Buffalo Medicine

April Christofferson writes of her latest thriller, Buffalo Medicine, "It revolves around an experimental vaccine for brucellosis," she explains. "It's the theory of many that the threat of brucellosis is nothing more than a non-sensical excuse for the slaughter of the buffalo that inadvertently roam outside the Park's boundaries. That the issues are purely political."

Over the past decade, thousands of articles have been written decrying the hazing and slaughter of an animal that symbolizes the wild beauty of our country. Countless organizations, including the controversial Buffalo Field Campaign, have done everything in their power to save the buffalo.

Below are just a few of the news headlines ... *

Conservationists fear bison will die if they leave Yellowstone. With Yellowstone National Park's bison population at its highest level in years, some environmentalists fear huge numbers of the beasts will wander into Montana this winter and be killed in the name of controlling disease.
- Seattle Post Intelligencer - January 22, 2004

Yellowstone bison thrive, but success breeds peril. Bison have made a remarkable recovery in Yellowstone National Park, but heavy snows may force them to forage outside park, where they can be shot to prevent their brucellosis from spreading to cattle.
- New York Times - January 26, 2003

Environmentalists worry as bison leave Yellowstone. Hard winters forced the animals to wander out of the park. Officials, cattlement want them killed to keep disease away from herds. Under a joint state-federal bison management plan, bison that cannot be forced back into the park are captured and tested for brucellosis. Animals testing positive are sent to slaughter. If the park's population exceeds 3,000 animals, bison that stray into Montana can be killed without being tested first.
- Los Angeles Times - February 15, 2004

More bison test positive, sent to slaughter. Twenty seven more bison from Yellowstone National Park tested positive for brucellosis and were sent to slaughter.
- Missoulian - February 26, 2004

Park Service slaughters 260 wild buffalo inside Yellowstone, domesticates another 198 captive wild buffalo.
- Buffalo Field Campaign news release - March 18, 2004

Don't let bison slip into extinction. Once an icon of this nation's natural abundance and wildness, today the bison is symbolic of conflicts that underscore the weakening balance between civilization and nature. Perhaps nothing more strikes of that imbalance than the recent roundup and slaughter of hundreds of Yellowstone National Park bison.
- Seattle Post Intelligencer - April 13, 2004

Bison protester arrested. A protester who had been pereched atop a pole in a capture facilit since last week has been arrested.
- Missoulian - April 14, 2004

Bill introduced to stop Yellowstone bison slaughter. Bison that roam from Yellowstone National Park would be protected from killing under legislation.
- Missoulian - November 5, 2003

Whenever a particularly hard winter makes foraging for food within the park difficult, the bison wander past Yellowstone's boundary lines and are slaughtered by the hundreds by state and federal sharpshooters, as they were last winter when nearly a third of the 3,400 animal herd was cut down.
- Houston Chronicle - May 8, 1998

The winter of '96-'97 saw 1,100 buffalo killed, shot, murdered, and slaughtered as a direct result of the livestock industry's control over the fate of buffalo, one of our nation's wild animals.
- Yellowstone Ranger Tom Mazzarisi Yellowstone Net Newsletter - August 21, 1998

Four winters running, the border zones of Yellowstone National Park have produced a sickening spectacle of politics masquerading as wildlife management. Rifle-toting public employees have killed nearly 2,000 buffalo for crossing park boundaries to graze.
- Minneapolis-St.Paul Star/Tribune - October 22, 1998

Buffalo Nations (BN) announced today that they are opposed to any further harassment of wildlife by the Montana Department of Livestock (DOL). "We simply are not going to stand by and watch as DOL agents haze these animals to death," said BN spokesperson Dan Brister.
- Buffalo Nations Field Report - December 28, 1998

"The DOL continues to ignore the Yellowstone bison herd's value to both the region and the nation by adhering to a near zero-tolerance policy for bison migrating outside Yellowstone National Park," says Defenders of Wildlife president Rodger Schlickeisen. "This is an American tragedy."
- U.S.Newswire - January 12, 1999 - Defenders of Wildlife Press Release

"Why kill this animal, which is one of the last wild herds in America, when there are no documented cases of brucellosis being passed to cattle from bison?" asked James Holt of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee.
- Spokane.net - February 5, 1999

Montana livestock officials say the state will not relax its policy on managing bison that wander from Yellowstone National Park, rejecting a change that would have prevented the killing of some of the animals. "The department will continue to manage bison through a combination of hazing, capture and slaughter," said Marc Bridges, acting executive officer for the Livestock Board.
HELENA (AP) - Associated Press - January 22, 1999

Buffaloed by Fear - The federal government is wasting your tax money to help slaughter America's last wild bison, in a ridiculous attempt to halt a threat that really doesn't exist.
- Denver Post - February 7, 1999

The DOL has asked the US Department of Agriculture to fund the costs of installing and operating the buffalo trap with taxpayers footing the bill of $500,000 a year for the next 10 years. All of this is justified in order to protect 170 cow-calf pairs that graze on 3 public allotments on Horse Butte and generate a mere $765 a year in grazing fees.
- Buffalo Field Campaign - February 22, 1999

