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Denis Giles

08 January 2018

Created: 08 January 2018

Last Updated: 08 January 2018

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By Maneka Sanjay Gandhi

All living beings require vitamins, essential micronutrients, and these should come through the diet. An extra dose of vitamin has very little nutritional benefit if you are already healthy, but if you are deficient in any vitamin you will require supplements so that your cells and tissues can grow properly. Vitamins facilitate the chemical reactions that produce among other things, skin, bone and muscle. If there is serious deficiency in one or more of these nutrients, you may develop a deficiency disease. Even minor deficiencies may cause permanent damage. Some well known illnesses connected with vitamin deficiencies are beriberi, pellagra, scurvy and rickets.

In 1910 Vitamin B 1(thiamine) was discovered by Japanese scientist Umataro Suzuki and its food source was rice bran. In 1913 Vitamin A (retinol) followed and its food source was considered cod liver oil. Between 1920 and 1948 all the other vitamins were isolated. The last one was Vitamin B 12 (cobalamin) and its source was liver, eggs and any other animal products.

In the 1930s the first commercial yeast-extract vitamin B complex and semi-synthetic vitamin C supplement tablets started being sold.  From then to now, the consumption of vitamins and multi-vitamins has become a common practice in many households. Thirteen vitamins are recognized at present and each one has a particular function. Some function as antioxidants, others, especially in the B group, help enzymes to work.

Vitamins are classified as A, B (including B1 Thiamine, B2 riboflavin, B3 Niacin, B5, B6 (Pyridoxin), B7 Biotin, B9, B12 (Cobalamin), C, D, E and K. As supplements become an integral part of our lives, it is important to know where they come from. The B group has other common names which are on the packaging labels : (thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, biotin, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12 and folate).

Most Indians would be surprised to know how many vitamins are derived from animals and are not vegetarian. Product descriptions are not always honest. While the law directs manufacturers to display the contents of their products, it is not mandatory for them to display the source of these ingredients. Many vitamin supplements are not vegetarian.

Whether or not one opts to continue consuming these vitamins is a personal choice, but you must be aware of their animal content.

Vitamins tablets or capsules usually contain additives that aid in the manufacturing process, or the way the vitamin is digested by the body. These are some of them :

Gelatine is the most commonly used animal ingredient in vitamin supplements. It forms the basis of most capsule shells and is also used in the coating and filling of tablets. Gelatine is derived from boiling hooves, stomach, and other tissue linings, of pigs, cows and goats.

Other components of fillers and lubricants, on the coating of vitamin supplements, are magnesium stearate and caprylic acid. Magnesium stearate is derived from stearic acid, which is a fatty acid found in pigs, chicken, cows, fish, milk and butter. Caprylic acid comes from the milk of goats, cows and sheep.

Many tablets are coated with colours to make them look attractive. Many of these colours are animal based. A commonly used red food dye is made from carmine, which comes from the dead bodies of scale insects similar to beetles.

Lanolin is another animal sourced material used to manufacture vitamin D supplements. It is obtained from wool-bearing animals. (D3 is also made from fish oils. This is dangerous because it may have a hidden mercury content). Vegan vitamin D3 supplements, sourced from algae, are a viable alternative. Or, stand in the sun.

Another common ingredient is cod liver oil, which is used as a source of vitamin A and vitamin D. This comes from oils extracted from the liver of cod fish. Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) is often derived from organ meats, especially liver, from lamb, veal, beef, and turkey, fish eggs, clams, mackerel and crab meat. So are Vitamins B 2, B 3, B 5 , B 6, B 7.

Omega-3 supplements usually use products based on fish, fish oil, eggs, meat etc..

Duodenum substances are used in many vitamins to help in the absorption of vital nutrients. These are derived from the digestive tracts of cows and pigs.

Lipase is an ingredient used in digestive enzyme supplements. This comes from the tongues of calves and lambs. Pepsin, which is sometimes included, comes from the stomach lining of pigs. Bone meal is used as a source of calcium in some vitamin supplements. This is basically crushed animal bones.

Calcium supplement tablets have glycerine, which can be extracted from soy or palm but is usually taken from animal tallow (animal fat) . Cholecalciferol, used in all vitamin supplements, is extracted from sheep wool.

Do not listen to people who tell you that some vitamins have to be from meat/dairy extracts. There is no vitamin which is exclusively found in non-vegetarian food. Each vitamin has plant based alternatives.

