ANIMALS SUFFER AND DIE IN RESEARCH LABS, Page 2
Of all the horror stories Research
labs create more cruelty than any others.
Non-human primates (NHPs) are used in toxicology
tests.They are caught in the wild, taken from zoos, circuses
and animal trainers, or purpose-bred. Around 65,000 NHPs are
used each year in the United States and European Union. Most
of the NHPs used are macaques., but marmosets, spider monkeys,
and squirrel monkeys are also used, and baboons and chimpanzees
are used in the U.S; there are currently around 1,500 chimpanzees
in U.S. research laboratories.
Felines are most commonly used in neurological
research. In the UK in 2005, 308 cats were used. This is a
decrease from 819 cats recorded in 2004 According to the USDA,
over 25,500 felines were used in the USA in 2000, of these
around half were reported to have been used in experiments
that caused "pain and/or distress".
Xenotransplantation
Xenotransplantation involves transplanting living
cells, tissues, or organs from one species to another. Current
research involves primarily using primates as the recipient
of pig hearts. The U.S. FDA has written that the research
is "driven by the fact that the demand for human organs
for clinical transplantation far exceeds the supply."
The British Home Office released figures in 1999 showing that
270 monkeys had been used in xeno research in the UK during
the previous four years. In 1999, three baboons and 79 cynomolgus
monkeys were used.
Medical journalists Jenny Bryan and John Clare
have called xenotransplatation experiments "some of the
most grisly procedures carried out anywhere in the name of
science." They write that: "They do sometimes involve
a full transplant of a genetically modified pig heart into
a monkey. In some cases, however, the doctors will graft the
transgenic hearts onto a baboon's neck arteries, as this allows
them to observe the way the pig heart behaves in another species,
and monitor the rejection process. The operation is carried
out under general anaesthetic and the baboon is humanely killed
afterwards. These measures, however, do not pacify animal
rights campaigners, who say the experiments are cruel and
unnecessary."
Cosmetics testing is particularly controversial.
It is banned in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK, and
in 2002, after 13 years of discussion, the European Union
(EU) agreed to phase in a near-total ban on the sale of animal-tested
cosmetics throughout the EU from 2009, and to ban all cosmetics-related
animal testing. France, which is home to the world's largest
cosmetics company, L'Oreal, has protested the proposed ban
by lodging a case at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg,
asking that the ban be quashed. The ban is also opposed by
the European Federation for Cosmetics Ingredients, which represents
70 companies in Switzerland, Belgium, France, Germany and
Italy.
Huntingdon Life Sciences
In 1997, People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA) filmed staff inside a British laboratory owned
by Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), Europe's largest animal-testing
facility, hitting puppies, shouting at them, and simulating
sex acts while taking blood samples. The employees were dismissed
and prosecuted, and HLS's licence to perform animal experiments
was revoked for six months. Footage shot inside HLS in the
U.S. appeared to show technicians dissecting a live monkey.
HLS obtained a restraining order that prohibited PETA from
distributing the footage, although other sources are free
to publish it. The broadcast of the undercover footage on
British television in 1997 triggered the formation of Stop
Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.
Covance
TEST MONKEY
In 2004, German journalist Friedrich Mülln was
hired as a operative to shoot undercover footage of staff
in Covance, Münster, Europe's largest primate-testing center,
making monkeys dance in time to blaring pop music, handling
them roughly, and screaming at them. The monkeys were kept
isolated in small wire cages with little or no natural light,
no environmental enrichment, and high noise levels from staff
shouting and playing the radioA lawsuit by Covance placed
an injunction on Mülln from distributing the footage he shot;
the same material remains accessible on the web at sites outside
jurisdiction of the court.
Primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall described the
living conditions of the monkeys as "horrendous,"
and told BUAV that to see them "crazed with boredom,
and sadness probably, is deeply, deeply disturbing."
Primatologist Stephen Brend told BUAV that using monkeys in
such a stressed state is "bad science" and trying
to extrapolate useful data in such circumstances is an "untenable
proposition." PETA stated they found similar conditions
in Covance's Vienna, Virginia lab during an undercover investigation
in 2004-5. Covance sued PETA and their undercover operative
as a result of the Vienna operation, and obtained a restraining
order preventing the operative from performing any further
undercover work for three years, and forced PETA and their
operative to turn over all materials they obtained documenting
conditions at Covance. PETA is further prevented from attempting
to infiltrate Covance for five years.
University of Cambridge
Internal documents from the University of Cambridge's
primate-testing labs showed that monkeys had undergone surgery
to induce a stroke, and were then left alone after the procedure
for 15 hours overnight, with no veterinary care, because staff
only worked from nine to five. The BUAV judicial challenge
followed a 10-month undercover investigation by BUAV into
three research programmes at Cambridge in 1998. BUAV's lawyer,
David Thomas, told the court: "The whole system is very
secretive and the public does not get to see what is really
going on."
