tagged w/ Animal Research
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All animals, whether companion, commercial, or captive, under the care of humans, deserve a decent life and a painless death.
The latest scientific research as well as her own personal observations are used by Temple Grandin, an animal science professor, in a journey into the animal world. She believes that animals and humans have much more in common that previously believed, including emotions.All animals, whether companion, commercial, or captive, under the care of humans,... more
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by Martha Rosenberg
Scratch that $11.2 million underground animal research facility the University of Iowa's interim vice president for research, Jordan Cohen is probably saying to his Board of Regents right about now.
Related Stories on Scoop
A 35,000-square-foot underground vivarium where researchers could move mice, sheep, pigs, rabbits and primates without ever coming above ground made a lot of sense in 2004--when activists breached Iowa labs, opening cages and ruining research.
But it doesn't make a lot of sense when the enemy is, gulp one of one's own.
The Yale community might be breathing a little easier now that a suspect is in custody in connection with the murder of graduate student Annie Le who was killed inside a high security lab in September, but the animal research community isn't.
What good are electronic surveillance, code cards and high tech security when the foe is in your own household in the form of a laboratory technician like suspect Raymond Clark III some are asking?
Did he euthanize one too many decorticated cats? See too many primates pinned in stereotaxic devices? Spend too long under the ether hood?
Or was Clark "off" before he became a lab technician--even becoming a technician because he was off? (Does the job description read, "most love animals but not get too attached to them"?)
Whatever Clark's reasons if found guilty, animal researchers now have two new fears: depraved technicians--and the public peeling back the Plexiglas curtain on the secretive, pork-ridden world of animal research.
There's a reason for the security that keeps Beagle burn videos from surfacing like egg farm videos. Animal research is too lucrative for the university/government/pharma complex to risk macaques on YouTube and the public judging the asinine and repetitive experiments many researchers know they live on.
Do you think Northwestern University--or the National Institutes of Health (NIH)--want to acknowledge that every year from l978 through l985 Associate Professor Dr. Charles Larson fused monkeys' necks to their skulls and deprived them food five days per week to make them cry out in a specific manner according to Concerned Citizens for Ethical Research? At a tax payer cost of $472,370? To "gain insights into some of the neurological disorders affecting vocalization?" Even as his colleagues scoffed?
Thanks to the Stimulus Bill, NIH has a 2009 budget of $39.9 billion--think a year of the war in Iraq--and much of it goes to animal research.
University of Washington, for example, scored a cool $1 billion this year according to the Seattle Times for research, topping all public universities, despite its little incident with assistant professor of immunology Chen Dong in 2003.
Dong withheld food from mice, removed tips of their tails without anesthesia, failed to let babies wean and failed to euthanize suffering mice per the established mouse-pain scale said the university, barring him from animal research. Dong was also charged with falsifying his scientific articles and the Journal of Clinical Investigation asked for a retraction, reported the Times.
Nor does the University of Iowa seem to be hurting financially with its plans for a $122.5 million Iowa Institute for Biomedical Discovery which will connect to the underground vivarium mentioned earlier with its state of the art animal housing facilities, cage washing facilities and aseptic surgery space.
No, for animal researchers the bigger fear from Le's murder than technicians like Clark is the public seeing the heaps of unsupervised government pork behind their Plexiglas curtain. No wonder the research community wraps a "saves lives" cloak around its work whether falsified journal articles or Larson's "speech" studies.
It keeps the public from saying YOU'RE FUNDING WHAT? For how many years? With what results? about its tax dollars.by Martha Rosenberg
Scratch that $11.2 million underground animal research facility... more
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MADISON, Wis. - The University of Wisconsin plans to expand its primate research labs using the same land where animal rights activists had wanted to build a museum.
University Research Park, a partner of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, bought the lot for $1 million in July.
Activists had wanted to buy land from the previous owner, Roger Charly, but Charly decided to sell the land to the university instead.
Animal rights activist Rick Bogle calls the outcome a "sad irony." The museum would have protested experimentation on monkeys.
But university officials say the expansion means researchers can provide bigger and safer living quarters for the monkeys.
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And I am sure also to add more monkeys and more cruel research facilities... Sad day for nonhuman primates and those who sought to protect them.MADISON, Wis. - The University of Wisconsin plans to expand its primate research labs... more
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Nothing in the world of animal cruelty tends to surprise me these days. However, once in a while, something comes along that sickens and disturbs me at a level that can only be described as indescribable. This is one of those days: Pain-free animals could take suffering out of farming ( http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327243.400-painfree-animals-could-take-suffering-out-of-farming.html )
This article basically proposes that, rather than eliminate (or at least reduce) meat consumption, stop nonhuman animal testing, and stop genetic engineering and its massive negative effects on animals and the environment, that we should instead genetically engineer animals not to feel pain so that factory farming (which makes up 99% of animal product production) may continue.
Wait, it gets worse...