Vegetable cellulose caps are an alternative for gelatine. Stearates used as fillers and lubricants on coating can be derived from palm oil, rather than animals. There are also vegetable sources of caprylic acid which come from coconut or palm oil.

Alternative sources of Vitamin D include yeast extract ergosterol, algae and, of course, exposing skin to sunshine. Cyanocobalamin, which comes from soy, can be used for Vitamin B12 supplements. Kiwifruit seed oil, chia seed, fig seed oil, hemp, flax and black raspberry are good sources of Omega-3.Vitamin A can be made from carotene.

There are ways to derive lipase from oilseed and cereal seed for use in digestive enzyme supplements. Crushed animal bones, used for calcium, can be replaced by a number of vegetarian sources, including calcium carbonate, kale, mustard greens, soy, broccoli, leeks, spinach, beets, vegetable compost, plant mulch, dolomite and clay.

Despite these vegetable ingredients being available, the hugely profitable health supplement industry often chooses to use animal based products because they are easily available, from slaughterhouses, and cheap.

Apart from plant alternatives, almost all commercially sold vitamin supplements can also be made from synthetic vitamins. There are no chemical differences between vitamins produced synthetically and those derived from plant or animal sources. Synthetic production is becoming more popular, as, such vitamin tablets are easier to produce and found to be even more cost effective than animal products.

More funds need to be channelled, into the R&D of plant alternatives, for use in vitamin supplements. We need to chart a path away from the unnecessary violent methods of producing vitamin supplements. An increase in the consumer demand for plant based supplements will push the industry in a better direction. There are many multivitamin brands that come from animals, or use animals, in their production. Some of these are : Inlife Multivitamin, Centrum, Herbalife, Healthvit, Muscle Pharm Armour V, Revital, Univita, Amway Nutralite, Opti-Men, Muscle Tech Platinum Multi Vit Supplement among others. You need to write and ask the company.

Vitamin supplements don’t promote health, or prevent disease. They simply treat deficiency. As much as possible, we should rather eat a variety of more whole foods directly. This is more sensible, not to say healthier, than trying to derive micronutrients from these same foods and consuming those in tablets.

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Denis Giles

26 December 2017

Created: 26 December 2017

Last Updated: 26 December 2017

Hits: 1965

By Maneka Sanjay Gandhi

For years the scientific community has been talking about the uselessness of experimenting on dogs. According to most scientists and companies that produce pharmaceuticals, dogs have no role to play in proving any drug for humans.

Thirty years ago I had created the CPCSEA in the Environment Ministry. This was supposed to be the apex centre of deciding which experiments and which animals were to be used in India. It was supposed to bring in new ideas and promote safe animal alternatives. Unfortunately, instead of putting first class scientists on it, it was soon overrun by low level ministry directors and it degenerated into a dull and senseless office, which simply holds meeting every now and then to rubber stamp useless and repetitive experiments that lead nowhere and push up the prices and delay the issuance of vital drugs. 

In October 2017, the first ever conference on the use of dogs in testing and research was held in Hyderabad, India. The event was organized by People For Animals India, partnered by Cruelty Free International a London-based scientific research agency, to bring attention to the practical and ethical problems associated with the laboratory testing of dogs. It was attended by government people and by the 16 Indian companies that test on dogs.

Every year, over 2 lakh dogs are used for testing worldwide to evaluate the safety of new chemicals and drugs. Most regulatory agencies around the world require a non-rodent species (usually dogs) to be used in pre-clinical trials to test the effect (toxicity and pharmacokinetics, pharmacokinetics which means the study of the movement of drugs in the body, including the processes of absorption, distribution, localization) of new chemicals before the tests are conducted on humans. This includes testing of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, pesticides etc.

Beagles are the most commonly used breed of dogs for animal testing, owing to their passive nature and small size. These dogs are kept in cages for years until the study is complete, and undergo very invasive and painful procedures during this time. Their vocal cords are sometimes cut so they cannot bark when hurt. These dogs rarely have access to veterinarians and are often not even given painkillers. When rescued, test dogs have been seen to have enlarged hearts and various diseases due to their high stress environments. They are also very anxious and scared of humans. It is a difficult task to rehabilitate even those dogs that manage to make it out of laboratories.

