Written by PETA
Gerardo L. Paez, a former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) School of Veterinary Medicine, spent years using taxpayer money to breed puppies to have a gene that causes progressive retinal atrophy, a degenerative eye disease that culminates in blindness. During one study, 3-week-old beagle puppies were killed after they had their eyes cut out and dissected. As if that weren't awful enough, according to an investigation by the federal government's Office of Research Integrity, when the results weren't what Paez had hoped for, he simply fabricated them.
Here's a little-known fact about government grants: They're refundable. At least they are if you break the rules. That's why PETA is urging the National Eye Institute (NEI) to demand that UPenn return the money that was used for the experiments in which serial puppy-torturer Paez intentionally fabricated data. Paez later presented the bogus findings at two annual meetings of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Obviously, that's a big no-no—and it's grounds for the NEI to demand a refund for a portion of the $2 million it laid out for the dog experiments and to prohibit Paez from ever receiving taxpayer money again.
This wouldn't be the first time that grant money had to be returned: Prompted by investigations and complaints from PETA, the University of Connecticut Health Center and the University of Washington were ordered to pay back tens of thousands in grant money for abusing monkeys in their laboratories. The feds have also ordered the University of Michigan to pay back a whopping $1.4 million that was used for animal experiments that violated the law.
It just goes to show that crime doesn't always pay—sometimes it pays back.
Written by Alisa Mullins
PETA filed a formal complaint today with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) calling for an immediate investigation into painful, deadly, and, we believe, illegal veterinary vaccine potency tests on hamsters at Colorado Serum Company (CSC) in Denver.
The persistent folks in PETA's Regulatory Testing Division have repeatedly written and called CSC to make sure its officials are aware that in 2006 the USDA approved a non-animal test in place of an obsolete and lethal method of using hamsters to test the Leptospira vaccine. The Animal Welfare Act states that the use of animals should only be approved when alternatives are not available, but CSC is killing hundreds of hamsters a year, without providing them with any pain relief—more than 1,850 of them in just the past four years.
And catch this: According to CSC's annual reports, the company "found no new information which would allow for a change in our approach to these issues," even though a simple Web search would have clued someone in. In fact, CSC has done nothing but copy the same information that it used in 2004 to justify its use of animals into every report through 2009!
We'll keep on top of this case. If you're sick of pointless cruelty to animals or want to know more about superior test methods, check this out.
Written by Jeff Mackey
A report issued this week by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., blasts 100 "questionable," "mismanaged," and "poorly planned" stimulus-funded projects, including an especially cruel and wasteful experiment that the report aptly calls "Monkeys Getting High for Science." (No, it isn't another Onion story, unfortunately.) The study in question is being conducted at the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, which nabbed $71,623 in stimulus funds (i.e., tax dollars) to feed cocaine to monkeys.
"I think all of [the projects] are waste," McCain told ABC News. "[S]ome are more egregious than others but all of them are terrible."
Hooking monkeys on coke definitely falls into the "more egregious" category. Unfortunately, the idiotic study is just a drop in the proverbial crack pipe. Other mind-bogglingly absurd addiction studies on animals include the following:
Please help prevent more money from being flushed down the laboratory drain by asking the National Institutes of Health to stop funding addiction experiments on animals.
Victory Update: Following a year of vigorous campaigning, PETA has learned that government officials have grounded plans for a cruel and ineffective radiation experiment on monkeys. Learn more about this victory for monkeys.
But here on Earth, people aren't only listening, they're following you—on Twitter. Check out the following tweet from Astro_Sandy, aka NASA astronaut Dr. Sandra H. Magnus:
Hopefully, Dr. Magnus will avoid zoos (and, given the fishbowl reference, aquariums) entirely in the future. We also thought that she should know about some other caged animals who desperately need her help—the squirrel monkeys who are slated to be zapped with massive doses of radiation in a cruel NASA-funded experiment.
We are also sending her info on how massive amounts of radiation administered all at once cannot simulate the real conditions astronauts face in space and letting her know about the harm that will be inflicted on the monkeys (including brain damage, blindness, and cancer). In addition, we are telling her about her peers in the space exploration community who have openly criticized these misguided experiments.
Maybe Dr. Magnus will join former NASA aerospace engineer April Evans, members of Congress, and every member and supporter of PETA in objecting to this cruel and stupid experiment.
After more than a decade of scientific research, negotiations, and lobbying by PETA, PETA U.K., and other groups, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has approved new, non-animal testing methods for measuring skin irritation. Now, across the world, rabbits will be spared as the standard way of testing for skin irritation is switched over to high-tech modern methods. This really is a global deal: The OECD produces binding safety testing guidelines for its more than 30 member nations—including the U.S.—and represents almost all of the world's largest economies. Many countries that aren't members also follow the OECD's guidelines.
Animal-friendly methods employ in vitro toxicity screening, "skin" grown in laboratories, and computer models. While non-animal methods have been recognized for some time as valid for testing corrosivity (whether something will permanently damage the skin), these are the first methods to be recognized as effective in measuring skin irritation, thus allowing for a complete assessment of skin effects without the use of animals.
The methods that have just been adopted by the OECD use reconstructed human skin models that successfully reproduce the effect of chemicals on human skin and allow reliable, accurate measurements of damage in a way that applying chemicals to the shaved, raw skin of rabbits can not. Besides the pain and distress caused to the rabbits who are used in such tests, evidence considered by the OECD also included the fact that animal tests do not accurately measure whether a substance is likely to be an irritant to human skin—in other words, these methods will be better at protecting us too.
We're particularly proud that PETA U.K. played an integral role in this process. Our affiliate financially supported the rigorous scientific testing of one of the non-animal methods that were just approved, and this helped to produce the scientific evidence that led the OECD to green-light the method. And on the U.S. side of things, PETA has given more than $850,000 over the past 10 years to the development and implementation of non-animal testing methods.
Thanks to this news, tens of thousands of rabbits a year will no longer suffer in these tests. And that should make us all feel pretty good.
Written by Shawna Flavell
The Onion—in a 2004 article that was recently re-posted on the front page of the gag mag's website—says scientists torture mice just for laughs. This "report" is so cleverly written that when I sent it to Kathy Guillermo, PETA's vice president of laboratory investigations, she had "palpitations," as she put it.
Sorry, Kathy, didn't mean to trick you into thinking that vivisectors had finally come clean and admitted that mice aren't good stand-ins for humans. But wouldn't it be great if they really were as refreshingly honest as this "researcher"?
"For years, I've used lab mice to research cell breakdown in living tissue—and I've been lucky enough to make some pretty important medical advancements along the way," said researcher Ellen Gresham of the Harvard Institute for Advanced Studies. "But even if there were no scientific benefit to the work I do, I'd still experiment on mice, just to watch them suffer." "The truth is, mice are particularly ill-suited for our tissue study," Gresham added. "We could construct a computer model that would yield more accurate results, but we don't care."
"For years, I've used lab mice to research cell breakdown in living tissue—and I've been lucky enough to make some pretty important medical advancements along the way," said researcher Ellen Gresham of the Harvard Institute for Advanced Studies. "But even if there were no scientific benefit to the work I do, I'd still experiment on mice, just to watch them suffer."
"The truth is, mice are particularly ill-suited for our tissue study," Gresham added. "We could construct a computer model that would yield more accurate results, but we don't care."
While Ellen Gresham is a figment of The Onion's imagination, the fact that modern, high-tech alternatives to experiments on animals are faster, cheaper, and more accurate is very real. In fact, one more such test, EpiDerm, was just approved last week by the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. While we're on the subject, why not drop a line to your congressional representative reminding him or her of that?
TiVo alert: April Evans, my nominee for Gutsiest Animal Defender of the Year, is scheduled to appear on Issues With Jane Velez-Mitchell tonight. Evans, who is also featured in today's Houston Chronicle, is the NASA engineer who walked away from her dream job working on development of the International Space Station to take a stand against NASA's cruel and pointless radiation experiments on monkeys.
