Scientists grab stem cells from eggs

MALCOLM RITTER
Associated Press

NEW YORK — Scientists say they have created embryonic stem cells by stimulating unfertilized eggs, a significant step toward producing transplant tissue that's genetically matched to women.

The advance suggests that some day, a woman who wants a transplant to treat a condition such as diabetes or a spinal-cord injury could provide eggs to a lab, which in turn could create tissue that her body would not reject.

Ethicists disagreed on whether the strategy would avoid the long-standing ethical objections to creating embryonic stem cells by other means.

Such cells can develop into virtually any tissue of the body, and scientists hope to harness them for producing specialized tissues like nerve cells or pancreas cells to treat a range of illnesses. But the process of harvesting the stem cells destroys embryos, which many people oppose.

To create tissues that genetically match a patient, some scientists are trying to develop a process called therapeutic cloning, in which DNA from the patient is inserted into an unfertilized egg, an embryo is produced and stem cells are harvested. But nobody has made that work in humans.

The new work tries another tack: stimulating a woman's unfertilized egg to begin embryonic development. Scientists believe this development cannot continue long enough to produce a baby, but as the new work shows, it can produce stem cells that are genetically matched to the egg donor.

Such an approach could not provide matched cells for men, of course.The work, published online by the journal Cloning and Stem Cells, is reported by scientists from Lifeline Cell Technology of Walkersville, Md., and from Moscow.

Jeffrey Janus, president of Lifeline and an author of the study, noted that stem cells produced by the method might prove useful for patients other than the egg donor, in combination with anti-rejection therapy. That's the case with standard stem cell lines created from ordinary embryos, he said.

He and colleagues report producing six lines of embryonic stem cells, one of which had chromosome abnormalities. They obtained their eggs from five women who were having eggs harvested for test-tube fertilization, and who agreed to donate some for the research.

“It's a big deal, it's a very nice advance,” said Kent Vrana of Pennsylvania State University, who has done similar work in monkeys. The process appears efficient, he said, and it provides “an additional tool” beyond therapeutic cloning.

George Daley, a scientist at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, called the work interesting.

“It's a new type of embryonic stem cell line from a different kind of embryo,” he said. “We just don't know whether these cells will be as good as embryonic stem cells from naturally fertilized embryos.”

One question, he said, is whether the lack of a father's DNA contribution would impair the performance of the stem cells. DNA in sperm carries particular markers that differ from those found on DNA in an egg, and these markers affect the activity of specific genes.

Ronald Green, a Dartmouth College ethicist, said he believes the egg-stimulation process will prove an ethically acceptable way to create stem cells.

“People will see that these are activated eggs ... they do not of themselves ever develop into a human being,” he said. “This is not anything biologically or morally like a human embryo, and it's a very good way of trying to provide human embryonic stem cells that does not involve the destruction of an embryo.”

But Rev. Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia disagreed.

“My view is that if these grow as organized embryos for the first few days and then arrest, they may just be very short-lived human beings,” he said.

“One is very possibly dealing with a defective human being. And at a minimum, the benefit of the doubt should be given here, and these embryos should not be created for the purposes of destroying them.”

By : MALCOLM RITTER Associated Press

Mouse tests show stem cells treat brain disease

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Human stem cells taken from both embryos and fetuses delayed a fatal brain and nerve disease in mice, moving throughout the brain to take on the jobs of damaged neurons, scientists reported on Sunday.They said their study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, could lead to ways to treat a range of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.For their study, Dr. Evan Snyder of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, California and colleagues used mice bred with the equivalent of Sandhoff disease."Children with the disease have severe mental retardation and motor dysfunction, and death typically occurs in infancy," the researchers, who included a team at Oxford University in Britain, Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea and elsewhere, wrote in their report.It is marked by inflammation that kills brain cells, and it is impossible to treat in part because of the blood-brain barrier, a molecular gateway that keeps many drugs out of the brain."The Sandhoff disease mouse typically becomes symptomatic by 90 days of age and dies between 114 and 130 days, depending on strain and/or cage conditions," the researchers wrote. Human children with Sandhoff rarely live past age 6.Snyder's team made up a mixture of human embryonic stem cells, taken from days-old human embryos left over at fertility clinics, and human fetal stem cells.They transplanted these into the brains of the mice and noted no problems. No tumors formed, the mice did not "reject" the foreign cells, and the treatment seemed to reduce inflammation.The transplanted human cells replaced damaged nerve cells and carried nerve signals. They also boosted the brain's supply of the enzyme Hex, which is lacking in Sandhoff disease.The treated mice lived 70 percent longer than untreated mice. The disease eventually came back, but the researchers hope to test the theory that they could keep it at bay by giving booster injections of the stem cells to take over the functions of the mutated natural brain cells.Sandhoff disease belongs to a class of genetic diseases called lysosomal storage diseases. They affect one in 5,000 patients, mostly children.Sandhoff is caused by a mutation in the gene for an enzyme called hexosaminidase or hex, which brain cells need to get rid of excess fatty material called lipids.When the lipids build up, brain cells die. It is similar to Tay Sachs disease, and there is no treatment for either Tay-Sachs or Sandhoff.