The practice of using dogs has become a part of most regulatory protocols over the decades, despite it lacking a scientific basis. The tests on dogs do not validate any drugs. The tests conducted on dogs have no added value and usually do not provide any new useful data which an original test on rodents cannot. It continues to be practiced despite immense public opposition and clear scientific and ethical arguments against it. In fact, tests done on dogs in the '50s delayed penicillin coming into the market, as dogs were found allergic to it and they died. When they were bypassed and humans were administered the test, it turned out to be a lifesaver.

For years, scientists believed that the central physiological functions of circulation, respiration, and nervous system were common to all mammals. However, no species of animal has been identified which has the same absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion processes of drugs as humans. It is unlikely that such an animal species will ever be found. Despite this, there is a persisting opinion that animal research has made a significant contribution to the treatment of human diseases. This is not based on fact, as most of the research using animals is known to be wasted.

The primary objection to the specific use of dogs in testing is thus simple – the data derived from dogs is not predictive enough to be applied to the case of humans. Any conclusions that come out of this forced extrapolation (an act of inferring an unknown from something that is known) between two such different species is largely unreliable. And the scientists know that. So, instead of paying attention to, or taking any interest in, the results of tests on dogs, it becomes simply one more step to fulfil on paper for bureaucrats, before they can get down to the real  testing on human beings – which is the only test that matters.

For example, if a new drug is already known to have a 70% chance of not being toxic for humans, a negative test conducted on dogs will increase this probability to just 72%. The dog test thus does not provide significantly new or supporting evidence. It does, however, have a huge financial and ethical cost.

Dogs have always been found to be inconsistent predictors of toxic responses in humans. A study conducted, at the School of Pharmacy, University of Connecticut, as early as 1982 found that most derivatives of the drug benzodiazepine, used in many common medicines, have a much smaller half-life in dogs as compared to humans. As these drugs are processed and metabolized much faster in dogs, results of tests conducted on dogs become irrelevant to predict the side effects or toxicology on humans.

A study by Nerviano Medical Sciences, Italy found that the CYP3A enzyme – which is present in all animals and used to study drug toxicity – is extremely specific to the species being tested. The extrapolation of such data to human subjects is a risky exercise. Dogs are not a good metabolic model for humans due to major differences in their cytochrome P450 enzymes (CYPs), which are the key enzymes involved in the metabolism of over 90% drugs. Other research has also proven that the results obtained by studying drug metabolizing enzymes in animals could not be extrapolated for humans due to the molecular differences among different species.

The Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacodynamics at the University of Illinois conducted a study where 43 drugs were administered to dogs and humans. The overall correlation with regard to drug absorption and efficacy was relatively poor (r2 = 0.5123) in comparison to an earlier rat vs. human study on 64 drugs (r2 = 0.975). In fact, even poorer than rats which are tested on to begin with simply as a basic exercise. The data could not be used to build a better understanding of the effects on humans.

Further studies, including one conducted by AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company, have shown that several drugs when tested are observed to be free in the plasma of animals, meaning that they do not bind to proteins as they might do in humans and are thus irrelevant for human comparison.

Despite the consistently proven lack of scientific value, tests on dogs continue to be demanded by government regulatory bodies. This can have adverse repercussions on humans. Like penicillin, there could be a number of drugs/chemicals which have an unfavourable reaction on dogs, but may not have such a reaction on humans. There is a risk that a number of potentially useful compounds will be discarded at an early stage due to these early negative results.

On the other hand, there are high chances of drugs passing the tests on dogs but reacting unfavourably on humans. Many toxic compounds can wrongly reach the stage of human testing, and can harm humans in clinical trials. Few people know that 92-94% of all drugs which pass preclinical tests fail in clinical trials on humans – this fact has been revealed by Cruelty Free International after examining hundreds of thousands of studies. This happens largely due to unforeseen toxicities which did not show up in animal tests. Even worse, half of the drugs that get past human trials have been subsequently withdrawn, or re-labelled due to adverse drug reactions which were not detected in animal tests.

The advances in neuroscience and related technology make the practical need and ethics for conducting tests on dogs increasingly questionable. The advent of new technology provides a number of alternatives. Computer simulation programs have been developed, which can simulate cell models to help study effects of drugs at the molecular and cellular level. Such in-silico studies have a better scope at providing important results than studies on animals, as there is better control over the experiment parameters.

Another new method of testing is in-vitro testing, or the Tox21 method, which employs cells obtained from live humans. For example, anti-cancer studies are conducted on human cancer cells taken during surgeries by biopsy. This type of testing also gives researchers a more controlled environment, making the results more reliable and reproducible.

