Animal Experimentation

     Animal experimentation intrinsically involves the incarceration of animals which itself causes intense psychological distress plus subsequent poisoning, mutilation, disease and the killing of those individuals. It is arguably the most brutal and most severe form of systematic, genocidal-scale violence in the modern world and yet it is called science.

Vivisection

     Although vivisection literally means 'to cut up alive', the term has come to include all experiments involving animals, and not just those involving dissection. Vivisection began because of religious prohibitions against the dissection of human corpses. When religious leaders finally lifted these prohibitions, it was too late - vivisection was already entrenched in medical and educational institutions.

     Estimates of the number of animals tortured and killed annually in U.S. laboratories diverge widely - from 17 to 70 million animals. The Animal Welfare Act requires laboratories to report the number of animals used in experiments, but the Act does not cover mice, rats, and birds (used in some 80 to 90 percent of all experiments). Because these animals are not covered by the Act, they remain uncounted and we can only guess at how many actually suffer and die each year.

     The largest breeding company in the United States is Charles River Breeding Laboratories (CRBL) headquartered in Massachusetts and owned by Bausch and Lomb. It commands 40-50 percent of the market for mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, rhesus monkeys, imported primates, and miniature swine.

     Since mice and rats are not protected under Animal Welfare Act regulations, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not require that commercial breeders of these rodents be registered or that the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) inspect such establishments. (4)

     Dogs and cats are also used in experiments. They come from breeders like CRBL, some animal shelters and pounds, and organized "bunchers" who pick up strays, purchase litters from unsuspecting people who allow their companion animals to become pregnant, obtain animals from "Free to a Good Home" advertisements, or trap and steal the animals. Birds, frogs, pigs, sheep, cattle, and many naturally free-roaming animals (e.g., prairie dogs and owls) are also common victims of experimentation. At this writing, animals traditionally raised for food are covered by Animal Welfare Act regulations only minimally, and on a temporary basis, when used in, for example, heart transplant experiments; but they are not covered at all when used in agriculture studies.

     Unfortunately, vivisectors are using more and more animals whom they consider less "cute," because, although they know these animals suffer just as much, they believe people won't object as strenuously to the torture of a pig or a rat as they will to that of a dog or a rabbit.

Dissection

     Dissection is the practice of cutting into and studying animals. Every year, 5.7 million animals are used in secondary and college science classes. Each animal sliced open and discarded represents not only a life lost, but also just a small part of a trail of animal abuse and environmental havoc.

     Dissection teaches youth that animals are merely resources for our disposal, not living organisms which experience pain and suffering, and desire only to lead their lives. Humans must learn the value of existence; cutting up animals in stils anthropocentric (exclusively human-centered) values. Studying life does not require destruction. Dissection overlooks.

     Specific companies profit from supplying the vast number of animals necessary for dissection. Biological supply houses often obtain animals from pounds, shelters, slaughterhouses, fisheries, fur farms and the wild. Taking animals from wild habitats depletes the natural animal populations. This exploitation negatively affects frog populations and insect control, resulting in crop damage. If not taken from the wild, animals are bred explicitly for dissection, again in poor conditions. At the supply houses, live animals are held in unsanitary and substandard conditions, until they are gassed or injected with formaldehyde

Animals in Cosmetic and other Product Test

     Every year, millions of animals suffer and die in painful tests in order to determine the safety of cosmetics. Substances like eye shadow and soap are tested on rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, dogs, and many other animals, despite the fact that the test results do not help prevent or treat human illness or injury. According to the companies that perform these tests, animal testing is done to establish the safety of a product and the ingredients. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which regulates cosmetic products, does not require animal testing. Some of the tests used on animals are eye irritancy tests, acute toxicity tests, and skin irritancy tests.

     In eye irritancy tests, a liquid, flake, granule, or powdered substance is dropped into the eyes of a group of albino rabbits. The animals are often immobilized in stocks from which only their heads protrude. They usually receive no anesthesia during the tests. After placing the substance into the rabbit’s eyes, lab technicians record the damage to the eye tissue at specific intervals over an average period of 72 hours. The tests sometimes last seven to eighteen days. Reactions to the substances include swollen eyelids, ulceration, bleeding, swollen irises massive deterioration, and blindness. During the tests, rabbits eyelids are usually held open with clips, because of this, many animals break their necks as they try to escape.

     Acute toxicity tests, commonly called lethal dose or poisoning tests, determine the amount of a substance that will kill a percentage, even up to one-hundred percent, of a group of test animals. In these tests, a substance is forced by tube into the animal’s stomach or through holes cut in their throats. Experimenters observe the animal’s reactions which can include convulsions, labored breathing, malnutrition, skin eruptions, and bleeding from the eyes, nose, or mouth. The test was developed in 1927 and the testing continues until at least fifty percent of the animals die (usually takes 2-4 weeks). Like eye irritancy tests, lethal dose tests are unreliable and have too many variables to have a constant result.

     Skin irritancy tests are conducted on rabbits, guinea pigs and other animals. The process involves placing chemicals on the animals’ raw, shaved skin and covering the skin with adhesive plaster. The animals are immobilized in restraining devices to prevent them from struggling. Meanwhile, laboratory workers apply the chemicals which burn into the animal’s skin.