The neuroscientists proposing such measures did their work using animals they created various forms of brain damage in (by way of lesions, surgeries, or genetic engineering) and then placed them in electrical shock chambers to see which ones could tolerate the shocks the longest or the most frequently. Countless animals suffer in these painful and cruel experiments every day for these kinds of ideas. The researchers then speak of how it would not be economic to give cows brain surgery in mass amounts, so they must find a way to engineer them to have brain damage that will reduce their ability to feel pain.
Basically, rather than encourage a vegan diet, or at least one with less animal products, which would solve the animal factory farming problem, they want to engineer animals without certain abilities to feel pain, ignore the fact that suffering is based on far more than physical pain, and create animals who would make their consumers feel less guilty about consuming them, because they would be genetically engineered to "suffer" less.
These scientists and theorists completely ignore a few very important factors. Let us ignore the ethical and environmental problems with genetic engineering, simply because they would take far too long to discuss and because I believe it is popular to be against genetic engineering. Instead, let's examine the psychological factors involved in this.
1. Animal suffering is not caused by physical pain alone. If a female cow experienced no physical pain while being placed on a "rape rack", repeatedly impregnated by farmers, only to have her babies taken from her to be made into veal, while she was hooked up to machines, she would still suffer greatly.
2. The brain is full of connections. To eliminate one part of the brain's functioning is impossible without also affecting most if not all of the rest of the functioning in the brain. There is no feasible way to remove the "pain areas" of the brain alone without causing deficits elsewhere.
3. Pain is a necessary part of functioning and survival for all animals. Pain teaches us when we are hurt, when we need to reposition ourselves, when we have something wrong with us, and so on. Removing physical pain from an animal would likely cause MORE suffering than allowing an animal to feel pain as the animal could and would likely suffer multiple problems and injuries which s/he could not identify as well as suffer other cognitive deficits in areas that are closely connected to areas of the brain which respond to pain.
To do something so insane to these animals who are already suffering the imprisonment, exploitation, objectification, and commodification of farming simply for human over consumption, would also involve massive amounts of nonhuman animal testing involving a lot of pain. This proposal can be seen as nothing more than a fraud and a money-making scheme in which those who seek to profit from animal exploitation may continue on, and increase their activity, while confusing the public into believing that they are actually helping animals.Nothing in the world of animal cruelty tends to surprise me these days. However, once... more
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WASHINGTON – Scientific advancements in medical testing may reduce the need for animal subjects, eliminating the heated debate without another fight.
Although scientists are already carrying out many of the alternatives in major research, some believe there is still plenty of room for progress.
Dr. John Pippin, senior medical and research adviser of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, said animal experimentation should be completely banned for medical reasons as well as for the obvious ethical concerns.
According to Pippin, animal testing for human conditions can be misleading, and even dangerous, as the human anatomy is different from other animals – even our closest relatives – the great apes.
“There have been at least 85 successful vaccines to either cure or prevent HIV infection in animal models, mostly in monkeys,” said Pippin, a cardiologist. “Those vaccines… have been tested in approximately 200 human clinical trials. They have all failed.”
Additionally, Pippin said a recent trial conducted by Merck showed that people who received HIV vaccines that were originally tested on animals were more likely to contract HIV after taking the vaccine than people who took the placebo.
“That is fundamental proof that you’re on the wrong track,” said Pippin.
Theodora Capaldo, president of the New England Anti-Vivisection Society, also known as NEAVS, said many people have the dangerous misconception that experimenting on animals such as chimpanzees, who share many genetic similarities with humans, will help find cures for human-related ailments. In reality, Capaldo said he believes if animal experimentation was outlawed, humans would benefit.
“Yes, the genetic similarities between Homo sapiens and chimpanzees is even as little a difference as 2 to 3 percent, but it is enormous when it come to how disease occurs, progresses and what the outcome is,” Capaldo said.
Looking at HIV for example, Capaldo said chimpanzees are extremely poor models for testing for human cures. Chimpanzees cannot contract HIV, but only a virus similar to it. Additionally, because of our genetic differences, what does not effect a chimpanzee adversely may cause critical harm to a human.
And the evidence doesn’t stop there.
“There are more than two dozen cures for diabetes in animals; there is nothing successful in people,” Pippin said.
Once a professor of medicine at Harvard University, Pippin testified before the FDA and the Institute of Medicine in 2005 on the repercussions of animal experimentation, stating that such research led to life-threatening products, such as Vioxx, being released on the market.
Pippin admitted to once using animal models, mostly dogs, in his cardiovascular research. However, he stopped using them, he said, once he realized that caninesweren’t the most reliable models when trying to discover new ways to help people.
Fortunately, Pippin said there are many new, more humane and effective ways to conduct research. For example – using stem cells.
“You can already create human cell cultures and tissues that can be used for testing drugs in a way that’s more accurate than animal testing,” he said.
