Written by PETA
One danger faced by dogs and cats who are left outside or turned over to disreputable animal shelters is that they could wind up in the hands of Class B dealers, people who profit by acquiring "random source" animals and selling them to laboratories for use in cruel and deadly experiments. Now, a bill before Congress, the federal Pet Safety and Protection Act of 2011, would outlaw the seedy underworld of Class B dealers and end the trafficking of lost, abandoned, and stolen animals in the vivisection industry.
Such a law is long overdue. A 2010 congressional report stated that Class B dealers have been violating the law for many years, including mistreating animals and even fraudulently obtaining them from unknowing citizens looking to place cats and dogs into loving homes. In fact, five of the eight active Class B dealers in the country are currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for their continued violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. Even as these businesses flout the law, they are allowed to continue profiting off the backs of homeless animals with the endorsement of the U.S. government.
Please, never give unwanted animals away to strangers or let your dogs or cats roam outside alone. Click here to urge your representatives in Congress to support the federal Pet Safety and Protection Act of 2011, which would stop Class B dealers from profiting off the suffering of animals.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
Friday marked an inspiring victory for pigs, who were routinely being cut apart, surgically mutilated, and killed as part of an elective medical training course at Germany's University of Ulm. Just two hours after PETA Germany asked supporters to contact university officials, the university announced that it would be permanently ending the pig lab!
Medical students and doctors at the university were performing invasive surgeries on live pigs, including cutting out their gallbladders, removing part of their stomachs and livers, and cutting holes in their chests. Using live animals is a crude and archaic method of teaching surgery, and more and more leading institutions have adopted the use of sophisticated human simulators in place of animals. In fact, the use of animals for this purpose appears to violate German law, which requires the use of non-animal teaching methods whenever they are available.
PETA U.S. assisted PETA Germany by drafting a comprehensive brief for University of Ulm officials that described humane, non-animal options for teaching the procedures that students were performing on pigs.
While the University of Ulm is modernizing its curriculum, here at home, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) still mutilates and kills live pigs in trauma training exercises by cutting holes in their throats and chests, despite the availability of superior, non-animal training methods. Tell MUSC President Raymond Greenberg to end the barbaric training exercises on animals immediately.
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.
In a huge victory for vervet monkeys, U.S. military officials have confirmed that the Army is ending cruel and archaic monthly training exercises at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in which monkeys are poisoned with a drug overdose that makes them suffer from violent seizures in a crude demonstration of the effects of nerve-agent exposure. Instead of abusing terrified monkeys, Aberdeen—the only Army base in the country that uses animals for this training—will now use human patient simulators, just as every other military facility already does. The move follows months of vigorous campaigning by PETA.
PETA's campaign against the barbaric chemical casualty training exercises included a series of protests this week outside the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army. Supporters of this effort included veterans, physicians, active service members, and actor Woody Harrelson, who sent a letter on PETA's behalf to Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno. Many others have also been protesting at Army recruitment centers, flooding the offices of Army officials with e-mails and phone calls, and even gathering outside the homes of Army officials affiliated with the monkey lab. One PETA member even disrupted a speaking event last week by Aberdeen's commanding general, Nick Justice.
Please send an e-mail to Maj. Gen. Nick Justice to thank him for this compassionate decision and ask that he ensure that the transition to simulators be made immediately.
© Robyn Mackenzie/Dreamstime.com
"If shopping could cure breast cancer, it would be cured by now," says Think Before You Pink, an organization dedicated to ending "pinkwashing"—slapping pink ribbons on products in order to convince consumers that they can end breast cancer by buying pink products. In truth, reports Forbes, corporations seek to profit off consumers' strong feelings about breast cancer while simultaneously marketing products that actually contribute to the disease.
Such was the case with KFC's cancer-linked chicken, sold in "Buckets for the Cure," which, adding insult to injury, didn't really raise much money for cancer research, either, as is often the case with pinkwashing campaigns. And what little money makes it to breast cancer research frequently goes to support antiquated, unreliable experiments on animals.
I lost the person I was closest to in the world—my grandmother—to breast cancer, but I know that no matter how many pink sun visors I buy, it is unlikely that I am doing much to help with the search for a cure. Women deserve better than greedy corporations throwing a few pennies at a charity in exchange for huge profit margins. We deserve better than having our money spent on experiments that have proved to be useless. We deserve a cure, and the only way to find one is to stop buying pink doohickeys and start supporting breast cancer research that works—cutting-edge, effective, non-animal research.
For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, please look at PETA's list of cruelty-free charities and join us in supporting breast cancer research that really works.
Victory: As a result of PETA's campaign, the Army announced that it is ending its cruel use of monkeys in chemical attack training exercises and will instead use advanced human simulators!
On Monday, dozens of PETA members greeted the 32,000 attendees—who included Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno—of the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) in Washington, D.C. The protesters were there to urge the Army to stop poisoning primates in a cruel training exercise at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Many veterans and former military medical professionals have already joined PETA's campaign, and the protesters received more encouragement from men and women in uniform attending the meeting.
