I wrote this for Breed Notes in the two dog papers, but it semed a appropriate to place it here too. "I feel I have to comment on aspects of the Breed Council chairman’s report to the press. Firstly, I did not specifically ask for financial help for publication of the ARVC/BCM paper. Rather I made what I regarded as a conciliatory gesture considering the political situation, of asking Breed Council if it would like to contribute to funding the Open Access publication costs being faced by other authors (my own contribution paid by my old research lab). I thought after the bad press Breed Council has been getting on facebook they would have jumped at the chance to gain some good cred, but not so. Even token support would have served, as the paper received much acclaim at the Cardiovascular Group meeting of the recent major Veterinary Congress in Birmingham. With Open Access, everyone (vets, cardiologists and even Boxer breeders) can access the paper. Fortunately, a fund was set up by Peter Squires on the internet and raised the full sum in a little over two weeks with donations from all over the world, but also from the UK Boxer show world (mostly anonymously). It may be thought that since the breeding control scheme has seemingly wiped out ARVC from our show stock, the paper with its new findings were unimportant in the UK. This is totally wrong. The disease remains a problem in the non-show population which must represent at least 80% of the breed. The breeding control scheme has proved of limited value to them (they are too far removed from source animals). Do we just let them continue to suffer?
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BoxerJKDCommunication posted through Facebook Archives
May 2018
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