Additionally, Pippin said scientists can use microdosing, where humans are administered low, non-life threatening doses of a chemical that are still high enough to study how it is effective on a cellular level. The goal is to figure out what dose of a certain chemical should be added to new drugs.
In-vitro testing is also a popular alternate method, where human cells are placed in a test tube or Petri dish along with a chemical of choice to measure everything from toxicity to effectiveness.
These are only a few examples of the new and improved research methods, according to Pippin.
But not everyone agrees.
...full article at link.WASHINGTON – Scientific advancements in medical testing may reduce the need for... more
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Police in Hannover on Wednesday removed 26 protestors from a site where a pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim is slated to build a lab to test animal vaccinations.
Two women had to be dug out of the ground after entombing their feet in concrete at the site. Three other protestors trying to hide on the roof of a nearby structure, as well as a young man attempted to climbing 10 metres up an oak tree, were also taken into custody.
Since the beginning of last month, the protestors have occupied the site in protest to the construction of the lab by the pharmaceutical company. A police spokesman said Wednesday they were removed because their demonstration was “no longer a peaceful assembly.”
Police said the animal rights activists were aggressively trying to claim the territory for themselves by digging pits, building barricades and stone deposits on the grounds. They are there as part of a citizens initiative to keep labs that conduct tests on animals out of populated areas.
Other sites in the area are also being targeted by animal rights groups. On July 27, Hannover mayor Stefan Weil’s house was attacked with paint. Last week, a building of a veterinarian school was painted as well. Police are still investigating any possible connection to the Boehringer Ingelheim protest.Police in Hannover on Wednesday removed 26 protestors from a site where a... more
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A look inside Huntingdon Life Sciences over the past 9 years. They are still doing this as we speak. For more information, go to www.shac.netA look inside Huntingdon Life Sciences over the past 9 years. They are still doing... more
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By Daniel Engber
Updated Friday, June 5, 2009, at 7:19 AM ET
My research monkey had a pink face, dark eyes, sandy fur, and a 2-inch titanium rod screwed into the top of his skull. His name was Clayton.
It's customary to name research macaques in alphabetical order according to when they arrived at the lab. Clayton showed up after Axel and Bongo and ahead of Duper, Einstein, and Freud—but whatever institutional seniority he had meant little in the monkey room. Clayton, a juvenile, was skittish and shy, submissive as a rule, and generally afraid to leave his cage. When I'd finally manage to coax him out, he would leap straight into the "monkey chair," preferring enclosure in a small, plastic box to the thought of ambling across the laboratory floor.
Though he hardly needed it, Clayton was leashed even for these short trips from cage to chair. I'd hook a chain to his collar and slide it through a loop at the end of a 3-foot pole so he couldn't get close enough to bite or scratch. Macaques can harbor the deadly herpes B virus, and it's generally forbidden to approach one that's unrestrained and un-anaesthetized. Though Clayton and I spent hours together every day, I never so much as touched his fur during an experimental session. If he came to recognize me—and I believe he did—it was despite the surgical mask, goggles, hair net, and other safety accoutrements of any visit to the monkey room.
The monkey chair wasn't much bigger than the animals themselves, and Clayton's head poked out through sliding panels at the top. I'd roll him in front of a computer monitor and fasten his protruding metal post to an external frame. With his skull fixed in place, only his eyes could move to follow the targets that zipped across the screen. (By tracking the direction of Clayton's gaze, I'd hoped to learn something about how smooth pursuit eye movements are controlled in the brain.) His eyes would follow me, though, as I loaded up the software and filled his juice dispenser; sometimes I'd place a jelly bean or a raisin delicately on the edge of his mouth, which he'd gobble up before flashing his gums in the deferential gesture of silent bared teeth. I talked to Clayton, too, trying to keep him entertained. But every once in a while he'd show his impatience with a gesture that was disturbingly human: I remember the day he crossed his legs on the shelf of the chair and started strumming his fingernails against the wall.
The one time I held Clayton in my arms, he was asleep and swaddled in a blanket. He'd just undergone a minor surgery, probably to repair a broken eye coil. (Most of the monkeys in the lab had a thin wire implanted under one eyelid that could be used to track their eye movements.) As a junior graduate student, I wasn't allowed to do more than observe the procedure, but when it was done, one of the postdocs lifted Clayton off the table and beckoned me over. I was to carry him back to the monkey room and deposit him gently into a cage before the anesthesia wore off.
For the first time, I felt the shape of his body—the outline of his little shoulders and spindly legs. For weeks we'd interacted across bars and through thick plastic; now I had him cradled him against my chest, his eyes closed and his head tucked into the crook of my arm. He was about the size and weight of a newborn baby; with the blanket wrapped around him, only his pink face was showing, and his eyelids fluttered as I carried him down the hall.
...full article at linkBy Daniel Engber
Updated Friday, June 5, 2009, at 7:19 AM ET
My research monkey... more
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The BUAV, the UK’s leading organisation campaigning to end animal experiments, welcomes the announcements made by the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green parties to pledge to include a ban on the testing of household products on animals in their manifestos for the next election. The announcements were made at a BUAV Parliamentary Reception in Westminster on Tuesday 2 June.
