The Public (Health) Lives of Pets

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DNA of the H5N1 virus, better known as bird flu, is found in pasteurized milk. The Arizona House of Representatives passes an abortion law, repeal. The Biden administration delays a long-awaited menthol cigarette ban. This is America Dissected. I'm your host, Dr.

Abdul El-Sayed.

Hey everyone, just a heads up that today's episode is the last we're doing under the Crooked Media Network. I'm so proud and excited to announce that I'll be bringing this show in-house to my production company, Incision Media, and exploring opportunities in the educational space. Thank you to the tons of hard, smart work by Emma and Austin and everyone else at Crooked Media who've helped to bring this show to life each week. I also want to share a particular thank you to John, John, and Tommy, who took a bet on the show back in 2019.. Don't worry, America Dissected isn't going anywhere.

We'll still be releasing new episodes every Tuesday on this very feed, and I'll be keeping you updated on any exciting changes coming your way here, including premiering the show on YouTube. I'm really excited about this next chapter, but we are, of course, going to miss our colleagues at Crooked Media. And now to the show.

Look, I'll be the first to tell you, I'm more of a people person than an animal person, but I learned to love the furry creatures and I have to believe that I've done my duty by them. Let me explain. I was hired to rebuild the Detroit Health Department in 2015.. Just three years earlier, the city decided to shut down a 185-year-old health agency as it sought to downsize to avoid the impending collapse. Bankruptcy happened anyway, and in the process, the city slagged its public health responsibilities off onto a poorly operated non-profit.

I walked into a shell of a department situated in the back of the offices of the municipal parking department. You can imagine all the issues coming my way. Address the city's shameful infant mortality rate. Solve our asthma epidemic. Figure out the lead crisis.

But according to my boss, the mayor, the most pressing of all was animal control. Yep, you heard that right. Animal control. We were operating under deeply outdated and, frankly, inhumane procedures in a building built in 1927. The facility was understaffed, overworked, underpaid, and when I started, nearly eight in ten animals that came to the facility would end up euthanized.

Worse, we had roaming bands of abandoned dogs terrorizing neighborhoods across the city, as suburbanites, finding themselves unequipped to care for a new pet, would simply drive to Detroit, open the door, and let them loose. And the fact that many of these animals were dogfighting survivors, abused by their owners and trained for aggression, made the problem deadly. Every night at 5, 6, and 11,, the local news would make a smorgasbord of the city's failures to care for animals. I have to admit that I didn't immediately appreciate the connection between animal control and public health, but one morning early on in my tenure brought that into sharp relief. On his way to school, a five-year-old little boy, Xavier, was killed when he was attacked by a neighbor's dog, which had likely been trained for dogfighting.

It made the connection vivid, and so should current events. On Monday, the Texas Department of State Health Services issuing an alert confirming our state's first human case of avian influenza or bird flu. America's dairy cows will be tested for bird flu more closely to stop the virus from spreading. This week alone, I spent several hours on calls regarding what we're calling HPAI, or highly pathogenic avian flu, a fancy way of saying bird flu that can make you really sick. We'll talk more about that later in the show.

But there's another side to this. For as long as humans have existed, we've built symbiotic relationships with animals. Archaeological evidence suggests that we began domesticating dogs dating back to nearly 26,000 years ago in Siberia, whereas our connection with our fur babies today is more about love and affection. Back then, it was a matter of survival. Dogs are incredible hunters, and when hunting and gathering was the difference between life and death, the keen sense of scent, incredible speed, and ferocity of a hunting dog could mean the difference between finding your dinner or not.

It wasn't only one-sided. They benefited from our strategic minds, our ability to forge weaponry, and our ability to provide reliable shelter. Dogs are man's best friend, sure, but man should be dog's best friend, too. The benefits far outweighed the public health concerns, and they should today, too. And when they don't, it's not because the dogs did something wrong.

