In the Pixar movie, WALL-E, set a few hundred years in the future, humans have no direct contact with one another, are relatively helpless, and spend all day interacting only via television. As did many of my friends, I felt that the film got the...
In 1990, an international research collaboration was launched to map and sequence the human genome, now known as the Human Genome Project (HGP). Four years earlier, Thomas H. Roderick of the Jackson Laboratory in Maine coined a new term – "genomics" – that was adopted...
The European Union (EU) and its earlier formations have played a significant role in developing animal welfare regulations and oversight since the 1970s. However, the EU has generally not addressed issues related to companion animal welfare, believing it is more effective for individual member countries...
In 1985, Dr. Denise Herzing launched the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP) to study dolphins in the wild and identify their social structures and interactions. Dr. Herzing's interest in knowing what dolphins might think began when she was just 12 years old. She chose to study...
A group of Oxford University faculty and health advocates launched the Oxford Longevity Project, a community interest company focused on sharing discoveries and insights regarding healthy aging with the broader public. There is growing international attention to what the IMF has labelled the “Silver Economy,” and...
The ongoing controversy surrounding outdoor cats is a genuine concern for those who care about animal welfare. Although outcries over the impact of cat predation on wildlife, especially birds, were heard as early as the turn of the twentieth century, these worries have become significantly...
In July 2014, following the persistent advocacy of Dame Sally Davies, England's Chief Medical Officer, Prime Minister David Cameron tasked an expert group with producing a report on the spread of antimicrobial resistance. Lord Jim O'Neill, an economist, was appointed as the chair of this...
In the early 1970s, numerous reports in publications such as Science and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and in popular media highlighted the problem of free-roaming dogs in nearly every American community. Veterinarian Dr. Max Feldman noted in the Science editorial that some roaming...
Dr. Boris Levinson (1907-1984), a psychologist, reportedly coined the term "pet therapy" in 1964. However, Levinson's initiative was criticized by his colleagues. Thirteen years later, the Delta Society, founded by a group of veterinarians and a psychiatrist in 1977 (now doing business as Pet Partners),...
Around 1990, the Delta Society (now Pet Partners – an organization supporting animal-assisted activities and therapy) held its annual meeting in New Jersey. During one of the lunchtime sessions, five Jingles Awards were issued to five human-animal teams representing different areas of human-animal cooperation. The...
