People For Animals - India's largest Animal welfare organization by Maneka Gandhi

All other animals were also picked from different streets and most of them are recovering fast. [Image Gallery]

Do you send your children's lunch to school wrapped in aluminium or silver foil?

 

The silver or aluminium foil market is growing fast. In 1975-76 15,546 tonnes of aluminium was produced. 1990-91 it rose to 37,000 tonnes .This year it is estimated to cross the 50,000 tonne mark.

 

Aluminium is very light, soft at low temperatures and a good thermal insulator. It reacts with oxygen to form aluminium oxide. Anodised aluminium as it is then known acts as an anti-corrosion layer making it an ideal packaging for the food industry.

 

Chips, chocolates and chewing gum wrappers are how most of us seen foil. In the kitchen it wraps food that is to be heated in ovens and preserved in the fridge.

 

What does your convenience do to the rest of India?

 

Till a few years ago cancer – and specially any breakthroughs in curing it – hogged the health news headlines. Now, that space has been taken up by AIDS. But it is important to remember that even now cancer kills a thousand more people than AIDS.

 

Much of our research in India is derivative – based on the work done in the premier research medical research institutions in America. Our best cancer doctors depend to a large extent on solutions and medicines provided by America. So let me give you a few statistics on what America has achieved. The National Cancer Institute spends 3 million dollars a day on research. The American Cancer Society spends one million a day. In spite of that the death rate from the common cancers – cancers of the lung, colon, breast, prostrate, pancreas and ovary – have stayed the same or increased in the last 50 years. Every 30 seconds an American is diagnosed with having the disease, every 55 seconds an American dies of cancer.

PFA Uttardinajpur rescued two Gangetic dolphins from the shallow water of the Dock river, at Baldihata of Kishanganj, Bihar and  released in Mahananda river at Thakurganj.

Both of the dolphins were female, measuring 2.5 meters and 2.8 meters respectively. There were thousands of curious people gathered at the river side to see the rescue  work. Dr. Gopal Sharma, officer incharge, Gangetic Plains Regional Centre of Zoological Survey of India and Mr Subrata Paul Chowdhury, wildlife experts who actually made the plan how to rescue, were present during the operation. PFA Uttardinajpur members along with Mr Bhim Narayan Mitra, Nabonita Upadhyay, Mintu Das and other 10 PFA members were present. 20 fishermen were employed for this work and the dolphins were transported to Mahananda River 20 kms away in a truck with proper arrangement. According to the wildlife experts and the forest dept. officials the dolphin measuring 2.8 meters was the biggest to have ever rescued in India. However, all the PFA members pleased that we have at last been able to save the dolphins with Mrs. Maneka Gandhi interference and suitable instruction to the Divisional Forest Officers of Bihar and Bengal. [Image Gallery]

There are so many modern mythologies created by the advertising world. For instance -that chicken and fish are healthier than mutton. All three are identical. Another mythology is that beer and wine are better than whiskey because they are “soft” alcohols. Do you even know what these alcohols are made of – certainly not natural ingredients like grapes and grain? They are mainly a mixture of very potent and dangerous chemicals. Because alcohol does not put the ingredients on the bottle or can you have no idea what they are.

 

Each wine and beer bottle contains sulphur dioxide. This is used as a preservative. The allowed percentage is 1.2% but most wines, Indian and foreign, have more than that. If you are an asthamatic you are particularly sensitive to this chemical. In fact all people allergic to sulphur dioxide (which is the

More on my favourite subject—eating and health. This time it is iron on the chopping block.

 

From 1981, a theory has been expounded by various doctors in the Lancet, the apex international medical journal, that excess iron in the body is a risk factor in coronary heart disease. It was regarded only as a theory, however, until 1992—when a team of Finnish epidemiologists found, after a five year study financed by the Finnish government, that the amount of stored iron in the body ranks second only to smoking as the strongest risk factor for heart disease and heart attacks.