It's because the humans did, and those are the challenges I had in front of me in Detroit. Luckily, I had an incredible leader to work with, who happens to be our guest today. Melissa Miller is the director of St. Clair County Animal Control. She's also a certified dog behavioral consultant and served as a senior disaster field responder for the Humane Society of the U.S.

for nearly a decade. It was her insight, experience, and grit that helped us turn it around. We raised our animal care officer salaries 15%, helping us to get to full staff. We moved the operation into a new facility and upgraded our protocols and procedures. By the time I left, we had fully reversed the animal save rate, helping place nearly 80% of the animals that had come through our doors into loving homes.

I was interested in digging deeper into the relationship between animals and health today, and I knew that Melissa would be the perfect guest. I'm grateful she agreed to come on the show. Here's my conversation with Melissa Miller. All right, let's go. Can you introduce yourself at the tape?

And I feel like, given our work together in the city, I've done justice to animal kind. Absolutely. Many, many nights working to save many animals. So I appreciate them and I want to see them thrive. I just, you know, like they do them, and I do me, and like, you know, anyway.

But I am the proud re-owner of two cats.

And like those animals are still going to need to have a place anyway. So she ends up, within two weeks, finding a cat for adoption. This beautiful cat named Socks, which we think is like part Mancun because he's huge. And so Socks is living in this 880 square foot apartment, which is where we lived at the time. And he is a kitten, so he's like tearing up everything, destroying cords.

And she's like, I read online that if you get a partner for them, then they calm down. So now we ended up with two cats. The second cat is a beautiful white cat named Yoda, because he strikes a remarkable resemblance to the character. And now we end up with two cats that are living in our 880 square foot apartment. I'm like, oh, why?

All of us sharing a bathroom. There's like there's like litter all over the bathroom floor and the tiny little bathroom you can imagine. So of course, lo and behold, Sara ends up going to England. We have to find another home for these cats. We find that the lovely mother of a friend of Sara's, with whom the cats go and live a long life.

Now, we get a call about two years ago from this mother of Sara's friend who says we found out that my grandkids are really allergic to cats and I needed to put them up for adoption. They are at the Humane Society. So you and I both know, I know the Humane Society folks way better than I ever thought I would because of our time together. So I call them up. I'm like, yo, man, you got my cats.

I need to. I need to take these cats back. And we know that one of them is deaf and they're very old. So I think there were 14 at the time. So we didn't expect them to be adopted and, you know, we were going to let them go out like that.

So we brought them back home and they've been living in our house now for the last two years. And I begrudgingly accept the fact that, despite our house being full of their dander and and still a gigantic mess of of litter in places I don't want it to be, they have added immense amounts of joy to our lives. And, yes, even my life. So I wanted to tell you that story because, well, I thought you'd appreciate it.

We don't know why she calls them Tata, who named them Tata, but like she has this affection for them. Right. She just likes to go in and like, lean her face on them. It's very, very cute. And she chases them around the house.

And I'm sure they're definitely afraid. But, like to their credit, there is some sense that that, like, she is a young member of our species and they treat her with like far more respect than I think they would treat anyone else behaving in that way. So it's. it really is just lovely to watch.

And it was a mess at the time. And I needed somebody who I could trust, who could come in and do right by the animals and right by the people of the city of Detroit. And Mel Miller was that person. And so we spent many, many hours in my office strategizing about how to take on animal infections and how to improve operations in the facility and how to engage the animal care community in a way that was productive. And you were great through all of it.

So I learned a lot from you. So I'm thankful for that.

That's insane. Come out of a trunk. Right? It just sneezes once and literally everyone's in... Yeah.

Anyway. And I think we're foreshadowing a lot of the important aspects, right? Because you'd wonder why is animal control under public health? And this happens in municipality after municipality. If you ever find a health director and you want to make them groan, just say animal control.

Because it's literally the part of the job everyone's. like, yo, I didn't train for this. And it's wild. So I want to jump in, because you've clearly got a love and a passion for animals. What did that start for you?

Had to go through a few periods, years in college where I didn't have an animal and really wanted one really bad, and ended up with my apartment. bunny, who I basically treated like it, was a puppy and took him everywhere, and he was very well socialized and wonderful. And he became a house rabbit. But I think in terms of a profession, around 2006, when I was working in the financial industry, as a stress reliever, I started volunteering to walk dogs at the Franklin County Animal Control in Columbus, Ohio and met the dog. that would become my first dog as an adult, which is very different than having your parents also assist you with the care of a dog.

