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	Podcast:		Animals Today Radio
	Episode:		Animals Today April 5 2020: Can pandemics be avoided?
	Category:		Government & Organizations
	Duration:		00:43:00
	Publish Date:		2020-04-08 13:11:14
	Description:		Lori’s guest for this show is Dr. John Pippin, Director of Academic Affairs at Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). John and Lori begin discussing the origins and causes of zoonotic epidemics and the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Pippin then offers his views on how well the US has been responding to and managing the pandemic. He then goes on to review the traditional types of vaccines and how they are developed, and whether the ones under development for COVID-19 are likely to be effective. Pippin calls for continued development and implementation of new vaccine manufacturing methods (which coincidentally do not rely upon animals) to include genetic engineering and cell culture techniques. They then move on to a related topic, the huge problem with modern industrial animal agriculture, which is the widespread antibiotic resistance that is caused by routine use of antibiotics in extremely overcrowded animal agriculture facilities. This leads to medications losing their effectiveness in treating infectious diseases in people. John concludes by noting the monumental challenges in achieving cooperation between nations to take on global issues like viral pandemics, after which Lori offers some hopeful optimism.
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