Adrian Morrison, DVM, PhD. Throughout history, humanity has associated with animals in ways that have benefited human beings. Animals have been hunted for food and clothing, accepted at our hearths for companionship, and brought into our fields to produce and provide food. Only during the latter two-thirds of the last century could most people – in the developed, wealthy West — begin to imagine living without animals as part of our daily lives. We were completely dependent on them. As the twentieth century progressed, though, technological advances rendered animals’ visible presence in our lives unnecessary. We can eat a steak without coming close to a living cow, or wear a wool sweater without having to shear any sheep. But now, according to some, we have no need, indeed no right, to interfere in animals’ lives, even to the extent of abandoning their use in life-saving medical research. This belief motivates the animal rights/liberation movement, which follows the thinking of a small group of vocal philosophers. But what does the term “animal rights” mean in a practical way to most in our society? All of us do use the word “rights” quite commonly: the right to decent, humane treatment when animals are in our charge. This is our obligation as humane human beings. Indeed, this duty is embodied in law, and we can be prosecuted and punished if we ignore it as lawyer/ethicist Jerry Tannenbaum from the University of California-Davis pointed out to me years ago when I was focused on the depredations of the “animal rights movement” against biomedical researchers and blinded to the obvious. Thus, the ongoing debate – and recent violence in some California universities for example – is about a more radical (and unworkable view) of rights. To clarify things in my own mind, I have come up with a ranking of views/behavior from the extreme to the reasonable as I see it. © Copyright Oxford University Press USA 2006-2008

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Link ID: 12928 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Germany's constitution guarantees its citizens the freedom to conduct research — but local authorities in the northern city of Bremen are forcing a leading neuroscientist to halt his primate experiments. A court will probably now have to decide whether the controversial ruling violates federal law. Andreas Kreiter at the University of Bremen uses 24 macaques to study cognitive processes in the mammalian brain. Germany's largest animal-protection group, the Animal Welfare Association, has for years campaigned against the experiments, claiming that they are intolerably painful and have no short-term therapeutic use. Local politicians have become increasingly sympathetic to that view. Last year, in a move criticized by scientists as a grab for votes, Bremen's parliament called on the state government to ban Kreiter's primate research (see Nature 446, 955; 2007). After regional elections in May 2007, the newly formed Social Democrat–Green coalition government agreed not to reapprove his experiments when his current licence expires later this year. On 15 October, Kreiter was officially informed by the senate of health — the local authority in charge of approving animal experiments — that his licence will not be renewed. Referring to "changed societal values", the authority argued that the experiments were "ethically unjustified" because they address long-term scientific questions rather than help develop specific medical therapies. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

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Link ID: 12174 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jonathan Amos The number of animals used in UK labs for scientific experiments is now more than three million - a level not seen since 1991. Home Office figures show that in 2007, all procedures in England, Wales and Scotland used 3.1 million animals. The year-on-year increase of 6% continues the recent upward trend driven mainly by the use of rodents in genetics experiments. Mice and rats constitute more than 80% of all animals used in laboratories. The remainder involve primarily fish, birds, and reptiles/amphibians. Dogs, cats, horses and non-human primates receive special protection under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. These were used in less than half of 1% of the procedures. Most procedures are for research and drug development; safety testing accounts for much of the rest. The number of animals used in lab experiments peaked in the 1970s with more than five million procedures carried out annually. The statistics then fell rapidly during the 90s and 80s before picking up again at the start of the century. Just over 3.2 million scientific procedures were started in 2007, a rise of about 189,500 (6%) on 2006. The latest rise is the sixth in succession and largely reflects the increasing role of genetically modified animals in research. The use of GM animals – mainly mice - has more than quadrupled since 1995. By adding or knocking out genes in mice, scientists believe they can gain an insight into the molecular flaws in humans that lead to illness. Animal welfare groups have long argued that the numbers – although smaller than they used to be – are still too high. They say that many experiments often give misleading or wholly useless information; and that scientists ought to make better use of alternatives. (C)BBC

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Link ID: 11840 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Emma Marris Many readers of The Guardian, a British newspaper, will have been surprised at a recent online article in which Sophie Petit-Zeman, a neuroscientist and journalist, explained how she could at the same time be a vivisectionist and a vegetarian1. But they will not all have been surprised in the same way. Some will have been surprised at the existence of such a complex position in an area where much of the discussion is depressingly black and white. Others will have been surprised not by the position itself, but by its being discussed in public. As a poll of Nature readers working in the biomedical sciences reveals, many scientists who work on animals have complex takes on the issue. But they are not often willing, or encouraged, to express these feelings. Some of this is directly due to fear of animal-rights extremists; some is an indirect effect of the polarized atmosphere that surrounds the issue. In some labs, at least, scientists feel pressured to keep quiet about the grey areas of debate, lest they undermine the official mantra And how do they square the ethics of it all? As well as polling our biomedical readers (for full results see http://www.nature.com/news/specials/animalresearch), Nature set out to get some voices from the front lines — and found a lot of ducked heads. It would be fair to say that the average researcher prefers not to talk to the press about his or her work. And yet, there are those who are not only willing to talk, but have plenty to say. It quickly becomes clear that each researcher has his or her own system of ethical equations in place, but that the simplified pro–con debate makes it very difficult to communicate this — or have any kind of calm conversation about animal research. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

