Even without a big striped hat, our mischievous cat shook things up at the St. Louis Children's Hospital gala this past weekend. Dressed to the nines in a bowtie and tails, the cat grabbed the attention of the gala attendees while his fellow protesters handed out information about the hospital's abuse of cats for cruel and archaic intubation training exercises in its Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course.

The leaflets were, unfortunately, not works of children's fiction. Trainees at St. Louis Children's force hard plastic tubes down cats' delicate windpipes over and over again in a procedure that can cause bleeding and swelling in the tissue of the cats' throats as well as pain, scarring, collapsed lungs, and even death. One gala attendee exclaimed, "Are they really doing this? I have a cat at home. This is horrible!"

Readily available infant simulators have been shown to better prepare trainees to treat sick and injured babies and children. Even the PALS course's sponsor, the American Heart Association, strongly opposes animal use in the course. The group has distanced itself from the few facilities that still use animals and only recommends the use of simulators.

If you do not like it, not one little bit, take a minute to tell Saint Louis Children's Hospital to stop abusing cats and better serve children by switching to modern, superior human-patient simulators. 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

© StarmaxInc.com

In an ironic twist in the Michael Jackson manslaughter trial, Dr. Conrad Murray's defense team has reportedly commissioned tests on animals in an apparent effort to dispute charges that the doctor killed the King of Pop, who was famous for his love of animals.

According to news reports, Murray's lawyer, J. Michael Flanagan, revealed "in open court that he had commissioned his own study about the oral ingestion of [p]ropofol." A source close to Murray told RadarOnline.com, "A study was done on [b]eagle dogs to determine how much [p]ropofol would have to be orally consumed to cause death. … The study definitely involved more than two dogs. It's unknown if the dogs died or suffered any harm."

In toxicology tests, large doses of chemicals are pumped into dogs' bodies, slowly poisoning them. Not only are these tests cruel and irrelevant to human health, they are also redundant because substantial data are publicly available about the oral toxicity of propofol in dogs, humans, and other animals. The tests are also in potential violation of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which prohibits procedures on animals that "unnecessarily duplicate previous experiments."

PETA has filed a complaint with the State Bar of California and is urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to also investigate how and why the cruel test reportedly commissioned by Murray's defense team was approved and to issue citations and fines for any violations of the AWA. We will keep you updated as the case progresses.

 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

This year, trainees at the National Association of Neonatal Nurses (NANN) educational conference were better educated on how to care for newborns than they have ever been before, with help from PETA.

Previously, neonatal nurses in the course were taught emergency techniques such as inserting tubes into umbilical blood vessels, draining fluid from the chest cavity, and extracting spinal fluid by performing the procedures on fetal pigs, whose anatomy is very different from that of a human infant. But because of a generous donation of 30 newborn-patient simulators from PETA and one of our supporters, the McGrath Family Foundation of San Diego, the nurses are now learning the procedures by practicing on human anatomy instead.

NANN Director of Education Steve Biddle noted, "PETA's donation of medical simulators allows us to take our neonatal training program to the next level, above and beyond what we were able to achieve using animals."

Since NANN is recognized as an expert voice in neonatal nursing that influences standards of practice in the field, we hope that other training programs for nurses that still use animals will be inspired to switch to modern simulators as well.

You can help support the replacement of animal laboratories with modern patient simulators and other methods by donating to PETA's Investigations & Rescue Fund

 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Now that a debt-ceiling compromise has been reached in Washington, Congress faces the task of slashing more than $1 trillion in spending over the next decade. So which government-funded programs should get the ax? PETA is suggesting cutting the $16 billion spent annually on animal experiments.

A good place to start would be the cruel "Mr. Potato Head" experiments on baby monkeys conducted by Kevin Grove at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, which have cost taxpayers more than $8 million, including an additional $94,000 in support from the Obama stimulus package. This Vivisector of the Month awardee spends his days terrorizing baby monkeys with things that scare them, such as Mr. Potato Head dolls, to see if babies of monkeys fed unhealthy, high-fat diets are more scared than those of monkeys who ate healthy diets. Hello--does anyone not know by now that junk food is bad for you?

