Word: rat
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...last week. Not only does LSD expose unstable trippers to the risk of a psychotic break. Not only does it break down the chromosomes in some blood cells. The latest evidence is that it causes cell changes suspiciously like those seen in one form of leukemia. Given to a rat early in pregnancy, it usually results in stillborn or malformed young. Worse, LSD may have similar effects on the human fetus. And those chromosome breaks have been found in the babies of LSD users...
...Some of your best friends are rats," declares the American Cancer Society in ads that hail the research variety's services to medical science. But the wild Rattus norvegicus is man's worst animal enemy. It bites his babies, inflicting deforming and infected wounds; it cuts down his food supply, and it spreads disease. It was used as an instrument of torture in the Middle Ages, and now it is torturing the Johnson Administration, which is trying to get Congress to enact a $40 million rat-control bill (see THE NATION...
...female rat is capable of breeding at four months, and usually produces four litters, each of six or more young, in her reproductive year. If all lived, one pair would have millions of descendants in two or three years, but the attrition is high enough to keep the numbers fairly constant. Estimates of the U.S. rat population (largely guesswork) range from 90 million to 100 million, or about half as many rats as people. For New York City, the estimates run as high as 8,000,000, or one rat per person. The U.S. Department of the Interior figures that...
...rat's most distinctive contribution to human ill health comes from its bite. There are credible stories of men, exhausted and sleeping, or trapped in a mine shaft, being bitten to death by rats. Far more common today is the case of the city mother, awakened by a cry in the middle of the night, who finds her infant in his crib bleeding from rat bites on the nose, lips or ears. The rat usually flees on her approach and escapes. The child may suffer from either of two types of rat-bite fever or from many common infections...
...Since rats will eat anything, they should be easy to poison. But they are not. Psychologists explain that rats have two contradictory traits: along with a willingness to sample anything potable or edible, they have a deep suspicion of whatever is new. So exterminators give the rats time to get used to the sight and smell of their traps and baits before they expect results. Dogs and cats, despite their reputation, are not very effective as rat exterminators...