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Link ID: 9753 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In 2006, concern over the welfare of his family caused Dario Ringach to stop using animals in his research. A neuroscientist at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), Ringach had been receiving threats from animal-rights extremists over his experiments involving primates. Then, an undetonated firebomb was left next door to the house of a colleague, apparently because the activists had the wrong address. After three years of keeping a low profile, Ringach is now trying to raise public support for the use of animals in research. This month, he published a commentary on the subject in the Journal of Neuroscience1 and a letter to the editor in the Journal of Neurophysiology2 in which he calls on scientists to publicly support such research. His coauthor on both was David Jentsch, a neuropsychopharmacologist at UCLA whose work involves primates and whose car was firebombed earlier this year. Nature spoke with Ringach about his concerns. You say that animal-rights extremists are winning. Why? You can see this in a recent Pew research survey on public opinion on science. Only 52% of the broad public supports biomedical research involving animals. And over the years, this has consistently declined. What is behind this trend? A lot of organizations at different levels have had a tremendous impact — from work that the Humane Society of the United States [based in Washington DC] has been doing in exposing failures in the food industry, to work that PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, based in London] is doing in trying to reach out to children very early. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group

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Link ID: 13293 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon From polite petitions to fierce fires, activists opposed to animal research have made their position clear in the U.S. and abroad for many years. But now, medical researchers are being encouraged to press on—and speak out. Two new commentaries, published online today in The Journal of Neuroscience, highlight recent threats that have befallen some researchers who perform research on animals. "We have seen our cars and homes firebombed or flooded, and we have received letters packed with poisoned razors and death threats via e-mail and voicemail," Dario Ringach of the David Geffen School of Medicine and J. David Jentsch of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) wrote in one of the papers. "These threats do not endanger just these individuals alone, but also the scientific community at large and the health and well-being of millions affected by their research," Thomas Carew, president of The Society of Neuroscience (SfN), said in a prepared statement responding to the commentaries. "Today, it is unacceptable that in the pursiut of better health and understanding of disease, researchers, their families, and their communities face violence and intimidation by extremists." "Responsible research has played a vital role in nearly every major medical advance of the last century, from heart disease to polio, and is essential to future advances," Carew continued. Animal rights groups, however, maintain that most drugs developed and tested on animals never pass human safety or efficacy trials and never make it to market. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