The announcements follow a high profile political and public campaign by the BUAV as part of its Clean Up Cruelty campaign. The campaign aims to eliminate the cruel and unnecessary use of animals in the testing of the ingredients for household products such as washing-up liquid, bathroom cleaner, floor polish and air fresheners.
Major high street retailers are increasingly responding to public concern about this issue and signing up to the BUAV’s Humane Household Product Standard (HHPS) – the only internationally recognised scheme that enables consumers to easily identify and purchase household products whose ingredients have not been tested on animals. Already, all household products made by the Co-operative and Marks and Spencer have been approved under the HHPS. This clearly illustrates that it is unnecessary to test on animals to manufacture and sell safe and effective household products.
In 1997 the UK government made a small amendment to policy which instantly saved thousands of animals from suffering in needless cosmetics testing. The Clean up Cruelty campaign aims to do the same for household products.
Ian Cawsey, MP said: “I have been asked by Gordon Brown to look at all aspects of animal welfare policy and I am convinced that the ban we introduced on testing cosmetics on animals can be extended to cover household products. It will be central to my report to the Prime Minister and will be widely supported in the Labour Party to be in our manifesto for the next election.”
Andrew Rosindell, MP said: “Animal testing is one of the most significant and controversial areas of the animal welfare debate. It is crucial that, step by step, we make concerted efforts to reduce the numbers of animals used and the number of procedures undertaken.
“Following the successful ban on testing for cosmetic products, we must now look to see where we can extend this further. We are pleased to support the BUAV's Clean up Cruelty campaign and it is the Conservative Party’s view that we are now in a realistic position to ban the use of animals in testing on household products.
“This is the first step in the Conservative approach to continually reducing animal experimentation, there is still much ground to cover, and we will continue to press the case for greater emphasis on development into alternative methods of testing.”
Roger Williams, MP said: “The Liberal Democrats have had a long held belief that it is totally unnecessary to use animals for the testing of household goods and I am happy to support the BUAV’s campaign to ban their use.
“The British are a nation of animal lovers and the Government should reflect that by implementing steps that will lead to the eventual ban of unnecessary testing on animals. This has already happened with cosmetics and I see no reason why similar moves should not be made in the case of household goods.”
Caroline Lucas, MEP said: “The Green Party has pledged to continue campaigning to end the cruelty inflicted upon animals in the name of ‘safety’ and it is certainly timely for the progress that has been made with regard to cosmetics testing to be mirrored, and improved upon, with regard to household products.
“The Green Party fully supports BUAV’s campaign for a total ban on all testing of household products and I will be doing my utmost to press for a ban across Europe, as well as in this country.”
...full article at linkThe BUAV, the UK’s leading organisation campaigning to end animal experiments,... more
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Before long, we will each have an alter ego to assess the medication we need. That's the vision of Natalia Alexandrov, winner of the New Scientist/NC3Rs "Beyond animal research" essay competition.
A QUIET night in December 2050. Small town anywhere on Earth. In the hospital, little Peter has just made his appearance in the world. As the happy family takes pictures of mother and baby, the thought that his birth is incomplete is far from their minds. And the birth will not be complete for a few hours, until hundreds of miles away his virtual twin is born.
While Peter is dreaming his first dreams, samples of his blood and tissue are analysed and the resulting data transmitted to the simulation and modelling department of the regional medical centre.
It is expensive and time-consuming to build a virtual human from scratch, so a library of averaged mathematical models of newborns is maintained. The initial models differ by sex, ethnicity, geographic origin, basic genetic make-up and other salient characteristics. When Peter's data arrive, they are integrated with a model whose attributes most closely resemble Peter's. The vast resulting computational model is as unique as Peter himself.
Throughout Peter's childhood his parents take him for medical check-ups, inoculations and treatment for a broken arm and colds. All this information makes his virtual twin grow. When the boy is 10, flu leaves him with a complication - severe bronchitis. Which antibiotic to prescribe? The family doctor downloads Peter's virtual twin, updates it with the latest tests, and runs simulations for the range of available antibiotics to anticipate short-term and long-term effects. This identifies both the perfect drug and one that would have had a life-threatening, long-term effect on Peter's blood-clotting ability, possibly leading to a future stroke.
Why an individual twin? The laboratory animals used to develop drugs do not always represent humans adequately, and even well-tested drugs can cause adverse reactions in some people.
How far are we from building useful and practical virtual twins? There are many sophisticated models of individual organs and systems, such as network models of the metabolic, immune, nervous and circulatory systems; computational fluid dynamics models of blood flow; structural models of the heart and other muscles. These models will continue to grow in fidelity, but the behaviour of a complex system is a function of its complexity, and the biggest barrier is, arguably, the integration of subsystem models into one systemic model.
