physorg, NYT: The Second Coming of the Moose

The first appearance of the arthritic moose that I saw was on July 6, when the news wire physorg did a story, crediting the Michigan Technological University. The Michigan release was dated July 7, when a number of outlets picked up the story, including redorbit. The story tailed off,  but it popped up in the Times with a piece by Pam Belluck yesterday. The new piece has compelling color about life on the island and the long-running experiment on Lake Superior, and it has spawned a second life for the moose story, with a spate of additional coverage including one at tonic.com.

It's a good tale, and sounds like it will produce a whole new round of research on whether early nutrition in humans is one cause of arthritis later in life. It appears that's the way it is for the moose, as about half of the bones studied have arthritis. The researchers have correlated the time of food scarcity with the infancy of the arthritic moose, despite later abundance of food when the arthritis actually shows up.

--Phil Hilts