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WAs it one of the geese that laid the golden eggs that had been killed?

Date : Aug 07, 2007 12:58 PM

Author : Deja Suthikant
Subject : WAs it one of the geese that laid the golden eggs that had been killed?

Was it one of the geese that laid golden eggs that had been killed?When I was a little boy over half a century ago, I was embroiled in a fight with my father often for the reason unknown to me. When I looked back, I thought that it could be brought on by my motor mouth and my determination to have the last word. If that was the case, with all the whippings I had, I have not changed. Therefore life was strenuous to me then, and it was a big break for me to have the chance to stay at my grandmother’s river house in Mae Kham River, Banmee, Lopburi. Grandmother (paternal) lived with my aunt. My grandfather went back to China and never made it back home to his family. The house was so peaceful and all my relatives who clustered in three river houses adjacent to each other were so kind to me. Best of all, I liked to sit on the front patio watching fishes swimming gracefully and leisurely. The water in the river was so clear and the fishes were so tame that I could touch them with my hands.Gone is the Mae Kham River. Was it one of the geese that laid golden eggs that had been killed?When I was a boy in the Assumption Sri Raja Boarding School, I had to work very hard to get the grades I wanted. I also was constantly upset for not being able to perform well in sports and for feeling that I was a burden to my team mates. Therefore I always looked forward to the weekend when Brothers would take us on a bus trip to visit places. My most favorite place was Pattaya Beach. It was so wide that it seemed forever to me to run on the pinkly white sand beach from where the bus parked to where the pristine, deep blue water of the ocean was. But I did not care. I liked to roll over the sand while the cool waves run over me all day long.Gone is the wide beach of Pattaya, so is its white pinky sand, and so is the ocean's clear and pristine water. Was it one of the geese that laid the golden eggs that had been killed?When I was a young man studying at Chulalongkorn University Prep-School and Pre-med. in Bangkok, I lived at the store of my step-grand father on Padsai/Yowaraj Streets, right in the busy and noisy China Town. My grandfather was also busy looking for something for me to do, claiming that he tried to prevent me from going crazy for spending too much of my time studying my books. In search for an ideal study place away from the hectic environment I lived in, I found Wad Bho. There, it was only me and totally non-intrusive monks. I was cool in the shade of the Bho Tree, inspired by the bright multicolor ceramics on multiple, small pagodas, and pacified by the sound of music orchestrated by thoundsands and thousands of chimes dropping from eaves of the structures all around me. Best of all, when I felt tired and discouraged, I would go meditating on the side of the Reclining Buddha and had my hope renewed again and again.Gone is the peace, nicety, or quietness at Wad Bho. Was it one of the geese that laid the golden eggs that had been killed?When I was a student at Chiang Mai Medical School, I liked to ride my motorcycle to a nice spot on the bank of Mae Ping River and sat under a tree watching the water roaring down the wide Mae Ping. It was so majestic; it was so loving just as sung in hundreds of songs that romanticized Mae Ping. I often sang those songs on the bank happily and honestly, without the guilty feeling that I lied as I do now.Gone is the roaring water. Gone is the majestic width of Mae Ping. Was it one of the geese that laid the golden eggs that had been killed?Just wonder how many of those golden geese in Thailand that are still alive?