He also ended up being kind of a behavioral mess. And that is what sent me to the library, where I just started reading and taking in everything I could. The next six years, I became a certified professional dog trainer and then went on to become a certified behavior consultant for canines.

I started volunteering with HSUS as part of the National Disaster Animal Response Team and then became a consultant for the Animal Rescue Team. So responding to everything that would be defined as a disaster. So anything that would overwhelm a community's ability to respond. So that would be floods, tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, as well as puppy mill seizures and hoarding cases with multiple species and hundreds of animals on one single property, and blood sport like dog fighting or hog dog fighting cases. And throughout that time, I got really interested in some of the legislative and advocacy, making comments at the Michigan Senate about puppy mills and current legislation, as well as working within communities on anti-breed specific legislation and how that can be really detrimental to a community instead of community-based fight prevention.

And at a integral time when things at Detroit had gotten specifically very bad, started a nonprofit with a couple of my friends called Dog Aid. It's a community outreach program to help keep people and their pets together, because we realized that the number one way to keep animals out of the shelter and out of animal control was to keep them in their homes. So we started providing door to door services, information, getting out in the communities and helping people with finding resources and what they needed.

people part, right? Because it seems to me, as an animal adjacent lover, that the conversation is often one-sided. Everybody thinks they're doing right by animals, but oftentimes they're doing things that can be really quite harmful. Tell me a little bit about that people part. Where do people go wrong?

And if you could think about the ways that you could prevent some of these kinds of situations, what are the kinds of things that we all ought to be thinking about in the ways that animals and humans interact?

Their dog may have gotten its puppy shots. The cat distribution system, if anybody's aware of that internet meme of cats, just show up on your porch and decide that they're yours and they move in on you.

And all that happens. So sometimes it's just making sure that people have access to the resources. It's difficult to have the right stuff if there's not a pet supply store, even if you have the finances to do that. And honestly, some of the best human animal bonds I've seen have been with unhoused folks and the animals that they're caring for. So the other thing that I think we don't talk enough about is the lack of social safety net when it comes to this.

We have a lot of folks that are struggling with specific mental illnesses that make it difficult for them to either connect with humans or difficult for them to really understand what their capacity for care is. So when you look at collecting, which I'm going to say collecting instead of hoarding, hoarding is technically a diagnosis and I'm not a doctor. But if we're talking about collecting, we have folks who just kind of can't see the forest for the trees. They think they're providing the best care possible. They keep taking in the next animal that needs their help.

Well, that level of care continues to decline and medical care isn't provided. Typically, those folks don't have a strong social safety net. They don't have a doctor that they're going to regularly. They don't have family stopping by to say, woo, when was the last time you changed the cat litter? Or why are there six more cats here?

A lot of senior folks who are isolated and alone and don't have good family connections end up in really tough situations.

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I want to walk back into history and then we can talk a little bit more about some of the recommendations you have and some of the public health concerns that come out of our animal friends.

When did humans start to domesticate and take in animals outside of the circumstance of food production? When did we start taking pets and do we have a sense of what it has looked like over the years?

Then, over the next couple thousand years, you see dogs start showing up from an anthropological and archaeological basis in Southeast Asia and China about 30,000 years ago, Siberia about 26,000 years ago, moving into Europe about 10,000 years ago. Over a vast quantity of time, we see dogs moving into different continents in different types of ways. We don't necessarily think of a Shar-Pei as an ancient breed, but it definitely is just as ancient as a Siberian Husky or Malamute. Around 11,000 years ago, we started domesticating sheep and goats and about 8,000 years ago, we started domesticating cattle. Around that period of time, between our herding folks of goats and sheep and continuing to move with them, we started agriculture.

Where we started collecting grain came mice and wild cats said, this is pretty cool. They started showing up and they said, wow, there's all this food. People said, hey, you get rid of mice. This is cool. You can stay here.