A federal judge in Montana has rejected a request to limit the slaughter of Yellowstone National Park bison this winter.
- MSNBC/NewsIndex - March 17, 1999

There has never been a documented case of brucellosis transmission from buffalo to livestock in a natural setting. In Grand Teton National Park, buffalo and vaccinated cattle have co-mingled for over 40 years without a single cow contracting the disease.
- Associated Press - June 16, 1999

It's tragically inevitable that the State Department of Livestock will continue using brucellosis as an excuse to harass and kill buffalo wandering out of the park. The disease is transmitted through contact with the reproductive tissues of the infected animal - so only FEMALE buffalo COULD transmit the disease - yet bull buffalo AND calves have been put to death because of it.
- Billings Gazette - February 5, 2000

Although, some recent progress has been made to rectify the senseless massacre of buffalo, the fight is still far from over.

*Selections From Montana Buffalo Slaughter News Chronicle - Compiled by Tom Beno, http://www.forwolves.org/ralph/bison/Montana-buffalo-slaughter-news-chronicle.htm

APRIL CHRISTOFFERSON IS AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS
To schedule an interview, contact David Moench at Forge Publicity, 212/388-0100 Ext. 880 david.moench@tor.com

An Author's Crusade to Become "The Most Hated Person in the Pharmaceutical Industry."

Reviewers have praised April Christofferson's medical thrillers for their plotting and prose, their guarantee to make readers "late for dinner, or even breakfast." She's been likened to Michael Crichton and Robin Cook. And while Christofferson is pleased with the praise, for her, the real reason the positive reviews matter is that Christofferson is not just an author.

She is a woman on a crusade.

With an undergraduate degree in biology, two stints as a pharmaceutical representative for major pharmaceutical companies (one of which helped pay her way through law school), post graduate work in veterinary medicine and a law degree, Christofferson had been working as an attorney for almost a decade when she was offered a job in the biotech industry. Eager to put all that science and medical background to use, she jumped at the opportunity.

What she saw there changed her life.

"As a regular citizen, I'd already read enough about the pharmaceutical industry's greed and disregard for the average person's well being. But when I entered the biotech industry, I felt like I'd stepped into this bizarre world, where many of the rules I'd previously done business by faded into oblivion. I knew right away that some of what I was observing was not right, and the more I dug, the more I researched the industry in general, the more convinced I became that the rest of the world had no idea--no clue whatsoever--what went on behind the scenes in this industry.

"I'd already written two novels--both legal suspense. I toyed with the idea of writing a non fiction book about the industry. But then I decided that the better course of action would be to write about it in the form of fiction."

She made this decision because she concluded that people wouldn't necessarily want to read a non-fiction account of what goes on in the industry, but by shedding light on it in the form of a thriller, she'd be in a better position to accomplish her goal: to enlighten the general public about the dangers of biotechnology, and an industry that all too often puts profit over the public good.

Now she's a woman on a mission.

To become the most hated person in the pharmaceutical industry.

Her first medical thriller, The Protocol, was inspired by the news that Dolly, a sheep, had been cloned. Called "a suspenseful success" by Publishers Weekly, The Protocol demonstrates the all-too-real possibility of renegade laboratories pursuing human cloning.

The second, Clinical Trial, set on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, details the fraud and dangers involved in the all too lucrative clinical trial business. Library Journal proclaimed Clinical Trial, "a deftly woven thriller ... substantial and intriguing."

Patent to Kill brings to light another alarming practice in the industry; one that Christofferson's willing to bet the American public knows little about.

"It's about biopiracy," she said one recent afternoon, walking the pasture of her Idaho property with her four dogs in close pursuit. "For years now, pharmaceutical companies have sent researchers down into third world countries--the Amazon is a prime target--to learn all they can from the indigenous peoples there, about the herbs and plants they've used for generations in their healing practices.

"Then these companies take the plant, return to the United States, patent it, and, in theory, the tribe generous and trusting enough to share the information with these researchers in the first place can no longer use the plant for the cultural, religious and healing ceremonies they've used it for for generations. Unless they pay a licensing fee! Hard to believe, isn't it? Well, it gets worse. Now that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has allowed the patenting of human DNA, the gold rush is on. Researchers are going down to remote regions and taking blood from indigenous peoples. They return home and patent it. The person from whom the blood was taken loses all rights to it. If the pharmaceutical company strikes gold with it--i.e, ends up deriving a new therapeutic from it--they stand to make millions. Even billions. The donor receives nothing.

"Of course, in Patent to Kill, I take it even further," she offers with a smile.

Christofferson's next book is set around the controversial slaughter of the Yellowstone bison.

"It revolves around an experimental vaccine for brucellosis," she explains. "It's the theory of many that the threat of brucellosis is nothing more than a non sense-ical excuse for the slaughter of the buffalo that inadvertently roam outside the Park's boundaries. That the issues are purely political."

It appears Christofferson's crusading is not yet over.

When asked whether she'd ever consider going back to work as an attorney, Christofferson laughs and says she doubts whether the pharmaceutical industry would ever welcome her back.

But that's a small price to pay for sleeping at night.