By: thaiadsense-free.blogspot.com

Green energy investors entering China market

From : International Herald Tribune Newsleter.

By : Matt Richtel

In the vanguard of venture capital, the buzzwords of late have been "alternative energy" and "China." Are the two worlds about to collide?Seed investors are financing, or considering financing, start-ups in China that are developing equipment for wind and solar power; clean water and food alternatives; and technology to promote energy efficiency.
While this may seem an arbitrary combination of two of the hottest trends in venture capital — sort of like the first time someone mixed peanut butter and chocolate — there is a growing number of investors who say the potential reward in China is worth the tremendous risk.
China has voracious energy needs and "the most serious environmental problem in the world," said Jerry Li, a consultant in Beijing who matches venture capitalists with entrepreneurs. "There is a huge demand for investment" in alternative solutions, he said.
Li is the first director of Cleantech China, a joint venture beginning this month between Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Cleantech Venture Network, a blossoming North American trade and research group for venture capitalists investing in alternative energy technology.The Business of Green While independent hard data on alternative energy investments in China are hard to come by, Li's joint venture, aimed at marrying overseas investors and Chinese entrepreneurs, testifies to the emerging trend. From June 2005 to June 2006, American venture capitalists put $100 million into China-based start-ups focused on alternative energy, double the investment in the period a year earlier, Cleantech China said.
But the challenges are immense. For one, China has a hard-driving, fossil-fuel- centered economy that has so far done little to diminish its reliance on those fuels. And venture capitalists have still not entirely figured out how to manage investments from such a distance, and across cultures, and, pointedly, how to get their money out once they have built the start-ups into viable companies.
John Rockwell, a managing director at DFJ Element, a Silicon Valley venture firm, was not deterred. In March 2006, DFJ invested $2 million in Miartech, a 34-person Shanghai start-up that makes technology to send data over power lines, automate meter reading and make the distribution system more efficient.Rockwell liked both the technology and the cost of doing business: the company, thanks to lower payroll and other costs, uses less than $100,000 a month, a fifth of what Rockwell said it might in the United States.
He has been to China twice since August and plans three trips this year, partly in hope of finding new ventures that address the country's voracious need for energy. "They're going to require a greater increase in electricity than anywhere else," Rockwell said.
He said China was already beginning to look more intensely at renewable sources like wind, hydroelectric and solar power. "It's going to create a lot of opportunities," Rockwell said.
John Denniston, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, said he heard a similar message when he met with a high- ranking official in the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The deputy minister said that "one of their highest goals is to find alternative energy sources that decrease their dependence on oil," Denniston said. And he said that in conversations with other officials, entrepreneurs and scientists, "everyone was on the same playbook."
Denniston said he had not made any investments yet but was interested in exploring opportunities. He said he was curious to see whether China, because of its high demand for energy, could leapfrog some other countries and become a leader in alternative solutions, like being the first to mandate all-electric vehicles.Rockwell agreed that China had a chance to define itself early as promoting alternatives to oil. "When you don't have an established grid," he said, "a lot of renewables look more attractive."
A perhaps more basic issue that investors say is challenging China is the simple demand for potable water and clean food — industries that fall under the loose and broad definition of "cleantech." Li said that within six months, he expected to have a database of about 300 Chinese start-up companies seeking investment partners.Li said the big challenge facing American venture capitalists was not so much finding viable technology as finding capable managers.Chinese entrepreneurs can "have a different speed and rhythm — everything is different because of the cultural background," Li said.
He insisted, though, that things are changing, and "not just because the government is hungry for this." When it comes to alternative energy, he said, "The whole country is hungry for this."