Started cohabitating and sharing our environment with them. It's been a pretty cool 13,000 to 18,000 years of having dogs and cats in our lives on a regular basis.

Probably not as good at strategy, but probably a lot better on tactic than we are. But you think about cats and their ability to keep a barn or a silo free of the animals that are going to destroy and potentially put disease into your food supply. And you start to see this symbiotic relationship around scarcity and food and capacity. And then also the emotional joy of being able to do something well with someone, even if that someone's a different species than you. I want to jump now, because it's a really good segue, into some of the health concerns when we think about animals.

Obviously, there's a lot, particularly when we think about the domesticated animals that we keep, but there were several that we engaged with directly back when we used to work together in the city that you work on in a neighboring county. today. You know, whether it's the challenge of dog bites, you know, terrible circumstance. very early into my tenure in Detroit, little boy about five years old was mauled by a dog that somebody had been keeping inappropriately and had been training for purposes that are just inconsistent with the best care of an animal. that ended up becoming a very violent circumstance and took the life of a little boy.

Or it's the risk of disease spread in animals. Can you talk about some of the ways that, you know, you think about both the downside, but then also the upside of a relationship with animals when it comes to our health?

And you, all, Dr. House style, were trying on the window, trying to look at, you know, from a contagion perspective and using all of your public health epidemiology and me, using all of my cross-contagion and shelter knowledge of how are we going to manage this population so we can stop feeding the virus new hosts, so we can get this under control and save lives. So, you know, when we look at diseases like parvovirus, jumped from essentially the horses to greyhounds. And at that point, greyhound racing moved that into boarding facilities, moved that into contact with companion animals and animals that went into shelters. And it was this brand new disease.

And in the 70s, no one knew what it was. They just knew that all of a sudden dogs were dying, just incredible rates, and especially puppies. We now have vaccines. We have some amazing vaccines and the basic puppy vaccines that you should be getting with any pup. Your three boosters of DHLPP is distemper and lepto, parvo, parainfluenza.

So it protects against a lot of those things.

So there is a sense that private practice vets are absolutely doing the right thing when they say, have you thought about vaccination? This probably needs to happen. We should keep the animal on this schedule. But to a certain degree, it would be OK to go a year or two, according to the AVMA, without that booster. Because I work in a high risk environment, my pets get boosted every year.

I'm not going to ever take that chance because I work in a shelter and I come home in shelter clothes and change really quick. But I could still bring something home. So the other thing that's really interesting is the microchipping and having permanent identification on your pet, which is amazing when it comes to getting lost dogs and cats back home, as well as horses, rabbits, anything else that you want to microchip. It's just an RFID with a 15-digit number, goes into a database, and your contact information pops up if you've kept up with that. But there's definitely, since the pandemic, been an odd aversion to that as well.

But it's got to be weird to be demagogued on these global conspiracy theories for trying to get low-income children in sub-Saharan Africa vaccinated. I want to ask you, we talked a little bit about the downside. What about some of the upside? I mean, I got to tell you, so after the pandemic, during the pandemic, even, socks, I was working from home. And, as you well know, anybody who knows me knows I thrive on being with people.

I like to be with people. And it was just a very isolating experience. And every day I'd sit on the couch and I'd sit with my laptop doing my work-from-home thing. And every day, socks would come sit next to me. And I can't tell you how grateful I am to have had that companionship.

It really got me through some tough days, just to be like, all right, man, it's just me and you, just sitting here on this couch doing the same thing we did yesterday and the day before.

And there's some real upside to that companionship. Can you talk to us a little bit about what some of the evidence has shown about the value of having animals and what that can do for our health?

Outdoor, getting outdoors, getting social. It actually can affect your bone density to have a pet, which is pretty cool. In terms of cognitive function, that's really amazing. There's the socialization aspect, especially when it comes to dogs, getting out outdoors, seeing other people, as well as just having that friendship and being able to process stress. So definitely some really great things for our health, especially seniors, and having a routine that incorporates their animal, but also having different interactions every day.

Keep you on your toes.