You can see the ridiculous and cruel experiments for yourself in this never-before-seen video footage that PETA has obtained from ONPRC:
 

 
PETA has written to several key members of Congress, including those charged with appointing members to the super committee that will study where to make spending cuts, to suggest that the government could save billions every year by halting funding for these and other cruel and pointless experiments.

You can help by e-mailing your senators and representatives and asking them to spend your money on something other than tormenting animals.

 
Written by Michelle Sherrow

jasejc/cc by 2.0

 
The skies just got friendlier for primates of the nonhuman variety. American Airlines has publicly confirmed that it will no longer transport nonhuman primates to be used in experiments. In adding cruelty to its no-fly list, American Airlines joins British Airways, United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Qantas, Delta Air Lines, Air China, Monarch Air Group, Amerijet, IBC Airways, and several other airlines in refusing to transport primates to facilities where they will be tormented and killed in experiments.

You may also recall that Lufthansa airlines agreed last year to stop transporting dogs and cats to laboratories after a PETA action alert generated an enormous response from concerned people.

You can help stop laboratory abuse at its source by asking the federal government to divert funding from cruel experiments on animals to modern non-animal methods and human-based clinical research.
 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

In his new movie Project Nim, which opens today in New York City and Chicago, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker James Marsh explores the tragic life of a chimpanzee, Nim Chimpsky, and the people who exploited him for their own selfish ends.

Born in a laboratory in the 1970s, Nim was taught American Sign Language as part of a project to show that it could be done. But that was just the beginning of Nim's odyssey. He was shuffled between homes, kept segregated from his own species, often caged and tethered, and eventually dumped onto a series of laboratories. Animal rights advocates fought to have him retired to a sanctuary and, for those of you who plan to see the movie, here's a spoiler alert: They were ultimately successful.

While Nim did learn sign language, the truly important lesson that he taught us is that nonhuman primates, like all other animals, desire and deserve the same freedom that human primates enjoy and that depriving them of it is devastating. Why, 30 years later, have we still not learned that lesson?

 
Written by Michelle Sherrow

UPDATE: Statement released from Brookhaven National Laboratory: "NASA has informed Brookhaven that a proposal involving primate research at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory on the Brookhaven Lab site should be removed from consideration for experimental time at the facility."

Well, folks, you did it. After scores of protests and more than 100,000 letters, phone calls, and e-mails from PETA supporters—including some high-profile allies, such as Sir Paul McCartney,  Bob Barker, Alicia Silverstone, members of Congress, and even a former NASA astronaut and engineer—the space agency has quietly called off plans to conduct cruel radiation experiments on monkeys. 

 

Thanks in large part to your efforts, dozens of squirrel monkeys have been given an early Christmas gift and will be spared from receiving harmful doses of radiation and then being isolated in cages and subjected to years of behavioral experiments to measure the damage caused by the radiation. Such damage likely would have included brain damage, cataracts, cancerous tumors, loss of motor control, and early death.

Way to go, team—you can be over the moon on this one!

Written by Alisa Mullins

http://www.flickr.com/
photos/zoomzoom/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

PETA's savvy legal team never stops uncovering new ways to expose the ugly business of vivisection. The Wall Street Journal, The Scientist, Nature Medicine, and an ABC News affiliate have all recently done pieces about our innovative approach to exposing the torment that animals are forced to endure in laboratories.

PETA has recently filed lawsuits against the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Maryland–Baltimore for allegedly violating public records laws by withholding documents related to experiments in which holes are drilled into animals' skulls and others in which animals are given electric shocks to their tongues when they take a sip of water. We're also using a rarely invoked Wisconsin law to petition a judge to allow for prosecution of University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty members and administrators who have violated state law by subjecting sheep to painful and deadly decompression experiments.