These, and other new methods, have a number of benefits over testing on animals, particularly dogs – they save huge amounts of time and money, they provide more reliable results, the ethical concerns are minimal and the financial and practical implications of rearing animals etc. are much lower. There is benefit for all involved, if a move is made away from animal testing, particularly laboratory testing of dogs.

My teams rescue the beagles that are still alive after the experiments have been done on them for years. If you were to see their state, and realise that all this suffering was for nothing, you would be appalled. The first step has been taken by holding the conference. The pharmaceutical industry says it would prefer not to use them. Now the bureaucrats and government scientists need to  change the protocols that are using our tax money to inflict so much unnecessary harm. 

To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.peopleforanimalsindia.org

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Denis Giles

02 January 2018

Created: 02 January 2018

Last Updated: 02 January 2018

Hits: 1955

Maneka Sanjay Gandhi

The first known xenotransplantation was done by the god Shiva. Daksha, the father in law of Shiva, organized a yagna. He insulted Shiva and his daughter. Sati, Shiva’s wife, immolated herself in protest. Daksha’s head was cut off and burnt.  Later, when Shiva forgave him, he was brought back to life but with a ram’s head. The more famous decapitation was that of Ganesha. Shiva cut off the head of a baby elephant and transplanted it on to his son’s neck.

For the last 300 years doctors have been trying to replicate this miracle. The process is called xenotransplantation, or the transplanting of non-human organs or cells into a human body.

Thousands of animals have died in the process. And each attempt has been a failure. But that doesn’t stop scientists from trying. After all, animal life is cheap and, in the name of science, one can do anything.

In the 17th century, Jean Baptiste Denis started the practice of blood transfusion from animals to humans. Everyone died and xenotransfusion was banned in France for a number of years. In the 19th century, skin grafts became relatively popular between various animal species and humans. The fact that many of the species used as donors—sheep, rabbits, dogs, cats, rats, chickens, and pigeons—had hair, feathers, or fur, growing from the skin, did not deter the surgeons involved. The ideal graft was from frogs, which were sometimes skinned alive. None of the grafts were successful.

In the 20th century, the French experimental surgeon, Alexis Carrel, developed surgical techniques for joining blood vessels, which enabled organ transplantation to be carried out successfully for the first time. For this work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1912. He developed an interest in cross-species transplantation and his techniques became a reason for more people to experiment on animals.

A few years later, Serge Voronoff , a Russian émigré working in Paris,  developed an interest in reversing the effects of aging in elderly men who had lost their “zest for life.” He sliced a large number of chimpanzee or baboon testicles and implanted them in the testicles of old men. None of them had any effect. In fact they created infections and more complications. The concept of transplanting glandular tissue to produce hormones that would benefit the recipient was continued in the United States by John Brinkley, whose chosen donor was the goat, as he had been convinced by a local farmer of its sexual potency. He was later disbarred by the American Medical Association.

In the 1960s, Keith Reemtsma at Tulane University in Louisiana—hypothesized that nonhuman primate kidneys might function in human recipients and thus be a successful treatment for renal failure. By then kidney transplantation from human to human had been established (in the 50s), but the availability of kidneys from deceased humans was extremely limited. Reemtsma selected the chimpanzee as the source of organs, because of its close evolutionary relationship to humans. He carried out 13 of these transplants. While all the chimpanzees died in great pain the experiments failed. One woman lasted 9 months but spent all that time strapped to a bed and hospital catheters.  In another experiment scientists transplanted a pig kidney into a baboon. The baboon died in 5 months.

But the scientists carried on with kidney transplants. Tom Starzl used baboons as donors in Colorado. His results were similar to those of Reemtsma.

James Hardy, in 1964, tried to transplant a chimpanzee heart into a patient who had undergone amputations of both legs—and was in a semi-comatose state at the time the transplant was undertaken. The patient died within a few hours. The chimpanzee, of course, had been killed. In 1967 Christian Bernard also carried out two cardiac xenotransplants. Both failed.

Perhaps the best known clinical cardiac xenotransplantation since Hardy's attempt was that by Leonard Bailey, who transplanted a baboon heart into an infant girl, known as Baby Fae, in 1983. The graft underwent acute rejection and the patient died 20 days later. One of the reasons, which would appear common sense to an average, non medical person, is that baboons don’t have O blood type, which is donor blood. They have ABO which is incompatible with humans.  