And just watching them interact with him, in particular, my grandfather, who takes him for a walk multiple times a day, I really do think he's been just such an amazing lifeline for them. And has kept them young in a way that's pretty amazing. And grandma, grandpa, if you guys are listening, shout out to Warren Buffett.

Those impacts are really amazing and something to watch. The other part of it is also that I do think, when they say man's best friend, there's something real about the ability to have to care for an animal, but at the same time, know that that animal, in some respects, cares for you. And I think that there's something really beautiful about the nature of that kind of a relationship, because it's not just one way. And I think that's what makes relationships valuable. And with animals, so often there's this aspect to them where a lot of the purposiveness, the things that we get most frustrated with in other people, sometimes the self-centeredness, the need to look out for oneself over others, that doesn't show up in an animal.

And there's something with animals and children, I think, that make them unique in that way and makes them blameless. And so I think there's something really pure about that kind of relationship that more and more people engage with. I do want to ask, though, and this has been something that I've watched over time, we have this weird relationship to animals because of this nature, of this purity of the relationship where, on the one hand, we treat them as beings, and, on the other, we treat them as objects. Correct. And what's sad about it is it shows up in the ways that people think about what animal they want to get.

So if someone will go out and get a designer dog, and there are many other dogs with just as much purity and need for care that are sitting in animal care and control centers across the country that are liable to be put down that folks don't want to get. So there's that objectiveness, but then also that nature of like, oh, well, now this is going to be my best friend, right? And it's kind of odd, right? Because we don't really think about people that way. Right.

So I invite you to reflect with me about that sort of duality of relationships and the ways that kind of confuses things or creates circumstances where too often we're not really, as a species, treating animals with the respect and dignity they deserve, even if we might treat our little fur baby with the respect and dignity it deserves.

So it's always interesting to me to think about, you know, guinea pigs in our pet stores and guinea pigs in the wild. And that in some places, they're something we consume. And that consumerism boils down to some, not all, breeding. Puppy mills exist because people have an impulse to want a certain animal to look a certain way and have it right now. And so there's large scale cruelty and suffering.

that happens because we want that perfect little Pomeranian delivered to our door by air another the next day.

Instead of doing our research and finding a reputable breeder or somebody who really pays attention to the genetics of the animals and loves the breed, loves the line and can speak to their bone health, and that they don't carry the genes for hip dysplasia or eye issues or ear issues. So there's a big difference between the fast food of pet acquisition, which would be puppy and kitten, and parrot mills, versus looking around and seeing kind of what needs a home and what type of home can you provide. I think it's really important when we think about our homes, who are we asking to share our homes with us and our lifestyle with us? And do we have the activity level that's needed for a young, mid-sized dog that is really energetic versus a mature adult couch potato? If you like to watch Netflix all weekend, you're probably not going to want that hyper puppy that wants to go on four mile walks twice a day, every day.

And, like you, experienced with the kittens, kittens often are better together, but everybody has to sort of look at their budget, the average costs, and make those decisions for themselves about how they're going to care for anything, whether it's a beta fish or whether it's a great Pyrenees, we need to know what that animal needs. And a lot of times what we think an animal needs is far below what they actually do need.

Can you speak to some of the ways to think about or to assess what an animal needs and to make a smart decision for yourself? Are there resources out there for people?

So what those animals need based on their simple biology. Dogs and cats love games that are predictable, but also have a little bit of fun in there. And I think of it sometimes as playing pickup football or any of the games, hide and seek, the sort of things that you learn to play with friends. You know the general rules, but it's going to be different every time, depending on who's playing. So being able to predict what comes next, it affects stress with humans and animals.

So a game that they've learned, that they've picked up, Fetch, is one of the great ones we use on a regular basis, but that's tapping into a lot of dogs. Pre-acquisition sequence. So that's the orient to your prey, stalk, chase, bring back. So we have a lot of different animals, cats example. There's a lot of people who say, it's like my cat's, a dog.

He likes to chase after this particular toy, or my girlfriend's hair ties or things like that, or bring back bottle caps. But there's a lot of that that falls under predatory sequencing.