Dodge Ram Leads the Way in Promoting Use of Biodiesel

As the home heating season approaches, consumers who use heating oil now have a new option that is cleaner-burning and domestically produced. The use of Bioheatฎ fuel for home heating systems is gaining ground as an oilheat product.
Bioheat fuel is made from a combination of biodiesel and generic heating oil, making it a superior product for the environment, and for the heating system’s operation. The National Biodiesel Board (NBB) and National Oilheat Research Alliance (NORA) have recently trademarked the term and launched the official logo for this product.
To make Bioheatฎ home heating oil, fuel dealers blend ASTM D 6751 biodiesel with ASTM D 396 heating oil. Oilheat distributors blend Bioheatฎ fuel, mostly in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states, as blends from B2 (two percent biodiesel and 98 percent diesel) to B20. Inclusion of five percent biodiesel in oilheat, or B5, will be the overall objective of both NBB and NORA as the market progresses.
The NBB secured the term “Bioheatฎ” for use in identifying home heating oil blended with biodiesel, and sublicensed it to NORA so it can also help broaden the use of the fuel and its identity. Both will share use of the trademarked term and logo. A sub-license agreement for dealers is available on the NORA Web site, on the “News” page.
Bioheatฎ fuel is growing, thanks in part to favorable legislation like state tax credits in New York. Bioheatฎ oilheat provides the same benefits as biodiesel: enhanced energy security; lower emissions and odor (depending on blend); and economic development. Further, Bioheatฎ heating oil use shows a decrease in NOx emissions.
The Cardinals may have won the World Series, but the Rams are also generating attention in St. Louis – the Dodge Rams, that is.
Representatives from DaimlerChrysler hit the streets of St. Louis last month in the new 2007 Dodge Ram Heavy Duty Diesel Pickup to make an announcement. Chrysler Group will fuel every 2007 Dodge Ram diesel coming off the assembly line at the company’s Fenton, Mo., north plant with B5, a diesel blend containing 5 percent biodiesel made from soybeans grown in the U.S.
The Dodge Ram’s B5 factory fueling builds on a similar program implemented first with the company’s Jeepฎ Liberty CRD and continued with the recently announced 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee CRD. The company has also approved the use of B20 in the Ram for fleet use.
The Dodge Ram Heavy Duty 2500/3500 series diesel pickup trucks are powered by the 5.9-liter Cummins turbo-diesel engine. Beginning in January 2007, the vehicles will be built with the new Cummins 6.7-liter turbo-diesel engine and will meet all Federal and state environmental standards.
ASTM International released in October a new standard for biodiesel that will help ensure that biodiesel blends of up to 20 percent will be compatible with future diesel exhaust emissions technology. The new standard, D 6751-06a, adds new limits on calcium and magnesium, which can be introduced during the biodiesel manufacturing process.
“The biodiesel industry is committed to working with engine makers and exhaust after-treatment companies to do what it takes to boost automakers’ support of biodiesel blends with new diesel technology,” said Steve Howell, National Biodiesel Board Technical Director and Chairman of the ASTM Task Force on biodiesel standards. “That means ensuring that high quality fuel specifications exist, which recognize and adapt to important changes in diesel technology.”
The new changes address the potential of small levels of calcium and magnesium on particulate traps. Previous changes to limit sodium and potassium, used as catalysts in the biodiesel manufacturing process, passed earlier this year. Particulate traps are needed to meet EPA 2007 emissions standards, which reduce particulate matter by more than 90% from new diesel engines.
Although the changed specification covers pure biodiesel, the majority of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) view the adoption of an ASTM blended fuel specification as a key component for full, universal acceptance of B20.
A subcommittee vote on an ASTM B20 specification will happen in December. Depending on the results, final approval for biodiesel blend specifications could come as early as the spring or summer of 2007

Biofuel and water an uneasy mix.

