tagged w/ Laboratory Animals
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Gene Hackman Gets Behind 200 Retired Chimpanzees
By Sam Brand | Tuesday, August 10, 2010 4:25 PM ET
The actor and novelist takes up the cause of hundreds of former victims of animal testing currently threatened with a return trip to the laboratory.
Gene Hackman doesn't want his neighbors to leave town. Funny, considering they're a bunch of old apes.
Two hundred chimpanzees housed at the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico are threatened with deportation to a Texas lab known for conducting animal experiments. The chimps, some more than 30 years old, have been through it before. They're all retired test subjects.
Hackman, who lives in Santa Fe, is doing his part to make sure they stay at a facility that has been the chimps' home for almost ten years. He sent a letter, obtained by Tonic, to Dr. Fancis S. Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, which owns the Alamogordo Primate Facility.
"Scientists around the world have largely stopped experimenting on chimpanzees, in part because these animals just haven't proven to be good models for human health research," Hackman writes. "The United States is the last developed country on earth still making large-scale use of chimpanzees in invasive experiments."
Those experiments don't happen at Alamogordo, which has provided "for the long-term care and husbandry of chimpanzees [who] have been used in biomedical research" since 2001, according to the NIH. "No active, invasive research is conducted" at the facility, the second largest chimp laboratory facility in the US, according to Project R&R.
That could change when a 10-year contract signed by private operator Charles River Labs lapses in several months.
Hackman's passion for the animals isn't an act — he retired from Hollywood five years ago.
"As you know, efforts to save the Alamogordo chimpanzee have drawn support from Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Tom Udall, and many other people around the state and across the country," he writes to Dr. Collins. "I join them in urging you to fulfill the National Institutes of Health's goal to 'exemplify and promote the highest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility in the conduct of science' by allowing these chimpanzees to live out their lives in the safety of a sanctuary."
Photo by Trish Overton
genehackmanjun2108.jpgGene Hackman Gets Behind 200 Retired Chimpanzees
By Sam Brand | Tuesday, August 10,... more
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Many studies great news for mice, not so much for humans
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
June 8, 2010 8:18 a.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Potential cancer vaccine! Possible anxiety treatment! Scientific studies looking at potential therapies for physical and mental illness often sound exciting -- that is, until you read further and realize they're in mice.
The applicability to humans of studies in rodents varies widely, and some diseases are more accurately modeled in these animals than others, experts say.
Uncertainty about the applicability to humans is usually a big disclaimer in rodent studies, even in respected journals. One that's getting buzz in Nature Neuroscience suggests that a brain hormone is a "remote control" for cholesterol. The findings support previous research that the central nervous system controls processes that the body uses for energy, but must be further investigated before being translated to humans, the authors say.
Another is a recent study in Nature Medicine that found a vaccine was effective in preventing breast cancer in six mice that had been genetically engineered to develop breast cancer.
Generally, small studies like the cancer one appear to fit the adage "great news if you're a mouse," said Lois Parker, senior pharmacist at Massachusetts General Hospital. It's just too soon to draw meaningful interpretations from the available data.
"If it's just in rodents and only in a small number of rodents, personally I find it hard to get that excited about it," she said. "Maybe that's unfortunate, because maybe some of that stuff is worth getting excited about." But there's a large time gap from lab to clinical practice, she said.
Mice and rats are so often used because they can be bred easily, and they are convenient because of their small size, said Dr. Raymond Dingledine, chairman of the department of pharmacology at Emory University. Scientists also have an extensive knowledge of their physiology, so they can be compared against what is known about people.
But in most rat and mouse studies, the animals are highly inbred, and therefore represent a much more narrow sliver of genetics than seen in people, Dingledine said. Humans have a great deal more variability in their biochemical makeup than inbred mice, he said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration typically demands that drugs be tested in animal models before trials begin in humans. Out of every 250 compounds tested for safety in the lab or animal models, only one gets approved, according to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. That's out of 5,000 to 10,000 compounds considered for testing in the first place. The entire process of development takes 10 to 15 years for those that make it to approval.