"I began to feel guilty that I was part of an organization doing this," she told the Chronicle. "I've dedicated myself to trying to stop these experiments."
And she means it: Evans now spends her days working to halt NASA's misguided monkey radiation project and campaigning for an international treaty to end space experiments on primates.
You can support PETA's and April's efforts to stop these experiments by sending an e-mail to the Brookhaven National Laboratory, where a portion of these experiments are set to take place. (And don't forget to join PETA's NASA Facebook group.)
Congress is considering a bill to reform the way that this country tests and manages toxic chemicals, and PETA has submitted testimony.
Because the legislation seeks to require more chemical testing, it will lead to vastly increased suffering of animals in laboratories if it's passed. That's why it's vitally important that you tell your congressional representative to make sure that the final bill requires the use of modern, effective non-animal research methods and scraps cruel and archaic chemical tests on animals.
The Toxic Chemicals Safety Act, H.R. 5820, incorporates some major reforms. Even though the EPA has acknowledged that non-animal testing methods provide more accurate results, the current bill would force the agency to run plans to implement non-animal tests by a committee of government officials that is widely recognized as a major obstacle to the development and use of new non-animal methods in the U.S. We need reform, but it must be the right kind of reform—change that improves public safety and protects animals against unnecessary suffering.
Animals in laboratories have no time to lose—please speak up right now to save their lives!
In a study that sounds like something dreamed up by the mischief-makers at The Onion, experimenters at the University of Colorado (CU) have determined that putting mice into uncomfortable cages and moving them from cage to cage upsets them to the point that it physically alters their brains. This, the experimenters conclude, "affects the outcomes of research." Gee, ya think?
Another stunning discovery: Introducing a strange mouse to this already stressful mix may even cause the animals to fight to protect their little bit of turf. Experimenters also injured the animals' noses and shoved them into cages with either low or high ventilation for a few weeks, killed them, and cut up their brains for examination.
"We assume that mice used in laboratories are all the same, but they are not," Diego Restrepo, director of CU's neuroscience program, told Science Daily. Wow, if only someone had called us, we could have saved Restrepo (and the mice) a lot of trouble—not to mention all the government grant money it would have saved the taxpayers. We also could have told him that housing animals in crowded cages and failing to provide prompt veterinary care and adequate anesthesia during painful surgeries (all of which has been documented at CU laboratories) can also skew research findings.
Anybody who has spent any time with mice knows that they each have individual personalities, just like cats, dogs, and all other animals do. They also feel pain and experience loneliness, boredom, and fear. So, yes, sticking them in cramped cages, hauling them out every once in a while to poke and prod them, and forcing them to live in close proximity with strangers upsets them. Apparently, Common Sense 101 isn't a prerequisite at CU.
Animals across Japan are making a bid for freedom (hopefully, captive animals everywhere are taking notes). First, a dolphin who was being forced to perform stupid tricks for loud, obnoxious audiences day in and day out at Japan's Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium decided that he'd had enough. During a performance, he leaped over the side of his tiny tank. Unfortunately, he landed on the concrete instead of being transported back to his ocean home.
Then, earlier this week, 15 monkeys at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute (PRI) escaped from an enclosure (dubbed a "forest home" in news reports—yeah, right) by using tree branches to fling themselves over a 17-foot-high electric fence.
Sadly, freedom was short-lived for the monkeys as well. All the runaways were eventually recaptured. The head of PRI said that the monkeys didn't stray too far, probably because they wanted to be near the monkeys who were left behind.
Someone should listen to the SOS signals that animals in captivity are sending. Instead of keeping dolphins in chemically treated tanks and forcing them to "dance" for fish or locking monkeys in enclosures so that vivisectors can drill holes into their skulls, attach electrodes to their brains, and fasten small wire coils directly to their eyes to study eye movement (which is what some experimenters at PRI do), we should be leaving animals in the wild.
Please take action today to help us free captive marine mammals and put an end to senseless and cruel experiments on monkeys and other animals.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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