The Army's exercises involve injecting vervet monkeys with a drug overdose in a crude attempt to recreate the effects of a nerve-agent attack. The monkeys suffer from uncontrollable twitching and seizures, and some even stop breathing. One monkey suffered gaping lacerations, a torn lip, and bitten- or torn-off fingers in fights with other monkeys caused by the stress of the constant physical abuse and confinement.
Other military courses already use human simulators, which can mimic the effects of nerve-agent exposure. Tell Congress to take action now to save monkeys and troops by replacing animals with advanced non-animal training methods.
A notorious experimenter and primate supplier wants the U.S.' help tormenting more monkeys in laboratories.
Frank Ervin, a vivisector from McGill University, operates the Behavioral Sciences Foundation/Primate Resources International on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, which pays trappers to remove vervet monkeys from the wild so that they can be imprisoned in laboratories. The facility crams many monkeys into wooden crates and sends them on a terrifying journey in the dark cargo holds of airplanes to the U.S. and other countries to be tortured and killed in experiments. Ervin also performs his own deadly experiments on monkeys. These disturbing photos, leaked to PETA, are allegedly of monkeys killed in Ervin's cruel experiments on fetal alcohol syndrome:
Ervin wants the U.S. to buy even more monkeys to experiment on, since, in his opinion, the monkeys are "agricultural predators" because they sometimes eat farmers' crops. We're sure that's the reason he wants the U.S. to purchase the animals, not because of the profit that he stands to make. The Animal Rights Foundation of Florida (ARFF) has launched an initiative against importing the monkeys from St. Kitts, including sharing that St. Kitts' own Ministry of Agriculture advocates for spaying and neutering and strategically placed feeding stations to control the monkey population and keep them away from crops.
One U.S. buyer of monkeys from St. Kitts is the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground, which torments the monkeys in cruel and archaic chemical casualty training exercises. You can help end these torturous exercises and prevent the government from stuffing Ervin's pockets by asking your senators and representatives to take action to end Aberdeen's monkey laboratories.
In a true sign of the times, the editors at Scientific American, one of the most widely read scientific publications in the world, now agree with PETA that experiments on chimpanzees should be banned.
"That chimps and humans react to trauma in a like manner should not come as a surprise. Chimps are our closest living relatives and share a capacity for emotion, including fear, anxiety, grief and rage," write the editors. "In our view, the time has come to end biomedical experimentation on chimpanzees."
Hopefully, the editorial will sway members of Congress to support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would end invasive testing on all great apes and allow more than 500 chimpanzees in labs to be released to sanctuaries. And we are certain that the editorial will make its way to the desks of the members of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine (IOM) chimpanzee experimentation review committee, at whose hearing PETA testified this summer. The IOM is scheduled to release its much-anticipated report on the issue in December. A positive report could help propel passage of the federal bill.
Such a ban would mean far better living conditions after more than five long decades for Wenka, at 57 the oldest living chimpanzee in a U.S. laboratory. She is one of more than 100 chimpanzees imprisoned at the Yerkes primate laboratory at Emory University in Atlanta and has spent almost her entire life in a laboratory—she was born in a laboratory cage, torn away from her mother, and locked away in a dark room for the first 17 months of her life. The only time that she has spent outside a laboratory was when she was briefly sold as a "pet" in the mid-1950s before quickly being returned to a laboratory.
This past weekend, members of Georgia Animal Rights and Protection, gathered outside Emory University to call for the release of Wenka to a sanctuary, where she can live out her last few years with some freedom and autonomy. So far, Yerkes is refusing, claiming that Wenka is needed for "aging" research. If officials wait much longer, we suppose they will say that she is needed for "death" research too.
Please take a moment to tell your senators and representatives that you support this bill (H.R. 1513/S. 810) and ask them to spare Wenka and other chimpanzees from testing.
Monkey #V357 was born on the island of St. Kitts, where he was either captured in the wild or born in captivity. If he was abducted from his home in the wild, he likely watched trappers shoot his mother out of a tree with a dart gun, and then was ripped from her arms. If he was born into a breeding facility, he was forcibly—and permanently—torn from his screaming mother, probably within days of birth.
He was then crammed into a tiny crate and flown to Miami, Florida, in a plane’s dark, loud and terrifying cargo hold. There, he was piled onto a truck like luggage and driven up the eastern seaboard to the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
#V357, the only “name” the Army gave him in its laboratory, spent the next three years of his life locked in a steel cage and being used over-and-over as a target for nerve-agent attack training. Every eight weeks, experimenters injected him with a massive drug overdose to crudely mimic a chemical attack and trainees looked on as he twitched uncontrollably, sweated profusely, violently convulsed, and struggled to breathe. The psychological distress that this constant physical abuse and confinement caused led #V357 and the other monkeys imprisoned at Aberdeen to fight each other, and he suffered gaping lacerations, a torn lip, and bitten or torn off fingers. The injuries did not stop the training exercises.
After three years of being tormented in this cruel training course, the Army began punishing his small body in a different experiment. They injected him with a chemical agent that severely restricted blood flow to his brain. After one final injection and several hours of suffering, he died at night, alone in his cold, barren cage.
It is too late for #V357, but it’s not too late for the rest of the monkeys the Army is still tormenting in these cruel and ineffective training courses. Please help stop this by signing this White House petition to replace the monkeys with modern, superior human simulators.
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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