afkow, Sarah, and other employees have corroborated that both gorillas were fed massive numbers of vitamins and supplements—Safkow estimated Koko received between 70 and 100 pills a day. (The Gorilla Foundation says she currently takes “between 5 to 15 types of nutritional supplements,” as part of a regimen that “many doctors and naturopaths recommend for preventive maintenance.”) Sarah confirms that as part of her job as a food prep specialist, she was responsible for buying these supplements with the discount she received at a grocery store where she worked part-time. “We had to bribe her with all these things she shouldn’t be eating to get her to take these pills,” said Safkow. The list included smoked turkey, pea soup (“very salty,” Safkow pointed out), nonalcoholic beer, and candies. “We tried chocolate once we had tried everything else,” he said. The Gorilla Foundation denied this, yet it also said that chocolate is good for gorillas’ health—that a cardiologist suggested the gorillas eat 85 percent cacao to ward off heart disease and that the supplements given to the gorillas are “natural” and “high in antioxidants, which are powerful boosters of health and longevity.” Research on antioxidant supplements in humans shows no such thing, however, and they may do more harm than good. In any case, it’s not clear how well research on antioxidants applies to gorillas.According to multiple former employees, these pills were recommended by Gabie Reiter, a woman who calls herself a “certified naturopath and medical intuitive,” who consulted with Patterson on the phone. Reiter’s website advertises, among other services, chakra alignment and removal of pollutants and toxins through telephone “power tune-ups.” “[Patterson] would be on the phone with [Reiter] almost daily, and Penny would use her for the medical and emotional needs for the gorillas,” Safkow says, adding that Reiter “would make adjustments to her homeopathic medication, all without any scientific or veterinary diagnoses recommending that treatment.” The caption for a 2005 photo on Koko’s website describes her as having the option of taking certain homeopathic cures when she asks for them.
― Mordy, Thursday, 4 February 2016 22:51 (eight years ago) link