Here's the good news: There are specific conditions that rodents do model well. The effectiveness in humans of anticonvulsants have been quite predictive in mice and rat models, Dingledine said. Epilepsy turns out to be easily modeled in these animals.
But when it comes to the immune system, rodents and humans are so different that studies looking at treatments for certain diseases in mice or rats have not been successful when applied to people, he said. Increasingly, research is turning to nonhuman primates for preclinical research on immune-based therapies for a variety of conditions, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These kinds of studies look at understanding the body's response to viruses, bacteria, and other invaders.
In terms of cancer, it is difficult to translate animal models to human applications because a human tumor takes several years to develop, and rodent studies often just inject human tumors into the rat or mouse, said Dr. Gabriel Lopez-Berestein, professor of medicine and cancer biology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
In general, animal models give some hints about how to use cancer drugs in humans, he said. "But by no way should we be overexcited about it; we should be cautious about how to interpret that data" and in applying cancer studies in rodents to humans, he said.
Cancer drug researchers generally like to test potential treatments on two animal species, such as rats and dogs or mice and monkeys, and examine how the drug behaves in the fluids of the body, before proceeding to humans, Lopez-Berestein said.
"There are many genetic mutations that can result in cancer, and you can develop a compound or a drug that works great against one genetic mutation, but if that human patient doesn't have that genetic mutation, it'll be ineffective," Dingledine said.
Toxicity is also an issue for cancer research, as potential harmful side effects in humans do not always show up in rodents, Dingledine said.
We may think of our brain as an organ that is uniquely human in its intricacy and capacity for complex thought, but a great deal about us can still be learned from rodent models, researchers say.
Humans and rodents share brain circuits that are evolutionarily ancient, said Dr. Gregory Quirk of the University of Puerto Rico Medical School department of psychiatry. The amygdala, involved in the "flight or fight" response, and the prefrontal cortex, associated with decision-making, are human brain structures that can be probed in rats and mice.
Quirk's research has found that injecting a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor into the rat's prefrontal cortex decreases a fear response, which may be useful for the treatment of anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder. It may be years before this can be translated into humans, but Quirk is hopeful that researchers can identify existing drugs to be used in this way.
Other research groups are also making headway on treating anxiety based on studies of mice and rats. An antibiotic called D-cycloserine was first observed in rodents to diminish fear and went into human clinical trials relatively quickly, he said.
"It can be frustrating for the public to hear about the nth rodent study," he said. "But I think fear and anxiety is one of the areas where there's low hanging fruit."
Rodent research has also been driving human brain imaging research, Quirk said. It helps scientists to form an initial hypothesis based on observed patterns of brain activity in rodents before testing humans. Of course, human brain scans may reveal activity in structures associated with higher thinking that rats do not have, he said.Many studies great news for mice, not so much for humans
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN... more
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Revision of Directive 86/609
More than 115 million animals a year are used in laboratories around the world[1], with around 12 million animals used annually in the European Union alone[2].
Council Directive 86/609/EEC on the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes, is the European legislation that regulates animal experiments. It is more than 20 years old and urgently in need of updating in order to better protect animals in laboratories and to achieve the ultimate replacement of animals with more advanced, humane alternatives. A revised law has now been proposed.
Surveys and opinion polls clearly show that the public demands better protection for animals, with 79% of EU citizens believing there is insufficient public funding at European level for the development and validation of alternative methods to replace animal experiments[3]. The new EU law must reflect this high level of public concern and apply the requirement of the Amsterdam Protocol which obliges the EU to pay full regard to the welfare of animals in its research policy.
To benefit people and animals, replacing unsatisfactory animal experiments with more relevant and reliable non-animal methods must be the ultimate goal. Revision of Directive 86/609 provides Europe with an opportunity to lead the world in the development of non-animal methods. To achieve that the EU needs a targeted and properly funded strategy that places replacement at the heart of the new legislation.
1. Taylor K., Gordon N., Langley G., Higgins W. (2008) Estimates for Worldwide Laboratory Animal Use in 2005. Alternatives to Laboratory Animals (ATLA), 36(3):327-342 .
