another woman walked three blocks to an SUV, they passed through a gauntlet of several hundred students — who remained silent in a powerful show of their disdain.
Watch this. Watch this and tell me you think that was okay. Who can honestly, HONESTLY support this?
