Animal Testing and Vivisection
Vivisectors vs. Vivisectors in a New Lawsuit
Published September 17, 2009 @ 07:02AM PT
Wrap your mind around this one: InVivo Therapeutics Corp. is suing Oregon Health and Science University (notorious for its torturous animal experiments), but not as a group opposed to animal research -- rather as a business that hired OHSU to perform animal research. InVivo alleges that OHSU provided improper, substandard care to the monkeys in the study, but of course, InVivo is the company that happily ordered the monkeys paralyzed through the severing of their spinal cords in the first place, so there is no good guy in this lawsuit.
Decompressing Sheep and Starving Monkeys: Animal Labs in Madison
Published September 01, 2009 @ 05:26AM PT
Oh, Madison. Madison, Wisconsin, is a place I very much like, but forever adding to the complexity of my feelings about the small city (which, on a personal level, is also home to long-ago tangled family history) is how often I see un-animal-friendly news coming out of this otherwise progressive section of Wisconsin, largely as a result of one cruel institution: animal research -- specifically, in most cases, the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center.
In July, in "Do They Look Like They're 'Enjoying' Life to You?" for example, I wrote briefly about a horrid decades-long study involving the starvation and isolation of rhesus macaques. (And as Madison's active animal rights organization Alliance for Animals points out, non-animal advocates in the area have reacted with discomfort to the unnecessary study as well, including, briefly, the editorial board of a local news station.)
This time, though, the news of cruelty isn't coming out of the primate labs, but rather arises from the University of Wisconsin's apparent longtime habit of using -- and killing -- sheep in decompression experiments. Alliance for Animals shares these extracts from the university's 2008 report on the experiments:
"Generating" Rats, "Recycling" Animals, and Taking a (Concrete) Stand
Published August 24, 2009 @ 02:44PM PT
A few brief snippets from and comments on recent news related to research on animals:
"Create rat models with a focus in toxicology, neuroscience, cardiovascular and inflammatory disease"
"Generate rats with permanent, heritable gene mutations"
"Rats are ideal subjects for research into human diseases"
"Using this new methodology, rats and mice can be generated in as little as four months"
Take your pick as to which of the above, from an article on "creating" rats with genetic mutations to sell for top dollar ($300-500 each) to labs that will then perform cruel research on them, makes you grit your teeth the most. But the first line of the article really says it all: "Hoping to grab a slice of the $1 billion lab animal industry..."
Guardian Contributor Calls Vivisection a "Dead End"
Published August 10, 2009 @ 04:15PM PT
Writers for the Guardian's "Comment Is Free" section are after my heart lately. Just a couple weeks ago, in "Animal Research On the Rise in the UK: A Guardian Writer Weighs In," I commented on and directed you to a thoughtful antivivisection piece by Guardian contributor Peter Tatchell.
And then this past Friday, Kathy Archibald published "The Dead End of Animal Research" there. In her take on a pro-animal research article published in the paper recently (the source for which, she points out, was "not a charity, as stated, and is funded by the pharmaceutical industry to lobby exclusively for animal research"), she gave examples of how animal-based research is bad science (and thus bad for us) as well as bad for the animals:
All Chimpanzees Deserve Sanctuary
Published July 30, 2009 @ 06:19AM PT
Editor's Note: Although this post by Dr. Debra Durham focuses on research performed on chimpanzees, neither this blog nor PCRM is suggesting here that research merely be moved from chimps to other animals. Rather, nonanimal research that is more reliable and scientifically sound, in addition to more humane, should replace the cruel experimentation on chimps--and other animals. -S. Ernst
Lately, everyone has been wondering what happened to Bubbles, the chimpanzee who often appeared in photos and interviews with Michael Jackson. People were concerned that he might have ended up as a subject in biomedical experiments or in a roadside zoo.
But media outlets have reported that Bubbles is safe and sound at a sanctuary for great apes in Florida, where, according to a blogger on "The Daily Beast" who recently visited Bubbles, he "makes his home most of the time in a giant enclosure surrounded by native ferns, banana trees, water oaks, hibiscus, and Florida maples." Bubbles shares his home with a large group of chimpanzees, all released from the entertainment world where they were used in movies, television shows, commercials, and circuses.
As a primatologist, I often consider the strangeness of our relationships to nonhuman primates. We mock them when they're dressed in funny clothes or, in Bubbles' case, doing the "moonwalk." But we're in awe of their social lives, their awareness, and their emotional capabilities.
According to Bubbles' sanctuary, Bubbles is an extremely sensitive individual. The sanctuary's profile of Bubbles says, "If he has any kind of cut or scratch on his body, no matter how small, he will show it many times during the day to his caregivers and ask for sympathy."
We're constantly amazed by our similarities to chimpanzees and other primates--but we continue to keep these remarkable animals in extremely unnatural environments where they suffer immensely.
-Continue after the jump-
Animal Research On the Rise in the UK: A Guardian Writer Weighs In
Published July 23, 2009 @ 07:59PM PT
As many of you have likely heard by now, it was recently revealed that 2008 marked a significant and disturbing rise in medical research in the UK--the number of animals used last year was the highest in two decades. Numerous articles have been written about this in the last couple days, but I'm going to direct you to one that was just published today by Peter Tatchell of The Guardian: "The Long Fight Against Animal Testing." Following is a brief extract from the editorial (with a bit of commentary interspersed), but please read it in its entirety too:
Replacement of animals is possible in many spheres of medical research. Remember how the supporters of vivisection used to say that it was impossible and dangerous to halt the animal testing of cosmetics and household products? Well, despite their scare-mongering, it has been possible to safely replace many animal tests that were previously said to be "irreplaceable." The Dr Hadwen Trust has shown that alternatives are safe and effective. With tiny amounts of self-generated funding, it has already financed the development of successful, scientifically-validated alternatives to experiments that were once conducted with animals, including brain, kidney, diabetes and rheumatism research.
Glowing Dogs and the Problems with Letting Others Speak for Us
Published July 22, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
An article at Reason insists that "activists yawn[ed]" with indifference this year when it was announced that a cloned beagle litter's genetic material had been messed around with to make parts of the puppies' bodies glow when under ultraviolet light. The writer's proof that animal activists didn't care? HSUS and PETA didn't publicly object. And unfortunately, like too much of the public, the writer seems to think that HSUS, PETA, and (arguably even more oddly) ASPCA represent all animal (rights) advocates--and, apparently, that folks like Peter Singer and Matthew Scully are the chief animal rights, or "beast-friendly," philosophers. Take a look at one section of the article before we continue:
