Any one adopting or fostering these horses should search the web and read the other articles regarding this vet. Not the ones related to this abuse.
Malden Brook Farm is the same or adjoining farm to the one with the mini's. It is more like several old farms joined together.
American Veterinary Medical Foundations, Inc.
29 Prospect Street
West Boylston, MA 01583
www.vetfrontiers.org
Contact:
Dr. Robert Tashjian
Phone number and email removed
Rare Horses in EIA/HIV Research Rescued from
Dangerous 4,500-Mile Journey
Herd Is Key to Vital Research Program on
Equine Infectious Anemia
Implications for AIDS Research
West Boylston, MA – August 15, 2011 – For several decades, West Boylston’s historic,
idyllic Malden Brook Farm has been home to generations of a truly irreplaceable herd of
horses. Numbering 45 animals today, these horses are part of the Western Hemisphere’s
most important research on Equine Infectious Anemia (EIA), which is similar to Human
Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the causative agent of AIDS.
Dr. Robert Tashjian is a local veterinarian and scientist with over 40 years of veterinary
experience. He is also one of America’s foremost authorities on EIA. Through the
modest resources of America Veterinary Medical Frontiers, Inc., which he founded in
1995 and leads today, Tashjian has quietly but effectively overseen the EIA research
program.
The implications of AVMF’s EIA research go far beyond equine health. On the molecular
and clinical levels, EIA is very similar to HIV. Consequently the AVMF research on EIA
may have profound implications for AIDS research.
Recently, however, the viability of this far-reaching research has been threatened
because of financial pressure to keep the program afloat. So scientists in Nicaragua have
offered to continue studies of the herd in that country with AVMF, rather than see this
vital research end if underfunding puts AVMF out of operation. Countries such as
Nicaragua, where horses far outnumber tractors and other motorized farm implements,
understand implicitly the vital role of the AVMF herd for developing ways to fight the EIA
virus.
“The herd has never been confined to horse trucks nearly as long as the trip to
Nicaragua – about 4,500 miles – would take,” Tashjian observed. “Many of them could
well succumb to the stress of the journey along the way. If this happens, our research
will suffer a terrible blow, and millions of horses everywhere would be more susceptible
to perishing from EIA. AIDS research could suffer as well.”
Fortunately, Dr. Tashjian has decided against moving the herd to Nicaragua for now,
and instead try to raise the funds necessary to save the research program before it’s too
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late. “Malden Brook Farm provides a research environment unlike any other in the U.S.,”
Tashjian said. “Our free-range, natural surroundings enable the herd to live ‘socially,’
which is an ideal arrangement for studying EIA.”
This environment, too, is threatened by state and federal “test and destroy” regulations,
which restrict EIA-positive horses to live in quarantine and then inhumanely be put to
death. Currently, no EIA-positive horses reside at Malden Brook.
Recent EIA Breakthrough at Malden Brook
According to Gregory R. Ciottone, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and chair of the
Disaster Medicine Section at Harvard Medical School, “Through his cutting-edge research
over the past 40 years, Dr. Tashjian has become one of a very few internationally
recognized experts in EIA. His collaborative work has led to a number of breakthroughs
in the understanding of this lethal retrovirus. The culmination of this research is the idea
that a vaccine for EIA, similar in structure and action to human HIV, may be possible.”
In late 2010, AVMF announced a breakthrough in the field of retroviral research with
confirmation of a successfully bred horse with natural immunity to EIA. This
advancement adds significantly to the understanding of retroviruses, and may have
implications for the understanding of HIV.
Lentiviruses, a class of retroviruses, damage the immune system of horses (EIA),
simians (SIV) and humans (HIV). In the 1970s, Dr. Tashjian observed that an EIApositive
herd of horses lived side-by-side with EIA-negative horses, without a statistical
increase in mortality among the negative horses.
Dr. Tashjian brought a small herd of seemingly EIA-resistant horses to West Boylston
and started a breeding program. The intent was to amplify and document the natural
immunity that he had observed anecdotally decades before. That natural immunity had
recently been confirmed when “Nora” tested negative for EIA despite significant
exposure to the virus.
Sadly, however, regulations promulgated by the Division of Animal Health of the
Massachusetts Division of Agricultural Resources doomed Nora to a cruel death out of
fear she could infect other horses. This in spite of the fact that Nora had lived at Malden
Brook Farm disease-free for the prior 10 years. She had been the first horse bred for
immunity to a retrovirus. So her demise is doubly unsettling, both scientifically and
ethically.
“We realize that we’re fighting an uphill battle to keep the research going,” Tashjian
said. “But for the sake of the animals and the possible good our EIA research may have
for AIDS research, we refuse to go down without a fight.”
AVMF is accepting financial donations to help rescue the remaining horses in the Malden
Brook herd and sustain the vital research Tashjian and his colleagues have undertaken
for so many years.
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