From : Herald Tribune

By : Andy Mukherjee

If water were a globally traded commodity, with unmet demand in China and India reflected in its price, the world might shed its newfound craze for biofuels.
It is bad enough that some of us need ethanol distilled in Scotland to lubricate our evenings.
Growing corn to make ethanol to run sport-utility vehicles is downright silly; nowhere more so than in China and India.
As many as 400 Chinese cities are facing water shortages; farmers in the most-populous nation are forgoing millions of tons of grain production every year. Per-capita
availability of water is expected to shrink to alarming levels by 2030.
How serious is the shortage?
"The only thing that worries me about the China story is the water problem," a commodities investor, Jim Rogers, chairman of Beeland Interests Inc. in New York and a fan of
China, said this week at a press conference in Melbourne.
"If China cannot solve the water problem, that could be the end of the story," said Rogers, who co-founded Quantum Fund with George Soros and then went biking around
the world.
Amid this water scarcity, China has gone on to become the world's third-largest bio-ethanol producer after Brazil and the United States, pouring thousands of gallons of
water to grow a ton of corn, and then using more water to turn the corn into ethanol.
What a colossal waste.
As recently as December, the Chinese government came up with controls on corn-to-ethanol projects so as not to lose more precious water to producing fuel at the expense
of food.
The tradeoff between water and biofuels may also be crucial for India. One-sixth of India's food output is being supported by pumping groundwater, which is depleting
rapidly.
In the state of Tamil Nadu, more than a third of aquifers are "overexploited," meaning the rate at which water is being extracted is more than the pace of recharge.
According to the World Bank's estimates, by 2050 demand for water in India will exceed all available supplies.
India passed a law last May requiring gasoline to be mixed with 5 percent ethanol. The saving grace, from the point of view of water conservation, is that India doesn't yet
allow sugarcane juice to be converted directly into ethanol. The fuel can only be produced from molasses, as a byproduct of sugar.
"The downside of growing food for fuel is water," Fred Pearce, an environmentalist and the author of the 2006 book "When the Rivers Run Dry," said at a sugar-industry
conference in Geneva in October.
Sugarcane growers, some of the biggest guzzlers of water, are dreaming of biofuel riches when the world, following the lead of Brazil, moves to flex-fuel cars, which run on
both gasoline and ethanol.
Just because there is not a worldwide market in water, it doesn't mean the price of wasting this scarce resource in making fuel won't have to be paid. The adjustment will
come through food prices. And it will be severe.
China and India, which are going dry, will import more food. As urbanization gathers momentum, many farmers in India will sell their water entitlement to condominium and
factory owners.
When two of the world's top three grain producers become importers, it will have a big impact on prices internationally.
Global wheat prices climbed to a 10-year high in October, partly because India resumed imports in February last year after a six-year gap. Now there's a possibility that China
may become a net importer of corn, which, too, rose to its highest in a decade in January, thanks to the biofuel frenzy.
Neither China nor India wants to contemplate a future without agriculture. The governments in both countries have an avowed preference for self-sufficiency in staple food.
Premier Wen Jiabao of China sees falling grain output as a threat to national food security. The sentiment in India is the same.
The rest of the world is gasping with wonder at the fast- growing economies of China and India and betting that fossil fuels won't be enough to meet the burgeoning demand
for energy.
Therefore, there is a rush to find alternative fuel sources in everything from corn to sugarcane to oil palm. Alarmed by the tripling of crude-oil prices in five years, policy
makers in Beijing and New Delhi, too, have begun rooting for biofuels.
Ethanol plants in Minnesota use from 3.5 gallons to 6 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of ethanol from corn, says the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
For the United States as a whole, there will be a 254 percent increase in the volume of water used in ethanol production from 1998 through 2008, according to the institute.
The United States has plenty of water; the world as a whole doesn't.
"If water would have its correct price, then we wouldn't even be thinking about biofuels," the chief executive of Nestlé, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, said last month at the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "If I had to identify one resource I'm worried about, that's water."
Perhaps we will know the true price of water only when corn syrup is more expensive than oil.

Scientists Study How Bird Flu Spreads

Scientists Study How Bird Flu Spreads

By MALCOLM RITTER (AP Science Writer)