Experiment on Primates

     Experimenting on nonhuman primates in the hope of curing human neurological diseases is an exercise in futility. At first glance, this may seem counter-intuitive, as we all know how closely related we are to our nonhuman primate "cousins". That we share 98.5% of our genes with chimpanzees has been known for years, though the original author of that figure has now revised his estimate to approximately 94.5%. Even so, that is an awful lot of similarity and has led us to believe that laboratory experiments on chimpanzees, monkeys and other nonhuman primates provide results reliable enough to be extrapolated to humans.
     Some 2,000 chimpanzees are maintained in U.S. laboratories,1 and approximately 100 chimps are born each year to captive mothers.2 There are numerous problems with using chimpanzees as experimental subjects. One concern is their depleted status in the wild. Chimpanzees are considered a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Though importation of free-living chimpanzees from Africa is currently restricted, some fear that the restrictions will be lifted because of increasing demands by pharmaceutical industries, among others. This could present a serious threat to the survival of this species in the wild. For each captured chimp that reaches his or her overseas destination, it is estimated that ten others die en route. Another argument against their use is the extreme suffering imposed by the laboratory environment itself. In the wild, chimps are very active, traveling up to 7 or 8 miles daily3, and spending up to 70 percent of the day foraging for food.4 Chimps also have an extremely complex social structure, and spend large amounts of time socializing. These activities are denied to chimps who spend years confined in isolation cages. Chimps can live well into their fifties.
     AIDS experimenters have been infecting chimps with the HIV virus since 1984. None have become clinically ill, in spite of being infected with several different strains of the virus, having their immune systems altered with drugs, having treatments designed to specifically destroy the cells which are thought to be most active in protecting the body from HIV infection, and being co-infected with other viruses which were presumed to help HIV gain a foothold. Experimenters have even injected human HIV-infected brain tissue directly into chimpanzee brains, but to no avail.5
     HIV does not reproduce well in the infected chimp. This is apparently due to the higher baseline numbers5 and greater proliferative response6 of chimp T8 lymphocytes, as well as the lower ratio of T4 to T8 cells,7 when compared to human blood cells. T4 cells are central actors in most immune responses, including both cell- and antibody-mediated defenses. T4 cells are preferentially attacked by HIV in infected human patients.8 T8 cells are thought to suppress the replication of T4 cells.5
     T-lymphocytes play a crucial role in defending the body against disease organisms, through the cell-mediated immune response. While some individual chimps may demonstrate a reduction of T4 lymphocytes after HIV infection,9 they do not show the dramatic depletion characteristic of the human infection.10 This depletion may have an autoimmune cause in humans, since blood from HIV patients contains T-lymphocytes which kill uninfected T4 lymphocytes in culture. These killer cells are not found in HIV-infected chimps.11
     The antibody response to HIV is also more powerful in chimps. B-lymphocytes in the HIV-infected chimp produce greater amounts of antibodies than in most human patients, destroying infected cells early in the course of disease. This antibody-mediated cell-killing ability is not found in HIV-infected humans at any stage of illness.6 Also, humans show a drop in antibodies just before becoming clinically ill—this drop has not been seen in chimps.12 Perhaps due to the chimp’s immune system, HIV is found only in their blood cells, with very few exceptions,5 whereas in humans, it is found free in the blood plasma.
     The differences in the chimpanzee and the human immune system are dramatic, and highlight the impracticality of using these animals as a model for human AIDS. Also, above and beyond the intrinsic cellular differences, some authors have noted that the stresses associated with captivity can alter enzyme levels, thus invalidating experimental data.13
     Another result of AIDS experiments is the growing number of AIDS-infected chimpanzees who are unwanted by experimenters due to their infected status, but who cannot be re-introduced into the wild. Large amounts of resources must be set aside to care for them over the remaining years of their lives. Estimates for the cost of lifetime care for one chimp range as high as $250,000.14
     2,500 primates are imprisoned within the walls of the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center (ORPRC), ORPRC receives $15 million in federal tax dollars per year and subjects primates to a variety of cruel and useless experiments.
      ORPRC is one of eight monkey experiment hellholes entitled Regional Primate Research Centers (RPRC’s), funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
2,500 primates are imprisoned within the walls of the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center (The National Institutes of Health is now considering giving $3.3 million to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York to breed chimps who would be killed to provide hearts and other organs for human transplants. Each transplanted chimp heart would be used only until a human heart became available. No chimp-to-human heart transplant has yet been successful.

All the information was obtain from:

PETA http://www.peta.org/

Absurdity of Animal Experimentation http://vivisection-absurd.org.uk/primate.html

Free the animals http://www.freetheanimals.homestead.com/vivisection.html

Uncaged Campaigns http://www.uncaged.co.uk/default.htm

WHAT CAN YOU DO

Boycott March of dimes since all the money goes for animal experimentation

Boycott all product that test on animals (go to PETA for a free animal cruelty shoping list)

Boycott Protect & Gamble products since their household, personal care, and pharmaceutical product manufacturer continues to poison and kill animals

Do not dissect any animals. You have the right not to dissect, plus they are other alternatives for dissections.

Visit: http://www.peta.org/mall/cc.html for the Caring Consumer Guide