As well as the difficulty of modelling every aspect of the organism in terms amenable to computation, the challenges are in combining disparate models and the sheer volume and complexity of the information needed. However, in this writer's opinion, the situation is by no means hopeless. Moore's law of growing computational resources will provide the necessary storage and speed. The complex mathematics involved will be more challenging, but by no means prohibitively so.
...full article at linkBefore long, we will each have an alter ego to assess the medication we need. That's... more
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Dr. George Tiller, one of the few late-term abortion providers in the country, was murdered inside his church on Sunday, and the only suspect is Scott Roeder, a man The New York Times said “had professed an anti-government, anti-abortion philosophy.” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the murder an “abhorrent act of violence,” but he hasn’t used the word “terrorism.” Not once.
Why?
As a bit of context, if you’re new to this website, the FBI labels the animal rights and environmental movements as the “number one domestic terrorism threat” even though those activists have never harmed a human being. At the very worst, underground groups like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front have released animals from fur farms, destroyed SUVs and set fire to empty buildings.
When animal rights activists or environmental activists are arrested, though, the government immediately sends out press releases and holds press conferences trumpeting the arrest of “eco-terrorists” and “domestic terrorists.”
So it’s pretty startling that government hasn’t used the T-word, considering that we’re talking about murder, and, as James Ridgeway notes over at Mother Jones, Roeder was also arrested in 1996 with ammunition, gunpowder, a blasting cap, and a fuse chord in his car. He was sentenced to two years of supervised probation. (By contrast, the SHAC 7 received years in prison for running a website).
What gives? Why hasn’t the murder of an abortion provider been labeled “terrorism”?
IT'S NOT A THREAT TO PROFITS. Time and again, we’ve seen that a driving force behind the domestic “War on Terrorism” is protecting corporate interests. The ELF, ALF and above-ground, lawful activists all directly target profits. As the Department of Homeland Security said in a memo, “Attacks against corporations by animal rights extremists and eco-terrorists are costly to the targeted company and, over time, can undermine confidence in the economy.” Similarly, the State Department has warned corporations how to protect their profits from “eco-terrorists.”
HEALTH CLINICS AND NONPROFITS DO NOT HAVE THE LOBBYING POWER OF MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS. NOW is already pushing to label this crime as “terrorism.” I wouldn’t be surprised if they also push legislation to label anti-abortion violence as terrorism. The problem, though, is that groups like NOW and Planned Parenthood don’t have the political influence (read: money) as Pfizer, Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKline, and all the other multinational corporations who push “eco-terrorism” legislation like the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.
IT'S NOT THREATENING "THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE." In my reporting I’ve found that the word “terrorism” is typically applied to two types of crimes. The first are crimes that go up the chain of power (so, for example, the U.S. military bombing civilians is not terrorism, but an Iraqi civilian bombing the military is).
The second are crimes that challenge dominant American values. Let me explain: Attacking African American voters is not terrorism, right-wingers like Chuck Norris calling for armed revolution is not terrorism, Timothy McVeigh bombing the Oklahoma City building is not terrorism. Why? Because the values behind all of those actions– racism, capitalism, and Christian fundamentalism—are business as usual.
So, for example, if Dr. Tiller had been murdered by Muslim extremists proclaiming jihad against the West, the government would be labeling this “terrorism.” The exact same crime committed by Christian extremists is merely a “wicked deed in Wichita”Dr. George Tiller, one of the few late-term abortion providers in the country, was... more
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Where's Pepper?In the summer of 1965, a female Dalmatian was stolen from a farm in Pennsylvania. Her story changed America.
By Daniel Engber
First, Ivan Pavlov would sever a dog's esophagus and sew the loose ends to its throat, leaving a pair of adjacent holes that connected, by separate passages, to its mouth and stomach. Then he'd slice through the dog's abdomen, carve a hole in the wall of its stomach, and stitch open another permanent wound.
The dog, left hungry from the night before, would be harnessed to a wooden stand and presented with a bowl of raw meat. No matter how much it ate, it never got full—the dog chewed and swallowed, but the masticated meat would erupt from its esophageal opening and dribble back into the bowl, whereupon the dog would lap it up all over again. In the meantime, a glass tube attached to the animal's stomach opening allowed its gastric secretions to drip into a collecting bottle, so they could be filtered, analyzed, and sold to the public as a remedy for dyspepsia.
As historian Daniel P. Todes writes in Pavlov's Physiology Factory, these thrice-perforated animals enabled a new approach to science—the chronic experiment—and a series of discoveries about the nervous control of digestion for which Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in 1904. (At the time of the award, he hadn't yet shown that animals would drool at the sound of a bell.) In 1935, just before his death, Pavlov approved the design for a monument to his canine test subjects, erected on the grounds of the Institute of Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg, Russia. A bronze plaque on one side depicts the dogs on laboratory tables, tied to their wooden frames with their fistulas open. "We must painfully acknowledge that, precisely because of its great intellectual development, the best of man's domesticated animals—the dog—most often becomes the victim of physiological experiments," he had written in 1893. "The dog is irreplaceable; moreover it is extremely touching. It is almost a participant in the experiments conducted upon it, greatly facilitating the success of the research by its understanding and compliance."
