NIDS on alert for cattle mutilations [news]
From: Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk (Stig Agermose)
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 12:55:08 -0800
|
Source: IUFO mailing list, November 19,
http://www.ufomind.com/ufo/media/mailing/archive/iufo/msg01017.shtml
----- Begin Forwarded Message -----
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 22:33:33 -0700
From: "Terry W. Colvin"
Subject: IUFO: FWD: (FT) Dead Cattle Alert Issued to Solve Mutilation Puzzle
-> IUFO Mailing List
National Post, 19 Nov 1998, p. A17
Dead Cattle Alert Issued to Solve Mutilation Puzzle
By David Staples
A team of Las Vegas scientists is determined to solve the 100-year-old
mystery of what has been causing cattle mutilations across North
America, says the team's leader, Dr. Colm Kelleher.
The National Institute of Discovery Science is on red alert to jet
around the western U.S. and Western Canada in order to quickly autopsy
a freshly dead, mutilated cow, at no cost to the rancher.
The group--dedicated to studying matters outside the scientific
mainstream--is backed by Vegas businessman Robert Bigelow.
"We are moving in the direction of telling ranchers what might have
caused the death of the animals," Dr. Kelleher says.
In Western Canada in the past four years, cattle mutilations
investigator Fern Belzil says he has heard of 80 such cases and
investigated 45.
The cows die for an unknown reason, then lose certain body parts, such
as one ear, one eye, and the rectum, Mr. Belzil says. The cuts are done
with "surgical precision."
But Joe Nickell, a writer for *Skeptical Inquirer* magazine, says Mr.
Belzil and the scientists at NIDS are engaging in pseudo-science.
Cattle mutilation stories started in 1897, when a Colorado newspaper
reported the case of space aliens mutilating a calf, Mr. Nickell says.
A member of a local Liars' Club later admitted to planting the story.
The bulk of evidence shows that mutilations are done by predators, Mr.
Nickell says. Yet mutilation fever rages because the idea that cattle
are being mutilated is a powerful one. When it takes hold of ranchers,
Mr. Nickell says, they suddently start looking for evidence that in
fact a mutilation has occurred, instead of relying on common sense,
which would tell them cows die all the time for various reasons and
scavengers come and eat them.
Dr. Kelleher counters: "The ranching community has had that explanation
for 30 years now. In order to dismiss this phenomenon you need an awful
lot more evidence."
Dr. Kelleher's team, which includes a veterinarian, wants to autopsy at
least 20 cows that died no more than 24 hours previously.
The team has already jetted up to Canada, flying in to North
Battleford, Sask., to autopsy an allegedly mutilated cow at a ranch
that has suffered 25 mutilations in the past 15 years. Unfortunately,
laboratory error prevented accurate histopathological tests on the skin
tissue, Dr. Kelleher says.
--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean@primenet.com >
Home Page: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/8832
Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage *
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RELEVANCE OF THIS MESSAGE: UFO Personalities (NIDS)
Index: NIDS (#7)
Index: Animal Mutilations (#22)
Created: Nov 20, 1998