From Associated Press

NEW YORK - Scientists say they've found a reason bird flu isn't spreading easily from person to person: The virus concentrates itself too deep in the respiratory tract to be spewed out by coughing and sneezing.
But the virus could change that behavior by genetic mutation, taking a step toward unleashing a worldwide outbreak of lethal flu.
Experts said the new finding doesn't indicate how likely such a pandemic is. The virus may also need other mutations to take off in the human population, they said. Still, the work suggests a particular sign to watch for in new virus samples to help gauge the danger to humans.
The work, reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, comes from University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka with colleagues in Japan. Similar results, from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, will be published online Thursday by the journal Science.
More than 180 people are known to have been infected with the bird flu virus H5N1. Virtually all are believed to have caught it from infected poultry. But scientists have long warned that the virus, which is prone to mutation, could transform itself into a version that spreads easily from person to person. That germ could touch off a pandemic.
Ordinary flu viruses spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes, blasting out tiny droplets carrying the germ to others. For that to happen, the virus has to be perched in the right places to be ejected by a cough or sneeze. The new work suggests H5N1, by contrast, infects humans too low in the respiratory tract for that to occur.
Both research teams used human tissue removed from various parts of the respiratory tract - the region from the nose to the lung - to study where virus infection occurs.
Scientists already knew that bird flu viruses use a specific kind of docking site to enter cells they infect, while human flu viruses use a different one. Kawaoka's group found the bird virus docking site appears mostly on lung cells, while being rare on cells found in higher areas like the nose and windpipe. Those higher areas were dominated instead by the human-type docking site.
Kawaoka said that for H5N1 to become a pandemic virus, it would have to mutate in a way that lets it attach to the same docking site human viruses use. Other mutations would be needed as well, he said in a statement.
Robert M. Krug of the University of Texas at Austin called Kawaoka's work an important observation, and said that if H5N1 begins to use the human virus docking site "we've got a lot to worry about." It's not clear whether that would be enough to produce a pandemic germ, he said.
James Paulson of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., stressed that other viral factors may be important in human-to-human transmission. But he said that once the virus has a foothold in a person, regardless of where it is in the respiratory tract, it may mutate to gain the abilities it needs to start spreading among people.

Break Point and the Handicap System (Thailand Case Study)

Pigeon racing which had its birth place in Europe over a century ago had become a favorite hobby for millions of people around the globe. Breeding, training, feeding and racing techniques have also evolved with the changing and improving knowledge and technology. Nowadays, fanciers can obtain off springs of the long dead famous stud from his frozen semen. DNA samples can be compared to that of the original parents to confirm the blood line. Chick sex can be identified a few days before it was borne using chemical to test the female hormone level in egg fluid. Electronic clocking system using the contactless identification technology is quickly replacing the conventional mechanical clocks. New invention also makes it possible to mount a light weight GPS recording device on the back of a pigeon during its flight which enables the plotting of its flight path with amazing accuracy. Computer and racing software can sort out information and data in any manner to produce and send race results on line or via cell phones. It can produce statistical references and run race simulations incorporating changes of coordinates, break points, release times and/or distances, etc... Click 2006-09-07_155727_Break_Point_and_the_Handicap_System_edited 1.pdf for more detail

Pigeon Racing in Thailand

By: Old Hand
History:
Pigeon racing, if we call this game a sport, came to Thailand some 60 years ago after the Japanese occupation during the Second World War. Some messenger pigeons used during the war were retired and reached the hands of a few fanciers, mostly Chinese descendants, who kept them as pets. Since then a tiny racing community had its beginning. Some years after, a person whom we may call father of the Thai pigeon racing sport, the late Mr. Prateep Payakaporn, imported the first lot of racing pigeons from England, notably from the loft of the Osman. These pigeons and their offspring were distributed to many Chinese fanciers who by then became more serious in racing even though in the primitive style. Many pigeons were also imported from a pet shop in Antwerp in the late 50’s. Then in the early 60’s, pigeons from a very famous Belgian fancier in that era by the name of Joseph Vandenbrucke were imported. This strain had strong influence in the make up the Thai racing pigeon breed for more than two decades. Mechanical clocks also came to the country around that time. After that, several thousands of sky thoroughbreds were imported from famous lofts around the world particularly from Belgium and Holland. Imports of live pigeons into the country were relatively easy during the past decades until the recent outbreak of avian flu in SE-Asia. This had made Thailand rich in gene pool for racing pigeons.

Members and Organizations:
Despite its relatively long history, the number of active racing fanciers has never peaked beyond a thousand or so, although some people might be tempted to inflate this figure a little bit for commercial reason. Approximately 70% of active fanciers reside in the capital city of Bangkok and the rest spread out in five major provinces, i.e., the eastern coastal towns of Cholburi and Rayong, Samutprakarn (adjacent to the east of Bangkok), Nakornprathom and Supanburi (50-60 km west of Bangkok). No official statistics is available because there is really no central body that manages the sport like the NPO in Holland, AU in the United States, and the KBDB in Belgium. Fanciers can participate in any race without having to be official members of any association or federation as long as they have their lofts registered and air distances measured. Therefore, the same names may appear in all the clubs’ tallies and the summation of these figures will be totally misleading let alone the fact that a large number of fanciers have already left the sport or passed away but their names are still in the books. Some association might have started its membership number from 1000 instead of 1 or made itself appears bigger than life by accumulating licenses of a few defunct associations with no member and manage them by the same group of people under the same roof.