Obviously, with cats, it's a different story, but with dogs in particular. But a lot of times I think folks sort of think about their dogs really actually as humans, when they're not actually humans. And there's a different set of needs there. How do you recommend people think about training or start pursuing training? And of course, there's a health aspect here, because a poorly trained dog can be dangerous in the wrong situations.

They like to be up in trees. They like to be up off the ground. And one of the biggest complaints that people that work with cats from a behavior standpoint gets is he's always in what I'm trying to do. When I'm cooking, he's up on the counter when I'm doing that, because they're inquisitive. So for everything that you want to say no to, the biggest advice is what do you want to say yes to?

So for every get off the counter, how can I meet your need to be high to be able to watch what's going on? Because that's what they're interested in. And so sometimes it might mean for a while having a cat tree in your kitchen, not forever, but have it close to the place where Kitty gets on the counter. It's a no. Kitty gets on the cat tree and it's a treat, and they get to watch and they learn like, hey, if I want to be involved in this, I can go up here and this is a good place.

And then slowly move that a little bit away from your cooking preparation.

Same thing with dogs. There's a lot of, unfortunately, socially popular, but inaccurate dog training shows that propagate this myth of the alpha dog and dominance mentality pack theory, which has been proven to not be how dogs work for over 40 years. In fact, the gentleman, Dave Mesh, who came up with the term alpha wolf, has spent the rest of his career trying to take it back and correct people's understandings, because it was based off a flawed research of captive wolves that were unrelated.

So when it comes to dogs, dogs do what works. Their cognition level and emotional development is somewhere similar to a, two to three year old. So there's no real concept of time. We can't tell them it's going to be four days or three sleeps. They don't quite get it yet.

And as well as those sort of advanced emotions, sometimes that we give dogs, just aren't there. They actually don't feel guilty or feel regret, which is kind of interesting, because the concept of guilty or regret means understanding the concept of going backwards in time and doing something differently. So they really don't have that. But what they do have are puppy dog eyes, because they've learned that when they make the puppy dog face, that appeasement, face, for whatever reason, humans stop yelling and start acting more gentle towards them. So there's a lot of times people will say, oh, he knows what he did, but they lack that part of executive function, of morals.

They have a certain amount of ethics of, you know, we all did this thing together. We all should be sharing in it when it comes to old time hunting behaviors, but dogs are never doing necessarily anything out of spite. So when you see problem behaviors, things like inappropriate elimination, dog or cat, jumpiness, mouthiness, love bites, which my cat Nugget, you could pet him exactly 3.45 times before you get an overstimulated little bite in there.

It's important, when you see those problem behaviors, to also assess their health first. Is there something that's causing them to be painful? Is there underlining medical issue, pain, teeth, ears, joints, something that's going wonky anytime there's a sudden change in behavior.

That's going to startle them. That could cause a bite. We're not going to mess with them when they're eating. I don't want someone sticking their fork on my plate or sticking their hand in my dish. It's absolutely appropriate for a dog to not want that as well.

So we definitely want to teach kids that if the dog is eating or sleeping or playing with a toy, to always ask the adult if that adult will interact with the dog or cat. If the dog is chewing on a toy and really into it, now is not the time to grab that toy. It may be time for a toy exchange. Also, this is so, so hard because we're like crazy primitive primate brains really associate hugging and eye contact with oxytocin, right? Like there's a huge burst that comes out when we get hugged for more than three seconds and then when we make direct eye contact.

And that's largely because when we're little, all those receptors get all that oxytocin from being held and our food source is right next to mom. We're making eye contact. And so that's warmth and security and all these great things for us. Dogs, they're born blind. at the point where they're stopping nursing.

They're just starting to see about six inches or so from their face. So they're experiencing their world in a very, very different way. And it's hard to teach kids this because animals are so lovable. But most dogs don't like hugs. Most dogs view hugs as restraint.

And some dogs are super tolerant of it and they'll put up with it. Some dogs will try to kiss and dismiss, which is giving you that little lick, which we interpret as kisses. But really they're saying, okay, I'd like you to stop now. So they'll kiss and dismiss. And other dogs really just don't like it at all.