No one can say exactly how old Pepper was in the summer of 1965, but every member of the Lakavage family remembers her gentle disposition. There were plenty of other dogs racing around their farm at the bottom of Blue Mountain, but the Dalmatian named Pepper—trim and affectionate, pelted with splotches of black—was always Mom's favorite.
Julia Lakavage preferred to take in strays, but she made an exception when she saw Pepper at the decrepit Spatterdash kennel a few miles down the road. Julia and her husband, Peter, lived on 82 acres in the hills above Slatington, Pa., two hours due west of New York City. Peter had a job with Bethlehem Steel; Julia had polished shells there during the World War II, but by the 1960s she was working the night shift as a nurse for the Good Shepherd Home in Allentown. They had four daughters—Star, Carol, Kathy, and Peggy—and a 7-year-old grandson named Michael.
Pepper loved a car ride, and some nights Julia would take her along to the hospital in Allentown. If Julia were the only nurse assigned to the floor, she'd bring the dog on her rounds of nursing home residents and handicapped orphans. The patients loved it, remembers Star. They would call for Pepper as soon as they heard her paws click-clacking along the linoleum hallway. One day, Julia promised, she'd buy "Nurse Pepper" a little white hat.
But Pepper didn't come to work with Julia on the night of Tuesday, June 22, 1965...
full article at linkWhere's Pepper?In the summer of 1965, a female Dalmatian was stolen from a farm in... more
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WASHINGTON, June 1 (UPI) -- Twenty-six U.S. research labs were accused of fraud in a complaint filed Monday by an independent animal research watchdog.
Stop Animal Exploitation Now filed the complaint with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, urging a probe of 50 U.S. researchers for allegedly filing fraudulent documents and performing nearly identical experimentation in violation of federal regulations, the organization said in a news release.
"The animal research industry is just as unregulated as Wall Street was before the current economic crisis," said Michael A. Budkie, SAEN executive director. "If this system is not overhauled, the next meltdown will be in research laboratories."
The non-profit group based in Ohio said it filed the complaint following a study of 57 taxpayer-funded research grants valued at more than $110 million during a five-year period. The study concluded the projects have a redundancy index of 5.4 out of a possible 6.
The projects are funded at 26 separate U.S. labs, including Harvard, Stanford, Emory, University of Alabama, University of California campuses at Berkeley, Davis and San Francisco, as well as Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rutgers and Duke. Other labs named in the complaint are Wake Forest, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Vanderbilt, University of Pittsburgh, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas, Brown University, Smith Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, Salk Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, City College of New York, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Chicago and University of Washington.WASHINGTON, June 1 (UPI) -- Twenty-six U.S. research labs were accused of fraud in a... more
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No Federal Violations for Boiled Monkey Death - Everett Judge Refuses to Allow Prosecution in Scalded Monkey Case
She was a cynomolgus monkey, also known as a crab-eating macaque or a long-tailed macaque. Whatever name you prefer, her horrifying, gruesome death followed a brief life that itself was surely lonely, frightening, and painful.
There were no trees, no gusts of wind, no natural smells, sounds, and sights, no family or companionship, no joy or wonder in her daily existence. Instead there was a tiny, barren space, with walls, ceiling, and floor made of cold metal wires. Instead there was terror.
Instead there were likely injections and restraints and intentionally inflicted pain and isolation. And there was to be far more of that, as humans tested drugs on her--and in a lab with a history of abuse and cruelty at that.
But then even before they were done with her, she was killed, and in the worst way. She died horrifically in the same cage in which she lived so sadly. She gripped the cage bars as 180 degree water and caustic, burning chemicals rained down forcefully all over her trapped body, boiling her ALIVE, melding the skin of her tortured body to the cage, permanently fusing her fingers to the metal bars that she gripped in terror and excruciating pain like we will never know.
There is no doubt that she screamed. God, how she must have screamed.
They had to peel her dead body from the cage.
To those of you out there who don't understand why animal rights activists are sometimes so angry, who think we have nothing to be angry about, who don't understand how we can cry over animals we've never met, who prefer to remain blissfully ignorant and insist that the way we use animals is fine and that animals don't suffer at our hands because, after all, we have laws to prevent and punish animal abuse, or who condemn the open or covert rescue of animals from labs, to all of you--please pay attention.
Incidents such as this, in which animals are not just abused but tortured--these 'incidents' are not rare -- WE, the general public, are informed only by mistake or by undercover work --when informed, OUR society chooses not to listen to such uncomfortable and disgraceful acts of inhumanity -- these are among our reasons for being angry.
