Animal Testing and Vivisection
NY Surgeon Calls for an End to Training on Animals
Published December 02, 2008 @ 09:18AM PT
A week ago, a fantastic editorial titled "Animals Aren't For Our Practice" by a Schenectady surgeon appeared in an Albany newspaper. I didn't see it until today.
I know from firsthand experience what using animals in the classroom is like. When I was a plastic surgery resident at SUNY Downstate Medical School, it was common for schools to use live animals for a variety of purposes. In my senior year, I participated in a surgery course that used dogs. Each week, the dogs were subjected to a different operation, and like the pigs used in AMC's trauma training courses, the dogs were to be killed when the course ended. . . .
During this course, I witnessed the pain experienced by animals used in medical training. They suffer from transport, confinement, and preparation, and even with careful administration of anesthesia, it is possible for the animals to wake up during procedures. These classes cause the animals themselves extreme anxiety and suffering. But as I know from my experience, it can also be stressful and even traumatic for the human trainees.
Albany Med should immediately stop using live animals in trauma training — not only because it is inhumane, but because it is unnecessary. Even when I was in medical school decades ago, students were questioning whether it was necessary to practice procedures on live animals. In the surgery class using live dogs, I learned nothing I did not learn later and better in a more appropriate clinical setting.
Medical professionals must have a thorough understanding of human anatomy, and the anatomy of a dog or a pig is very different from that of a human. High-tech human patient simulators and other human-centered teaching methods allow students to learn how to treat acute trauma injuries on a model that duplicates human anatomy. With these superior alternatives, medical professionals can repeatedly practice critical emergency procedures without harming animals.
BUAV Primate Trade Investigation: Before They Get to the Labs
Published November 24, 2008 @ 09:24AM PT
Images and captions in this post courtesy of BUAV.
The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) today released its report on its undercover investigation into the Cambodian primate trade that is supplying macaques to research facilities (including U.S. and UK facilities, of course). I wonder, did the macaque whose life ended so horrifically earlier this year suffer in these same ways before ultimately ending up in the research lab where she continued to suffer so tremendously?
From the main Web page for the investigation:
The BUAV has obtained shocking never-seen-before footage of the trapping of wild monkeys in Cambodia destined for factory farms supplying the international research industry.
Appallingly, the monkeys were even hunted inside a nature reserve in Cambodia — supposedly a place of safety. The hunters used catapults and beat the tree trunks with oars to scare the monkeys out of the trees and drive them into nets. Then screaming in terror, or rigid with fear, these highly intelligent creatures were grabbed by their tails, stuffed into bags and stored in the bottom of a boat before being sold to a dealer of a monkey farm. . . .
The film is further evidence of the appalling cruelty that continues to be inflicted on wild monkeys for the international research industry. It also unveils the exploitation of indigenous populations of macaques (this type of monkey) in Asia, the industrial style breeding of monkeys, and the poor conditions in which they are kept that often fail to meet international guidelines on animal welfare, and fail to meet the monkeys' complex psychological and behavioural needs.
From the briefing [PDF]:
The latest BUAV investigation into the horrors of the primate trade is an expose of the abject cruelty and suffering that tens of thousands of macaques are forced to endure in the trapping fields, and holding and breeding facilities in Cambodia, the latest country to embark on the factory farming of monkeys for the international research industry.
In this daring investigation, BUAV investigators infiltrated and filmed the trapping network, dealers and supply companies to expose the secrets that the research industry would prefer to keep hidden. What has emerged is a shocking and sickening picture of animal cruelty and suffering. Monkeys are complex, intelligent and social animals who live in large family groups. Yet, bewildered and terrified, these wild monkeys were brutally ripped from their family groups and native habitat to feed a massively expanding breeding industry as Cambodia’s monkey dealers tote their grim business to countries around the world, including the USA and Europe.
See the BUAV's main page for this investigation for details and video.
The "Management" of Deer
Published November 22, 2008 @ 11:15AM PT
Back to the hunting topic we go. Doris Lin, of the About.com blog on animal rights, has written a detailed, well-researched piece titled "How Are Deer Managed by State Wildlife Agencies?" And we all should read it. Think that hunting is all about reducing deer populations? What if you learned that state wildlife agencies actually work to keep deer populations high--for the benefit of hunters who want to kill the deer and for the financial incentives involved for the state?