Tom Starzl, who is considered one of the pioneers in the field of kidney and liver human to human transplantation, performed a handful of liver transplants between nonhuman primates and young patients in Colorado in the 1960s, with no success. As more immuno-suppressants became available, he performed two liver transplants from baboons into adult patients in the 1990s, with no survivors.

In the meantime xenotransplantation of pig islet transplantation is under way in diabetic patients in New Zealand. A European group has given rhesus monkeys an artificially induced Parkinson like motor disease and is experimenting with genetically modified pig dopamine-producing cells from pig embryos into the monkey brain, so that this can eventually be done with people with Parkinson’s. No luck so far, but there is no shortage of monkeys being imported from Mauritius.

The people of Asia and Africa need new corneas. Experimental corneal xenotransplantation is being done . Transplanting pig corneas into monkey eyes. The recipient needs corticosteroid injections into the eyes for the rest of his life – if the 4 experiments work which they have not done so far. Nebraska Medical Center, is transplanting hearts from pigs into sheep. Pig xenotransplants of heart, kidneys, lungs and livers, into apes carries on. The results? Completely unsuccessful. Does that stop the scientists? Not yet.

Clinics in Europe tout the efficacy of various animal tissues from placentas to blood cells, plasma and  organs for a variety of conditions – from acne to anti-aging. There is no evidence that they work.

The pig is now the creature that is being focused on. Why? Its genetic makeup is completely different from that of a human being. But the reasons are far more commercial. Its organs are the same size as humans, it is cheap to maintain and it has three litters a year, so pigs can be easily available. Does this make any scientific sense. No. But by the time they give up, xenotranplantation companies will have tortured and killed millions of pigs.

In 1969, Nobel Prize winner Sir Peter Medawar, who is considered the father of transplant immunology, stated, “We should solve the problem of organ transplantation by using xenografts in less than 15 years.” It is now 2017 and we are no closer. Norman Shumway, the pioneer of heart transplantation, stated truthfully “xenotransplantation is the future of transplantation, and always will be.”

The scientists are going to keep trying. They get paid for their research and, if they do succeed in producing usable organs from pigs, then there is a Nobel Prize at the end of the rainbow. Who cares about the animals.

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Denis Giles

18 December 2017

Created: 18 December 2017

Last Updated: 18 December 2017

Hits: 1874

By Maneka Sanjay Gandhi

Man has always envied the powers of animals. His natural instinct was to complete himself in mythology with animal powers and become a superbeing. Angels, fairies, the Greek Drakaina, Mothmen, Seraphs, the Norse Valkyries, the winged genies of Assyria, the Vanth of Etruscan mythology who guide people to the underworld after death, the Chayot of Judaism, are all humans with wings.

Mythology and folklore is full of animal-human hybrids. Most of these have been given divine status – whether of god, or villain, or trickster. In Christian art the devil is depicted with a human body, horns of a goat and a ram, goat's fur and ears, nose and canine teeth of a pig. In ancient Mesopotamia, Pazuzu the king of demons, the southwest wind, bringer of storms and drought, has the body of a man, the head of a lion or dog, the talons of an eagle, two pairs of wings, and a scorpion’s tail. (But though Pazuzu is an evil spirit, he drives and frightens away other evil spirits, protecting humans against plagues and misfortunes).

Human hybrids appear in million-year old cave paintings. These were attempts to depict priests (shamans) in the process of acquiring the mental and spiritual attributes of various beasts.

In India the most famous man-animal combination is Ganesha. But, unlike other cultures, our mythology does not normally mix animals with men in order to worship them. The beauty of the pre-Hindu and Hindu mythology is that it confers divine status on the animals themselves – Kurma the tortoise, Matsya the fish, Garuda the eagle, Jambavan the bear, Kamadhenu the cow (who in later mythology is given a human head, body of a cow, wings, tail of a peacock), Nagas like Sesha who can change into humans at will like Balrama. In the Puranas, Sesha was a human ascetic. Brahma, pleased with his worship, entrusted him with the duty of carrying the world. Sesha changed into a serpent, entered into a hole in the Earth, slithered to the bottom where he then loaded the Earth onto his head.

In the other mythologies, specially the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Chinese and Japanese, the fusion of man- animal makes the being divine.