The biggest fear for those who imprison, cut up, burn, shock, and poison animals for a living is exposure. We'll continue to find and use every available legal avenue to make sure that laboratory doors are thrown wide open. Those responsible for harming animals must know that they are not above the law and that they will be held accountable in courtrooms—or at least in the court of public opinion. Please join our fight.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor

Here's what Jeff says about this week's masterpiece: "The strip is based on the sad measures that officials have to take in order to protect rhinos from poachers. And a little depravity thrown in for good measure."

He also let me know that, in honor of Earth Week, he sprayed this strip with 50 percent less pesticides. Which was very noble of him, I thought. Anyway, this one's a zinger—enjoy!

Click for a larger version

To check out the archives of past strips, click here.

PETA Demonstration Against Cruel Toxicity Testing in the ‘90s

You may have heard the news that the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology Program, and the National Institutes of Health have signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" to coordinate efforts on alternative methods to animal experimentation. This stuff is always more complicated than it sounds, so it’s not quite time to pop the champagne corks just yet (as some groups have been doing)—but feel free to put the bubbly on ice, because it’s a good sign that our hard work is paying off.

Courtesy of the good folks in PETA’s Regulatory Testing Division—who have been working behind the scenes with these agencies for years to get them to admit that their bloated animal testing programs (which are responsible for the suffering and death of hundreds of millions of animals) are outdated, ineffective, and, frankly, absurd—here’s a little rundown on what this all means, and how it came about:

First of all, this is a significant about-face for the NTP and the EPA—both of whom have been shockingly resistant to incorporating modern science into their toxicity testing programs. It looks like the United States is finally beginning to realize (as Europe has known for some time and as the animal protection community has been advocating for years) that the public and the environment can be better protected through non-animal in vitro tests based on well-understood biological principles than by throwing wads of cash and millions upon millions of lives into the bottomless pit of animal testing.

Fighting this entrenched, bureaucratic mentality over the past couple of decades hasn’t been easy—and, as usual, we’ve had to use a two-pronged attack to get it done: While our Regulatory Testing Division comments on each animal testing plan that the EPA and the NTP puts forward, works directly with top corporations doing the testing and finding alternatives, testifies at government workshops and before Congress, and, occasionally, sues the government to disclose their deliberations about promoting animal tests, our Campaigns Department gets out the billboards, the bullhorns, and the bunny suits and shouts about these ludicrous, wasteful experiments to anyone who will listen. During this time, PETA has convinced the Department of Transportation to stop testing corrosive substances on rabbits, followed Al Gore around on his campaign stops with a 10-foot rabbit to convince him to stop pushing EPA animal tests, and worked (ever-so-patiently) to persuade regulatory agencies which still believe that it’s important, for example, to keep testing asbestos on animals (the NTP) and which have failed to ban a single toxic industrial chemical in more than a decade (the EPA) that maybe it’s time to stop testing on animals and start using modern science instead. We’ve also funded the development and incorporation of non-animal test methods to the tune of more than ¾ million dollars in recent years.

This new collaboration is certainly something different, and it’s a promising step in the right direction—but it has to be backed up with Congressional will and funding if it’s going to get anywhere. A new entity must be created with the resources to get the job done—it can not be left to the EPA and the NTP. The fact that the head of the human genome project is involved with this is a good sign—it’s going to take an intense, focused effort on the scale of the human genome project to get the job done.

So we’re hoping that the prevailing wind surrounding the National Research Council’s vision and the newly announced collaboration between the NTP and the EPA will provide the momentum necessary to overcome the inertia that has characterized the American government’s attitude to toxicity testing for decades, and which causes the suffering and death of more than 15 million animals every year.

For more information on what you can do to help animals used for experimentation, check out StopAnimalTests.com.