SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the how-much^W-big-is-that-doggie-in-the-window? dept.
Big Dogs Face More Joint Problems if Neutered Early:
It's standard practice in the U.S. and much of Europe to neuter dogs by 6 months of age. This study, which analyzed 15 years of data from thousands of dogs at UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, suggests dog owners should consider their options carefully.
"Most dogs are mixed breeds," said lead author Benjamin Hart, distinguished professor emeritus at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
[...] Researchers examined common joint disorders including hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia and cranial cruciate ligament tears, a knee injury, in five weight categories.
[...] The risk of joint disorders for heavier dogs can be up to a few times higher compared to dogs left intact. This was true for large mixed-breed dogs. For example, for female dogs over 43 pounds, the risk jumped from 4 percent for intact dogs to 10-12 percent if spayed before a year of age.
"The study raises unique challenges," noted co-author Lynette Hart, professor at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. "People like to adopt puppies from shelters, but with mixed breeds it may be difficult to determine just how big the dog will become if you don't know anything about the dog's parents."
Neutering prior to adoption is a common requirement or policy of humane societies, animal shelters and breeders. [...] Shelters, breeders and humane societies should consider adopting a standard of neutering at over a year of age for dogs that will grow into large sizes.
Journal Reference:
Hart, Benjamin L., Hart, Lynette A., Thigpen, Abigail P., et al. Assisting Decision-Making on Age of Neutering for Mixed Breed Dogs of Five Weight Categories: Associated Joint Disorders and Cancers, Frontiers in Veterinary Science (DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2020.00472)
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday August 15 2020, @07:26AM (5 children)
The logical fallacy in that sentence is bigger than the sentence itself!
Compare:
After all, the vast majority of mammals never live in houses so it's definitely a flaw.
Google "spandrel".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @07:31AM (2 children)
Depends on how you define flaw too. Apparently, evolution believes the benefits exceed the drawbacks and it results in increased survival rates or is neutral. Otherwise, it wouldn't be so widespread today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @08:49AM (1 child)
I don't think humans have been reliably living long enough to experience menopause for enough time that there would be an evolutionary bias in any direction. Considering that there's good evidence for other group-oriented traits being genetic/epigenetic, I'd bet you're right though.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @05:59PM
It took 4,000 years for a single random recessive mutation in one person to spread blue ayes over a significant part of the human population. We don't need hundreds of thousands of years for mutations to spread. The average person has something like 60-200 random mutations. We're a real-time experiment in rapid evolution and the advantage it gives, same as the flu virus.
Since humans for most of our short existence never lived long enough to experience menopause, there was no evolutionary pressure either way. Now that we're living much longer than even as recently as 1900, we're seeing that menopause is a huge risk of aging. Brittle bones that aren't fixed with calcium supplements, dementia, muscle loss, depression, and the biggest risk factor - being placed in an old age home. Large losses of cognitive function within weeks as people become "institutionalized", passive, anxious. But this is exactly what we expect - people go to nursing homes to die, not to be nursed back to health.
With the way COVID19 swept through nursing homes, more people are going to choose euthanasia or suicide. Because dying in a pool of your own shit is SO not what people want. Life expectancy in a nursing home is 2 years, so after a lifetime, why not just skip the bad stuff at the end? It adds nothing of value - unless you're making money off it either as an employee, operator, or supplier. It's your body - choosing when to take it with you is the ultimate freedom.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @05:42PM
many mammals live in dwellings. We call them "dens", same as the man-cave. Ditto birds - we call them nests when it's for raising young, but many birds shelter in inclement weather.
Same as among primates, only humans have a problem with cholesterol clogging the cardiovascular system. And not all humans. Researchers are now looking for people who have naturally very low LDL to see what genes are involved, because it's certainly not diet. They can eat high cholesterol food as much as they want.
They should be looking for the subset that has very high HDL, since scavenging all that cholesterol and converting it from LDL to HDL will also cause low LDL, but they're not looking for that, and the subjects they've found have normal levels of HDL.
Doctor suspected I had the low LDL mutation, but I suspect it's a consequence of my high HDL. So I'm a freak … so what else is new?
A couple of my sisters have pretty much the same situation - those that don't are either taking drugs to lower their cholesterol or have a history of cardiovascular disease and are dead before 60, same as our parents. Go figure.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday August 19 2020, @03:38AM
The "flaw" is that humans significantly outlive our reproductive usefulness, whereas most animals... don't. So the age-related failing parts of the system become evident, simply because we outlive it.
Mostly this is thyroid decline (which takes about 15 years to kill you), but there's a feedback with gonadal hormones... if either goes down, the other follows. Fixing either (or ideally, both) improves both quality and length of life.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.