The experiments involved the use of hundreds
of macaque monkeys, who were deliberately brain damaged for
the purpose of research into strokes and Parkinson's disease.
The macaques were first trained to perform behavioral and
cognitive tasks. Researchers then caused brain damage either
by removing parts of the macaque's brains or by injecting
toxins. The monkeys were then re-tested to determine how the
damage had affected their skills. They were deprived of food
and water to encourage them to perform the tasks, with water
being withheld for 22 out of every 24 hours.
University of California, Riverside
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Britches,
as the Animal Liberation Front say they found him. |
One of the best-known cases of alleged abuse
involved Britches, a macaque monkey born in 1985 into a breeding
colony at the University of California, Riverside, removed
from his mother at birth, and left alone and tethered, with
his eyelids sewn shut, as part of a sight-deprivation experiment.
Britches was removed from the laboratory when
he was five weeks old during a raid by the Animal Liberation
Front, along with 700 other animals. The university criticized
the ALF, claiming that damage to the monkey's eyelids, allegedly
caused by the sutures, had in fact been caused by an ALF veterinarian
who examined the monkey after the raid and wrote a report.
The experiment was condemned by the American Council for the
Blind.
The photograph of Britches on the right is taken
from a video made by the ALF during the raid, and later released
as a short film by PETA. The university said that the monitoring
device attached to the monkey's head had been tampered with
by activists before the photograph was taken.
Columbia University
According to CNN, a post-doctoral "whistleblowing"
veterinarian at Columbia University approached the university's
Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee about experiments
being carried out by an assistant professor of neurosurgery,
E. Sander Connolly. Connolly was allegedly causing an approximation
of strokes in baboons by removing their left eyeballs and
using the empty eye sockets to reach a critical blood vessel
to their brains. A clamp was placed on this blood vessel until
the stroke was induced, after which Connolly would attempt
to treat the condition with an experimental drug. In a letter
to the National Institutes of Health, PETA described one experiment:
"On September 19, 2001, baboon B777's left eye was removed,
and a stroke was induced. The next morning, it was noted that
the animal could not sit up, that he was leaning over, and
that he could not eat. That evening, the baboon was still
slouched over and was offered food but couldn't chew. On September
21, 2001, the record shows that the baboon was 'awake, but
no movement, can't eat (chew), vomited in the a.m.' With no
further notation about consulting with a veterinarian, the
record reads, 'At 1:30 p.m. the animal died in the cage.'"
In a letter to PETA, neurologist Robert S. Hoffman
stated that he regards such experiments to be a "blind
alley," and that the baboons are "kept alive for
either three or ten days after experiencing a major stroke
and in a condition of profound disability. This is obviously
as terrifying for animals as it is for humans unless one believes
that animals are incapable of terror or other emotional distress"
A USDA investigation of the Columbia baboons
found "no indication that the experiments...violated
federal guidelines." Further, the Dean of Research at
Columbia's School of Medicine noted that Connolly stopped
the experiments because of threats from animal rights activists,
despite the fact that Connolly "remained convinced that
his experiments were humane and potentially valuable."
University of California, Los Angeles
In 2006, animal rights activists forced a primate
researcher at UCLA to shut down the experiments in his lab.
The researcher's name, phone number, and address were posted
on the website of the UCLA Primate Freedom Project, along
with a description of his research, which stated that he had
"received a grant to kill 30 macaque monkeys for vision
experiments. Each monkey is first paralyzed, then used for
a single session that lasts up to 120 hours, and finally killed."
Demonstrations were held in front of the professor's home.
A Molotov cocktail was placed on the porch of what was believed
to be the home of another UCLA primate researcher. Instead,
it was accidentally left on the porch of an elderly woman
unrelated to the university. The Animal Liberation Front claimed
responsibility for the attack. As a result of the campaign,
the researcher sent an email to the Primate Freedom Project
stating "you win," and "please don’t bother
my family anymore." In another incident at UCLA in June
2007, the Animal Liberation Brigade placed a bomb under the
car of a UCLA children's ophthalmologist, who experiments
on cats and rhesus monkeys; the bomb had a faulty fuse and
did not detonate. UCLA is now refusing Freedom of Information
Act requests for animal medical records.
Opponents of animal testing
Opponents argue that:
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The suffering of the animals is excessive
in relation to whatever benefits may be reaped. Some opponents,
particularly supporters of animal rights, argue further
that any benefits to human beings cannot outweigh the
suffering of the animals, and that human beings have no
moral right to use individual animals in ways that do
not benefit that individual.
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In practice, there is widespread abuse of
animals.
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Animals do not consent to being tested upon.
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Animal testing is bad science because:
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Many animal models of disease are induced
and cannot be compared to the human disease. For example,
although genetic and toxin-mediated animal models are
now widely used to model Parkinson's disease, they argue
that these models only superficially resemble the disease
symptoms, without the same time course or cellular pathology.
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Some drugs have dangerous side-effects that
were not predicted by animal models. Thalidomide is often
used as an example of this.
Thanks to Wikipedia
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