So also knowing some signs for body language for dogs and cats, but remembering that children under the age of six, and particularly children between the ages of six to 10, are learning about human emotions and faces. If you think about the first couple emotions, we learn, happy, sad, angry. Kids start scanning faces, looking at eyes and mouths. And it isn't until you're about 10 that you start looking at other things like cheeks, head position, all of that. So children under the age of six are cognitively not able to interpret dog body language, especially their facial signals.

So it's important to recognize children under six and in that developmental age between six to 10 may not actually be able to see that a dog is showing that it's scared by having whale eye, where you can really see the whites of their eyes, having their ears back and flat, lip licking, averting their face to the side to say, I really don't like you in my space right now, those sorts of things. And cats have a similar group of behaviors. The ears will go back or come slightly down. A lot of times with cats, it's their tails and the position of the tail. So if they're overstimulated, it's going to be that big puffy rattlesnake tail.

If they're uncomfortable, they're going to try to make themselves as small as possible. So they're going to tuck that tail. If they're angry, that little flick that they do with the tip of their tail saying, knock it off, back up. And so it's important to know just some basics of body language and actively supervise children around pets. And there's a difference between active supervision and passive supervision and no supervision.

So if you have kids under six, you need to absolutely be actively supervising. Active supervision is in the room, actively watching the dog and the kids and how they're interacting. Passive supervision is the kids and the animals are in the room. You're watching TV or you're in the other room and you keep an ear out, but you're cooking dinner or you're reading a book or something like that, where they're still in your proximity, but you're not actively watching how the animal is responding to the child's behavior.

Clair County, Michigan's Animal Control, and she's a certified behavioral consultant and former director of the Detroit Animal Care and Control Center, where she and I used to work together. Mel, thank you so much for making the time today to share some of those insights with us, and we really appreciate it.

have tested positive for remnants of the bird flu virus that has infected.

. FDA scientists tested 297 samples from 38 states, including all nine where cattle have tested positive for evidence of H5N1.. The scientists were able to identify H5N1 DNA in nearly 20% of the samples, but thankfully, none tested positive for live H5N1 virus. This is scary, but it probably sounds a lot scarier than it really is. Let me explain why.

Milk may show up for us in a sterile milk carton in its pristine white liquid form, but think about where milk comes from. The udder of a milk cow somewhere on a farm. Farms, cows, these aren't the cleanest places in the world. Normally, if you really wanted to kill all the microorganisms in something, you'd boil it. But of course, boiling milk would ruin it.

So instead, we pasteurized it. The process, named after Louis Pasteur, who developed it way back in the 1860s, involves heating the milk to a high enough temperature for long enough to destroy the bacteria or viral particles inside it. But pasteurizing doesn't make the particles disappear. It just denatures them, destroying them, but leaving their parts right there. So, if you think about that, what do these findings really tell us?

On the one hand, they show us just how widespread the virus is in raw milk. Nearly one in five samples tested positive after all. But it also shows us that pasteurization is effective at destroying the viral particles in milk, something we've known now for about 160 years. So that's the milk of it all. But that doesn't mean that there's nothing to worry about.

This virus is clearly spreading in cows way faster than we previously understood. Wastewater surveillance is identifying spikes of influenza A, of which H5N1 is a type, in communities where infected cattle have been identified. It's not certain that this is H5N1, but there's no other explanation for it, which points aggressively to infected cows. The fact that this is spreading rapidly has two consequences. First, the more cows it spreads to, the higher the risk to people who interact with cows every day.

But also, remember, this is an RNA virus with a high rate of mutation. The more this virus spreads, the higher the probability that some subset of those mutations unlock the ability to jump between people. And that's the never event we're all trying to protect against. This week, federal officials instituted a requirement of testing for H5N1 if cattle are moved across state lines. That's a good start.

But I'd like to see a lot more aggressive action, including communication. Guys, can we not do this from our back foot again? Remember that draconian Arizona abortion law we talked about a few weeks ago? Well, the Republican-led state legislature of Arizona may repeal it. Last week, with the support of three Republicans in swing districts, Democrats in the state House voted to repeal the law.