There are four active associations registered in Bangkok including a new federation recently established by a group of most accomplished fanciers and businessmen with unblemished records. The new federation is met with immediate success and the sport is looking forward to a new level of transparency and good governance in pigeon club management. In the provinces pigeon fanciers race under a lose club arrangement and they can now join the new federation as institutional members and adopt the same rules and regulations. The names “association” and “federation” have the same legal status by Thai law even though the later implies a more encompassing scope of activities and authority by English translation. No association legally or officially represents Thailand in racing pigeon sport. Memberships are not sought after by the associations so that just a few individuals can have total control on management and thus the lack of good governance and transparency. Running a club or association is not an easy task either because, unlike in the United States, members here do not expect themselves to pay any membership fee or to help the club in any respect be it financial or man hour. Therefore all the clubs have to compete for entries form the same small group of fanciers. This may have forced some clubs to offer something they could not afford and had to come up with some imaginative thinking to get the money back.
Admittedly, most clubs are too much involved in promoting pools and no priority is given to upgrade the image of this sport or to entice new comers to join the hobby. Gone were the days when fanciers would look forward to the honor of winning just the trophies and friendly admirations from their peers like in Japan where the sport is still very honorable. This explains why this sport has not grown over the years (or in fact has been declining rapidly). Like in many other countries, keeping pigeons have become too expensive especially in a capital city where real estates are precious and people have alternatives to spend their spare times. Most seriously, professional fanciers and big lofts have been migrating to the west side of the city to take geographical advantages and small lofts are forced to quit.

Racing Activities:
Races are organized almost all year round but the major ones are from the north route during the period from mid September to January. Pigeons fly with cool northeasterly tail wind from 140 km up to 750 km distance and the full program contains 15-16 races.
Races from the north-east direction cover the period from March until May (10+/-races) and this time against the wind and severe heat. Fanciers in the northeast corner now have the advantage. The last leg is along the costal line from the south in the monsoon season from June-early August. As the air distance is measured directly from the race points, pigeons are assumed to cut across the gulf straight to Bangkok. In reality they cannot and they have to fly along the coast line until they are close enough to the capital and then break over the water for a short distance homeward. Again, the west side has the advantage because the coastal line is west of Bangkok. The situation could be improved if racing software with a break point feature is used as practised in South Africa.
Average total entry in a good race is around 1500-2000 pigeons while there could be more than 2500 birds entered for some early races and only around 500-600 birds for the last two long distance stations. In some clubs, the number can be inflated by a few hundreds if the organizers so wish. Total number of clocks set in a race is around 120 which means less than 120 fanciers participate in a race because some big lofts employ more than one clock each. Popular models are the mechanical Benzing and Junior; the later is becoming less popular because it needs factory services after a period of time. Benzing Express is the only e-clock system that has been used for a number of years. Despite the small number of participants in a race the pool amount can be quite large if included free entries from the organizers.
Trophies and negligible amount of money prizes are given to the first three prize winners in each race. Therefore, fanciers try their lucks in pools and derby rings where clubs get a cut from total stake. Some clubs may offer guaranteed total purses but at the same time fanciers may have to race against unlimited number of the organizers’ birds most of which pay nothing for the derby rings. A great number of the King, Queen, and Princess cups are given out by associations every year, a number far greater than they are authorized to do.
One-loft races have been staged in Thailand for many years by several parties and most have been very lucrative undertakings since no import tax was paid for pigeons hand-carried into the country by so-called “birds-runners”. Some races could be just a private business ventures using the association credentials and names of innocent public figures to establish creditability while a few were organized by groups of people genuinely wish to promote the country and sport. Like in some countries where big money prizes are promised, participants must be aware that the organizers have better odds because they can enter unlimited number of their own pigeons. Because of the very warm and humid condition foreign pigeons which pay higher entry fees, have less chance to win especially in long distance race unless they are locally raised as youngsters (better as a third generation). Likewise, buyers of foreign pigeons after the races must see to it that the birds were bred from their country of origin, not locally bred birds that wear imported foreign rings.