2. Fifth Report from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on the Statistics on the number of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes in the member states of the European Union COM/2007/675 final.
3. European Commission 2006 survey
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/pdf/results_citizens.pdf
- Jane Goodall
http://www.makeanimaltestinghistory.org/resources/gallery/Dr%20Jane%20Goodall_Medium1.mp4
http://www.makeanimaltestinghistory.org/resources/campaign/vmarch2_gb.gifRevision of Directive 86/609
More than 115 million animals a year are used in... more
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The University of Konstanz and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have jointly established the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing—Europe (CAAT-EU) in an effort to promote better coordination in toxicity testing. The new Center, modeled after the Bloomberg School‘s Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT), will conduct scientific research to find new methods to replace the use of laboratory animals in studies, reduce the number of animals needed for research, and to refine necessary tests to eliminate the pain and distress of animals in research. CAAT-EU will hold an inauguration ceremony in Konstanz, Germany, on March 30.
Marcel Leist, professor at the University or Konstanz, will lead CAAT-EU, along with Thomas Hartung, the Doerenkamp-Zbinden Professor and Chair for Evidence-based Toxicology, and director of CAAT at the Bloomberg School. Hartung also holds an appointment as professor at the University of Konstanz.
“As a transatlantic cooperation center, CAAT-EU will unite its activities in the field of alternatives and toxicology at the University of Konstanz and combine them strategically with the activities of the Bloomberg School’s CAAT in the U.S.,” said Leist.
“Sound science is the bridge, not only across the Atlantic, but also for a future with safer products using fewer animals,” added Hartung.
The CAAT-EU board of directors includes EuroGroup for Animals, an umbrella organization of more than 30 animal protection organizations, and ECOPA—the European consensus platform for alternative methods made up of representatives of universities, industry, animal protection organizations and governments.
CAAT was founded at the Bloomberg School of Public Health in 1981 as an academic, science-based center to provide a better, safer, more humane future for people and animals. The University of Konstanz has more than 20 years of experience in studying alternatives to animal research. CAAT-EU will collaborate with CAAT to develop a worldwide standard for chemical testing.
“Konstanz is the ideal location for this enterprise,” said Ulrich Ruediger, rector of the University of Konstanz. “Here we have a tradition of intensive support for alternative methods.”
“The mission of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is to protect health and save lives through research and education,” said Michael J. Klag, dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We work with partners around the world and look forward to our collaboration with the University of Konstanz.”
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Press contacts:
Dr. Mardas Daneshian
University Konstanz
Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing-Europe
Universitaetsstraße 10, 78464 Konstanz
Tel.: +49 (0)7531-884685
Email
Tim Parsons
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
615 N. Wolfe Street/E2132
Baltimore, MD 21205-2179
Tel.: +1 410-955-7619
EmailThe University of Konstanz and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health... more
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Can you spare one week to be a voice for the millions of animals who suffer in laboratories?
World Week for Animals in Labs is rapidly approaching, and PETA is calling on kindhearted and energetic people to get involved and speak up for animals who are used in experiments.
This April 17–24, tell everyone you know that "Animal Testing Breaks Hearts!" Despite the availability of superior and humane non-animal methods, everyday household products and cosmetics are still pumped into animals' stomachs, rubbed on their skin and in their eyes, and forced into their lungs with aerosol sprays.
Reject this cruel and archaic practice by purchasing products that are not tested on animals. You can do even more for animals who are used for experiments by getting active during World Week for Animals in Labs!
Fill out the form below, and we'll mail you a free booklet filled with 10 "Animal Testing Breaks Hearts" leaflets and a pack of stickers to pass out to your family, friends, classmates, and coworkers.
Sharing this information will show others how easy it is to be cruelty-free and is a great way for you to help countless animals who undergo excruciating experiments each and every week at the hands of vivisectors.
http://www.peta.org/actioncenter/AnimalsLabsWeek.aspCan you spare one week to be a voice for the millions of animals who suffer in... more
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