It now awaits a vote in the state Senate. Why is this happening? Not because Arizona Republicans now support the right to choose. No. It's happening because they're being forced to reckon with the disastrous politics of the issue in a tough election year.

And that, well, that demonstrates the power of all of us who believe that abortion is health care and that banning it creates untenable risks to people that violate their bodily autonomy and threaten their lives. Keep pushing, folks. It's working. Finally, in another story about election year priorities shaping public health, the Biden administration caved to politics on a proposed menthol cigarette ban that had been in the works for two years. Models project that a ban on menthol cigarettes could save upwards of 650,000 lives over the next 40 years.

And those lives disproportionately belong to Black folks, who account for the majority of menthol cigarette smokers. But that set up a challenging political situation in the administration's mind. Do the right thing on public health and save 650,000 predominantly Black lives, or cave to political pressure and risk losing Black votes? Except the ban was supported by a majority of the powerful Congressional Black Caucus, as well as Dr. Robert Califf, administrator of the FDA, and HHS Secretary Javier Becerra.

Here's my take. It's sad to watch political anxiety get in the way of sound public policy. After all, the very people who benefit most from this ban are the folks whose votes this administration is scared of losing. Politicians, at their best, have to be teachers. They have to explain their policy positions in ways that build consensus and support for them.

When politics trump public policy, it's usually because an administration doesn't feel like they can go out and do that foundational educational work, explaining to constituencies why and how this matters. And that shouldn't have to happen now. It should have been happening over the past two years, as this policy was weighed and measured. Remember, smoking still accounts for 30% of all cancers, which, by the way, are going up. Anything that makes smoking easier or more enjoyable kills, menthol included.

That's it for today. On your way out, don't forget to rate and review the show. It really does go a long way. And, one last time, if you love this show and want to rep us, I hope you'll drop by the Crooked store for some America Dissected merch. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media and me, at Abdul El-Sayed, no dash, on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

This week, I hope you'll permit me a little bit of extra room, while I fully account for all the folks who helped to make this show possible, given that it's our last week with Crooked Media. So, one last time, America Dissected is a production of Crooked Media. Our producers are Austin Fisher, Emilic Frank, and Tara Terpstra. Thank you to past producers and story editors, including Carrie Jr. II, Katie Long, Andrea B.

Scott, Olivia Martinez, and Stephen Hoffman. Charlotte Landis, Vasilis Fotopoulos, and Veronica Simonetti mixed and mastered the show. Sound design by Daniel Ramirez. Production support from Allison Falsetta, A. Lisa Gutierrez, Kara Hart, Daniel Persarelli, Dr.

Nicole Aiello, Sydney Rapp, Lyra Smith, Ari Schwartz, and Nias Mata. Our theme song, which is staying, by the way, is by Takao Suzawa and Alex Uguera. Our executive producers were Sarah Geismar, Mukta, Mohan, Sandy, Gerard, Michael Martinez, and Leo Duran. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Corinne Gilliard, Robin Reister, and Solid Sound in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And to Crooked's phenomenal ads and marketing teams over the years, including Giancarlo Bizzaro, Reyna Paredes, Michelle Bocanegra, Jordan Silver, Julia Beach, Reyna Orozco, and Gabriela Laverette.

And a thank you to everyone else at Crooked who has supported the show over the years, including Matt DeGroot, Elijah Cohn, Kyle Seglin, Becky Klaassen, Emily Pender, Sarah Wick, Kelly Valetta, Shaniqua McClendon, Madeline Harringer, and Listen to Tree. And, of course, a special thank you to Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vitor. To anyone I missed who helped make the show, thank you. I so deeply appreciate you. I'm your executive producer and host, Dr.

Abdul Elsayed. Thanks for listening. I'll see you back right here next week.

This show is for general information and entertainment purposes only. It's not intended to provide specific health care or medical advice and should not be construed as providing health care or medical advice. Please consult your physician with any questions related to your own health. The views expressed in this podcast reflect those of the host and his guests and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Wayne County, Michigan, or its Department of Health, Human and Veteran Services.