Most people think of wildlife management agencies as serving the ecosystem, interfering minimally and mainly to preserve wildlife. These agencies do have programs to protect endangered species and to protect habitat in general. But instead of managing wildlife solely for the optimal health of the ecosystem, state wildlife management agencies also manage wildlife for recreation. The agencies have a financial incentive to do so.
Deer as a Resource
To these agencies, deer are a resource, not sentient beings with their own inherent rights. The resource must be conserved, or used wisely, so that there will be plenty of deer for future generations of hunters. As a result, deer management is usually designed to keep the deer population high. . . .
Financial Incentives
Most people find it incredible that their state wildlife management agencies are trying to keep deer populations high when so many residents complain that there are too many deer, but the agencies have financial incentives for pleasing hunters. The agencies depend on sales of hunting licenses for their funding, and hunters like a high deer population. . . .Also, the federal Pittman-Robertson Act gives money from the excise taxes on sales of guns and ammunition to state wildlife agencies to increase wildlife populations. . . .
How Do The Agencies Increase the Deer Popuation?
To increase the deer population, sections of forest in state wildlife management areas are clear-cut, to create the "edge habitat" that is preferred by deer. . . .State wildlife management lands are also sometimes leased to farmers, and the farmers are required to plant deer-preferred crops and leave a certain amount of their crops standing so that the deer will be fed and reproduce more. Sometimes, the state wildlife management agencies will plant "deer mix" themselves, to increase the deer population.
No Justice for the Monkey Boiled Alive
Published October 30, 2008 @ 04:35PM PT
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.
NIH-Funded Nicotine Testing on Animals
Published October 23, 2008 @ 06:02AM PT
Perhaps you've noticed in the last few days that one of the actions currently featured in the sidebar is "Tell the NIH to Stop Testing Nicotine on Animals." For those of you who haven't read the summary there yet, I'll repeat my brief introduction to the action, sponsored by In Defense of Animals (IDA):
Researchers in the United States, with the help of millions of taxpayer dollars and the support of the federal government and National Institutes of Health (NIH), are still conducting cruel nicotine experiments on helpless animals—pregnant and newborn monkeys as well as rats and mice—even though the harmful effects of smoking are already well-known.
The first time I learned that the tobacco industry and federal government both are still funding nicotine and smoking experiments on animals (this campaign relates to just one area of such testing; there are more), I was stunned.
Many proponents of animal testing and medical research are fond of arguing that such testing and experiments are performed only when necessary—only when tests on animals are the supposedly best, most reliable option we have, only when the experiments' results could lead to significant human benefits, and only when the potential benefit to humans outweighs the harm to the nonhuman animals used in the tests.
Major Animal Rights Issues and Controversies
Published October 03, 2008 @ 06:02PM PT
The arenas and ways in which animals are exploited and killed by humans are many and varied. Following is an overview of some of the greatest areas of concern as well as a brief look at controversies inside the animal rights movement.
Farmed Animals: Billions Slaughtered
Ten billion land animals are killed in the United States each year for food; 50 billion are killed worldwide. The majority of these animals live in hellish conditions, and they die in no less cruel fashion. They are crammed into trucks and transported in all extremes of weather, with no food or water, to slaughterhouses that are sometimes hundreds of miles and several days away. Those who survive the trip are dragged inside, where they witness the brutal killings of the animals before them in line. Chickens and pigs are often dumped into scalding water while still alive and conscious, and some cows suffer the horror of being conscious when their skin is pulled off and their limbs chopped off. Undercover videos show wide-eyed cows and pigs hanging upside down by their hind legs, flailing wildly as their throats are slit.
But faced with these truths, representatives of animal agriculture, easily a $100 billion industry with much clout and many friends in Washington, argue that its “efficient” industrial practices are warranted—even mandated—by consumers’ demand for meat, dairy, and eggs, in large quantities and for cheap. The Humane Slaughter Act, passed in 1958 with the intention of ensuring quick death with little pain, is clearly not enforced and does not even apply to chickens, turkeys, and other birds. Animals raised under supposedly humane standards go to these same slaughterhouses.
Animal-Based Research
Dogs, cats, primates, rabbits, mice, and other sentient beings are used in excruciating product testing (e.g., cosmetics, cleaners, and pesticides) and medical research. Huntingdon Life Sciences, for example, one of the largest animal research labs in the world, tests on approximately 75,000 animals per year and kills hundreds each day for product testing. Undercover operations have documented cruelty and sadistic torturing inside various labs.
Supporters of experimentation on animals argue that