Pan is a deity in Greek mythology. He has the torso of a human and hindquarters, legs and horns of a goat. He is the god of the wild, fields, groves, shepherds and flocks, nature and rustic music. He stands for fertility and the season of spring. The word panic comes from him. When disturbed he would shout scaring all. When the giants, called Titans, attacked the abode of the Greek gods, Olympus, Pan frightened the attackers away. The other word that comes from him is “companion” – and that is evocative, for me, of a paradise in which man and animal are friends.

The Greek Satyr is half human, half goat, hedonistically devoted to pleasure. His Roman counterpart is the Faun who is harmless.

Mermaids, half human and half fish are in every mythology but each culture has its own twists. Jengu is a beautiful water spirit of the Cameroon with a human upper body and a fish tail, long hair and gapped teeth who bring good fortune and healing to those who worship her. Sirena and Sireno are mermaids/mermen, from Philippine folklore, who guard the water. The Sirena has an enchanting voice that hypnotizes sailors and fishermen causing shipwrecks. Dagon is a Merman worshipped in Mesopotamia and Assyria as a fertility God. Cecaelia is a female half human, lower half octopus who lives in Lake Yaju, Japan and is a Sea Witch. The Cook Islands have a god called Avatea whose right half is that of a man and the left half of a fish. He is the father of gods and men. His eyes are the sun and moon and he is the god of light.

The Harpy is a Greco-Roman mythological creature with the lower body, wings and claws of a bird and the chest and head of a woman. Harpies are fierce, ill tempered, and live in filth. They are associated with the wind and the underworld and are sent to take those humans away who are unwilling to die. They do vengeful errands for other gods. Lilitus are Greek women with bird legs and wings, demons who work subtly to destroy society by leading mortals into sinful acts.

The Russian Alkonost, with the head of a woman and the body of a bird, makes such beautiful sounds that hearers forget all that they know and don’t want anything more ever again. She lives in the underworld with her counterpart the Sirin. The Alkonost lays her eggs on a beach and rolls them into the sea. When they hatch, a thunderstorm sets in and the sea becomes so rough that it becomes impossible to traverse. The Sirins are half-owl, half-human creatures. They sing to the saints foretelling future joys. Humans found them dangerous, as men, who heard them would forget everything, follow them and ultimately die. People would attempt to save themselves from Sirins by making loud noises to scare the birds off. In Persia the Sirins symbolized eternal joy and heavenly happiness. The Gamayun is also a Russian woman with the body of a bird. She is prophetic and a symbol of wisdom and knowledge.

The Sirens are part of Greek mythology as birds with large women's heads, bird feathers and scaly feet, playing harps. They have beautiful voices which seduced men, killing them.

The Jatakas describe the Kinnaras as half human, half bird, fond of music and song with the female beating a drum and male playing on lute. They go on in later mythology to be celestial musicians and protectors of humans. 

A divine creature of Japanese Buddhist mythology, with the head of a bird and the torso of a human based on the Hindu mythology of Garuda, the Karura is enormous, fire-breathing, and feeds on dragons/serpents who are non-Buddhist.

Horus the falcon headed is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities. Horus served many functions, most notably being a god of the sky, war and hunting.

Another creature that straddles many cultures is the half human–half horse. The Anggitay, a Philippine female with the upper body of a human with the lower body of a horse, smells out gems. The Greek Centaur, and his predecessor the Ipotane, have a mystical, ancient energy that reaches the desired outcome for their keeper. In Hinduism, Lord Hayagriva is worshipped as the god of knowledge with a human body and a horse's head, brilliant white in colour, with white garments and seated on a white lotus. Symbolically, the divinity represents the triumph of pure knowledge over the demonic forces of passion and darkness. Probable origins about the worship of Hayagriva go back to 2,000 BC, when Indo-Aryan people worshipped the horse for its speed, strength, intelligence. Hayagriva is worshipped on the day of the full moon in August and on Mahanavami, the ninth day of the Navaratri festival.

There are so many more. The tragedy is that, as we “evolve” we do not include animals in our spiritual fulfilment any more. There are no religions and cults any more that embrace all of Earthkind. In fact, religions like Yazidism, which is based on ancient Mesopotamian beliefs, and practiced by the Yazidis, a minority group in Iraq, have attracted extreme hatred. The Yazidis, who worship a gentle peacock-angel called Melek Tawwus as the archangel, who has been placed by God to care for the world, have been called Satan worshippers and are being systematically exterminated as I write this.

To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.peopleforanimalsindia.org