Go read the article that first appeared early this year, http://www.kirotv.com/news/15189249/detail.html ...when a Washington news station first broke this story. Among everything else you read will be the following, which tells a not-unusual story about what happens when employees who witness cruelty, whether in a lab or a slaughterhouse, dare to speak up: they get fired, and the abuse continues.
Details of this story will shock and sadden you. Please follow links at:
http://www.kirotv.com/investigations/16341994/detail.html
http://animalrights.change.org/blog/view/no_justice_for_the_monkey_boiled_alive
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008326494_webmonkey29m.html
http://animallawonline.blogspot.com/2008/10/washington-state-judge-refuses-to-allow.html
'Protect Captive Primates Act' http://animalrights.change.org/actions/view/urge_senate_to_pass_captive_primate_safety_actNo Federal Violations for Boiled Monkey Death - Everett Judge Refuses to Allow... more
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From the article...LOS ANGELES -- Two animal rights activists were charged Monday with conspiracy, stalking and other crimes against researchers at University of California, Los Angeles and executives of a juice company.
Linda Faith Greene, 61, and Kevin Richard Olliff, 22, pleaded not guilty to the charges during their arraignment in Superior Court.
The Los Angeles County district attorney's office issued a statement calling the pair "alleged domestic terrorists" and describing them as associates of the Animal Liberation Front, an extremist animal rights group.
A county grand jury indictment was handed up March 27 and charged each with three counts of conspiracy to commit stalking, three counts of stalking, two counts of conspiracy to threaten a public officer or school employee and two counts of threatening a public officer or school employee. They were arrested Thursday.
The indictment alleges that an unnamed co-conspirator tried to place an incendiary device on the doorstep of UCLA professor Lynn Fairbanks' home in July 2006 but it was actually left at an elderly neighbor's house and failed to explode.
One of the overt acts in the conspiracy was Greene, acting as press officer for an animal rights Web site, posting a "communique" by the ALF which took responsibility for what it called a "moletov cocktail," according to the indictment.
Greene, Olliff and others conducted demonstrations at the professor's home and on the UCLA campus, during which they chanted threats through a bullhorn and disputed law enforcement claims that the wrong house was targeted, according to the indictment.
Greene is also accused of identifying Fairbanks as a "target" on a Web site, publishing her addresses and other personal information online.
The indictment alleges a similar campaign against a neurobiology professor, Dario Ringach, who later gave up primate research, citing harassment from animal rights activists and concerns for his young children.
A telephone message seeking comment was left Monday evening at the office of attorney David B. Rutan, who represented Greene and Olliff when UCLA got a temporary restraining order against animal rights activists.
Dr. Jerry Vlasak, an animal rights activist with North American Animal Liberation Press Office, said Monday that Greene and Olliff violated no laws.
"They're using their constitutional right to free speech. They're not breaking any laws or breaking in to sabotage or destroying vehicles or equipment," Vlasak said. "Everyone knows who they are. They're high-profile activists who never tried to hide their identities. Linda did TV interviews."
The indictment further alleges that Greene and Olliff stalked executives of Los Angeles-based POM Wonderful Juice Co., picketed at a corporate family picnic and conducted demonstrations at their homes.
Vlasak said the activists targeted POM because they believe the company was using animal experiments to support claims that pomegranate juice could improve erectile function in men with mild impotence problems.
A telephone message seeking comment from POM after hours was not immediately returned.
Greene was held on $450,000 bail and is due back in court Friday for a bail review hearing. Olliff was held on $460,000 bail.
Both defendants are scheduled for a pretrial hearing on May 20.
Over the past couple of years, animal rights activists have aggressively protested animal research at the homes of scientists.
Earlier this year, four people pleaded not guilty in connection with an attempted break-in at the home of a UC Santa Cruz breast cancer researcher in 2008. Last December, a man pleaded no contest to making harassing phone calls to UC San Francisco researchers at their homes and telling them that they would die the same way they made animals suffer.From the article...LOS ANGELES -- Two animal rights activists were charged Monday with... more
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This year, there is more hope than ever, as technology moves us beyond antiquated animal experiments and government reports, agencies and scientists have begun to acknowledge the need to move away from animal research.
Recent published studies also document that an old boys network in the federal research funding system concentrates grant awards in the hands of a select number of older researchers ("aging cash cows" like Stephen Lisberger at the University of California San Francisco), perpetuating old-style, outdated research methods at the expense of modern and innovative studies.
With a new administration and a serious financial crisis at hand, it is more important than ever that we use this week to call attention to the outdated and unnecessary biomedical experiments that continue to claim the lives of millions of animals each year.
The new presidential administration has vowed to scrutinize the federal budget "line by line" to locate and eliminate wasteful spending. Now is the time to bring the massive waste of federal funds on cruel and unnecessary animal research to the new Administration's attention. IDA has begun this effort with a letter to Senate leaders
Among them are studies that looked at:
* Nipple preference in nursing infant monkeys.
