Interesting, Non Political News

The Ganges is the largest river in India, providing water to more than 500 million people. It also has extremely important religious significance in Hindu culture — personified as the goddess Ganga, Hindu faith holds that bathing in the river can absolve one’s sins, and that anyone who is cremated on the river’s banks, or whose ashes are submerged within it, will achieve salvation.

The Ganges is also one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world. In 2012 it was estimated that nearly 89 million liters of raw, untreated sewage is dumped into the river from the 12 different towns along its banks. There are also 150 industrial plants along the river releasing effluents into the water, not to mention the vast unquantified agricultural runoff that enters the river during monsoons. And then there’s the “necrotic pollutants”: hundreds of human and animal corpses a day are released into the river, as well as up to 50 tons of ash from crematoria.

Back in the early 1990s, the government hit upon a strange and novel solution for the problem of the corpses: flesh-eating turtles. This unusual plan was made easier by the fact that Trionyx gangeticus, a soft-shelled species found in and around the Ganges, had already demonstrated a taste for deceased flesh by raiding extinguished funeral pyres. In addition, turtles also have religious significance, so it was culturally acceptable for people to imagine the final fate of their physical selves as food for the aquatic creatures.

Some $32 million was spent on the program, and about 25,000 turtles were released into the Ganges over a decade. ”They eat everything — everything except the bones,” said a worker on the farm back in 1992. Ten adult turtles could consume an entire human body in two days.

So what happened? Well, the plan didn’t really work. It was plagued by corruption and mismanagement, and though plenty of forethought was put into raising the turtles, not so much attention was paid to seeing that they survived in the wild after their release, and as a result, they were poached and killed in large numbers. As Richard D. Connerney wrote in his book The Upside Down Tree, “In lieu of effective policies that would prevent the dumping of half-burned bodies into rivers and streams, India had turned to this innocent turtle to solve its problems.” Ultimately, thousands of turtles died or disappeared, and the Ganges remains a toxic soup today.

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The majority of foals born are fit, healthy and ready for the world, but sometimes things aren’t quite right. One condition that can affect a newborn foal is neonatal maladjustment syndrome, also known as being a “dummy foal”. A procedure that can help in this situation is the Madigan squeeze.

Traditionally, oxygen deprivation to the brain is thought to be the reason for this neonatal maladjustment syndrome, resulting in brain damage and inadequate blood supply to the nerve cells. Oxygen deprivation can result from the placenta coming away abruptly from the uterus before foaling, prolonged labour, prematurity, sepsis and swelling of the brain, among other causes.

Another, newer consideration is failure of the foal’s mental state to evolve from somnolence within the uterus to consciousness at birth, which normally occurs as the foal travels through the birth canal. The squeezing effect of the canal halts the release of neurosteroids. These keep the foal in a state of unconsciousness in the uterus; if no signal is received to stop their production they continue to be emitted, preventing the foal from becoming fully conscious as he emerges.

The Madigan squeeze is a procedure that can be used on a foal displaying dummy signs in an effort to recreate the natural transition to consciousness.

A rope is secured around the foal by looping it around the chest several times. Tension is then applied to mimic the pressures implemented by the birth canal during the foal’s journey from the uterus to the outside world, and at the same time the foal is helped to lie down.

The rope is held for 20 minutes, the duration that the mare would be in second-stage labour. During this time, the foal becomes somnolent and lies asleep within the rope.

At the point the rope is released, the foal awakens, and, if the procedure has been successful, displays normal consciousness –usually going straight to the dam to drink. With these foals who have responded well to the technique, the prognosis is excellent as the sedative effect from the neurosteroids has been switched off.

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