* Effect of high-fat diets on mice sleep. (Made mice fat and sleepy.)
* Effect of stress and isolation on voles. (Prairie voles had less anxiety than meadow voles.)
* Effect of mouse social separation on wound healing. (Affected monogamous mice, not polygamous mice.)
* Effect of exercise on rat health. (Rats who exercised were healthier.)
Your participation is urgently needed to join forces with IDA to push forward and bring about an end to cruel and wasteful animal research. Please, make a commitment today to take one action for animals in laboratories during the week of WWAIL. Here are just a few ways to participate during WWAIL:
* Organize an event in your area, such as a demonstration or educational table. Click here to read about the many different ways that you can get involved in 2009. Email us at wwail@idausa.org to let us know if you will be planning an event, or if you just need more information.
* Send a letter to the editor or your local newspaper. Click here for sample letters and guidelines.
* Write to President Obama and urge him to stand by his promise to end wasteful government programs. Contact the Office of Public Liaison ("the front door to the White House through which everyone can participate and inform the work of the President").
This year more than ever, we are closer to exposing and ending cruel, unnecessary and outdated animal research.This year, there is more hope than ever, as technology moves us beyond antiquated... more
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By Will Potter
Found flier warns of terrorist protesters.
Found flier warns of terrorist protesters.
A flier found in Portland warns that “terrorist” animal rights activists are…watch out…being effective!
Ongoing anti-fur protests by Portland animal rights activists have helped shut down one fur salon, Schumacher Furs. (The owner unsuccessfully tried to retaliate by calling on federal prosecutors to use the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act against the protesters).
Now activists are protesting Ungar Furs. But be careful, everyone, the grammatically-impaired right-wingers of the Republic of Portland are not going to take your Constitutionally-protected activity lying down!
“Why wait till they are in front of your business protesting. Stop these Terrorists now! There is something called The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act that is supposed to protect merchants from these people but the left wingers who run Portland will not stand up for decent folk trying to make a living. If they were protesting in front of a gay vegan hemp store, you bet your ass the city would be trying to stop them. Enough is enough. The last time I looked this was America.”
And the last time I looked there was still a First Amendment.
But hold up, forget all of my typical “protect the Constitution” rhetoric. Gay vegan hemp store? How have I never heard of this magical place?
If such a place were to exist, it would truly represent a “domestic terrorist” Axis of Evil. On this site we’ve seen how Pat Boone is fighting “sexual jihadists” and homo-grown terrorism. We’ve seen how “vegetarians are terrorist scum.” And we’ve seen how environmental activists like Tim DeChristopher are “eco-terrorists.”
This store would reflect a dangerous new development in the War on Terror, and the unification of the gays, the vegans and the hippies into the Holy Trinity of Terrorism.
Maybe it could move in to the vegan mini-mall? I hear the hemp-lovers at Food Fight have a vegan cheese pump.By Will Potter
Found flier warns of terrorist protesters.
Found flier warns of... more
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Wasted Lives is a 20-minute video designed for school students aged 14 and over but is an excellent introduction to the realities of vivisection for all age groups. Using explicit lab footage, testimony from scientists and doctors, computer graphics and other illustrative material, it makes a powerful moral and scientific case against animal experiments. It begins by outlining how animals are treated inside labs - answering the vivisectors' claim that their 'models' receive consideration and do not suffer. It then unravels the science question, making it clear, through examples of humans damaged and progress delayed, that animal experiments produce data that cannot be reliably applied across the species. This section also looks at the commercial imperative driving so much vivisection, and the way in which new generations of scientists are conditioned. http://www.animalaid.org.uk/educationWasted Lives is a 20-minute video designed for school students aged 14 and over but is... more
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Humane Society of United States
Primate Investigation | Undercover Investigation at Research Lab
February 2009: An undercover investigation by The Humane Society of the United States reveals psychological suffering of primates in research laboratories.Humane Society of United States
Primate Investigation | Undercover Investigation at... more
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Watch the video, and take action for chimps»
https://community.hsus.org/campaign/FED_2009_apeprotectionact
The investigation of New Iberia Research Center is the most comprehensive ever at any major primate research facility and has resulted in a 108-page complaint to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), alleging a minimum of 338 possible violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act at the center. The law sets minimal standards for the treatment of animals in labs.
Shocking Footage
The HSUS' videotape evidence shows severe distress of primates in isolation: they engage in self-mutilation by tearing gaping wounds into their arms and legs, a behavior that could be the result of NIRC's failure to provide adequate environmental enhancement.
Routine procedures, such as the use of powerful and painful dart guns and frightening squeeze cages for sedation, are shown causing acute psychological distress to chimpanzees and monkeys.
Infant monkeys scream as they are forcibly removed from their mothers so that tubes can be forced down their throats.
Altogether, the investigation reveals animals forced to endure anxiety and misery behind the razor wire of the research facility.
.....Watch the video, and take action for chimps»... more
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