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Link ID: 13272 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The organizers of today's Pro-Test rally at the University of California, Los Angeles, say it succeeded beyond their hopes. Hundreds of people—many of them students and postdocs—came out to show their support for biomedical research. U.S. scientists who use animals in their research have been under attack from animal rights extremists in recent years, and UCLA has been the epicenter. Many scientists have been reluctant to speak up in defense of their work for fear of provoking further harassment. But today that changed. "I'm amazed," UCLA neuroscientist David Jentsch said of the turnout (campus police put the crowd at about 700). Jentsch organized the rally after waking up one night last month to find his car in flames. Animal rights activists later claimed responsibility. Jentsch modeled today's rally on protests at the University of Oxford that helped turn the tide of public opinion against animal rights extremists who opposed construction of a research lab there. Despite the time and effort it took away from his research and the hate e-mail he endured, Jentsch says the rally was worth it. "I think putting our faces on what we do humanizes the effort and makes it harder to write obscene things in the middle of the night and to brutalize people." Pro-testers gathered on the edge of the UCLA campus as a counter protest staged by animal rights groups was winding down across the street. The anti-vivisection rally, part of the annual World Week for Animals in Laboratories, attracted fewer people—several dozen—and at times there seemed to be almost as many journalists as protesters. The media, including CNN and several local television stations, had turned out perhaps hoping to see a confrontation. There wasn't one. The visible police presence may have helped, but everyone on both sides appeared to be on their best behavior. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Link ID: 12796 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. If you caught your son burning ants with a magnifying glass, would it bother you less than if you found him torturing a mouse with a soldering iron? How about a snake? How about his sister? Such apparently unrelated questions arise in the aftermath of the vote of the environment committee of the Spanish Parliament last month to grant limited rights to our closest biological relatives, the great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans. The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the Great Ape Project, which points to apes’ human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future. The project’s directors, Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, and Paola Cavalieri, an Italian philosopher, regard apes as part of a “community of equals” with humans. If the bill passes — the news agency Reuters predicts it will — it would become illegal in Spain to kill apes except in self-defense. Torture, including in medical experiments, and arbitrary imprisonment, including for circuses or films, would be forbidden. The 300 apes in Spanish zoos would not be freed, but better conditions would be mandated. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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Link ID: 11817 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Janet Raloff Not Yet ObsoleteSome animal-rights activists are taking a page out of the anti-abortionists' playbook and now bully animal researchers at home. iStockphoto An Associated Press story in the morning paper, today, described a move by animal activists to make attacks on researchers who work with animals increasingly personal. Teams that used to hold placards outside conferences and labs now picket scientists’ homes. Some “animal rights” groups use bullhorns to send neighbors the message that “Your neighbor kills animals,” the story said. These reports rile me up. On lots of levels. First, so-called animal-rights groups seek to compel change through brutish intimidation. They are, in a word, bullies. The goal here is not to change the minds of scientists about the value of their labors but to intimidate their families and annoy — if not enrage — their neighbors. (I don’t like neighbors’ dogs barking all day or night; bullhorn-bleating activists are just a human corollary.) If these activists have a beef with scientists, they ought to compel with data or the law. If those don’t work, maybe the argument they’ve been trumpeting isn’t all that compelling after all. Actually, I’d like to see someone probe the behaviors of these alleged animal guardians to see how well they practice what they preach. For instance, I strongly suspect that when the animal crusaders (and especially their loved ones) become ill or injured, they don’t eschew life-saving medicines and procedures that were first pioneered through animal research. And if they don’t, they’re hypocrites to picket, harass — and occasionally even destroy the research of — toxicologists and biomedical scientists. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

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Link ID: 11811 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By TRACEY HARDEN WHY did Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo design its jaguar habitat so the big cats can creep into tree branches and lurk over the heads of visitors? For one thing, it is the kind of activity that jaguars enjoy. For another, getting that kind of thrill — at a safe distance — is something zoo visitors like. Call the exhibit an exemplar of "ecological psychology," a term used by zoo directors and planners to explain the increased focus not only on animal comfort but also on the needs of humans and the ways they interact with animals. "We're providing behavioral enrichment for our visitors as well as animals," said John Bierlein, the zoo's manager of planning and interpretive exhibits. "We recognize that most people have grown up in urban areas and we want to reconnect them with the natural world." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Link ID: 5219 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Our author finds Jeffrey Masson's "divertingly amateurish" style likely to broaden the audience for the animal-rights movement in a way that Peter Singer and Matthew Scully never could by B. R. Myers Although linked by a subtitle to his innocuous best sellers about dogs and cats, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's The Pig Who Sang to the Moon reads suspiciously like a veiled attack on meat-eating—until page three, that is, when the veil comes off. It is a more muddled attack than we have come to expect from the animal-rights movement, but that may be why it works so well. Most of us want to be talked out of enjoying our favorite foods about as much as we want to be talked into studying The Watchtower in our spare time; we're more likely to let people try to convert us if we don't think they've spent years perfecting their harangue. Masson, then, may be just the sort of spokesman the animals have been waiting for. His approach is so divertingly amateurish, his logic so far from airtight, that we see no harm in letting him ramble on for just one more chapter—only to find we've turned the last page, and he has affected us by the simple decency of his example. Unless the author thinks that quoting Gandhi is the way to cast an awed hush over neighborhood barbecues, he did not write The Pig Who Sang to the Moon for the average American meat eater. The publishers, for their part, must have known that the PETA crowd would be put off by the open-doored fantasy barn on the cover and the absence of grisly photographs inside. No, this book is aimed squarely at the James Herriot-reading fellow travelers of the animal-rights movement: those kindhearted people who are always looking for ways to help, even if it means donating a perfectly good exercise machine to the Humane Society thrift shop; the ones who are so appalled by factory farms that they've pretty much given up meat entirely, especially veal, unless, of course, they're at someone's house; these are the people who assume an air of solidarity with the movement that drives it stark raving mad. Copyright © 2004 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

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Link ID: 5167 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By PATRICK HEALY HICKSVILLE, N.Y., — Animal activists said on Wednesday that they were outraged by a history of problems at the Long Island Reptile Museum and called for the gallery of snakes, lizards and turtles to be shut down. The activists, who have visited the museum and taken some of its animals for rehabilitation, called conditions there the most deplorable they had ever seen. During a visit by the activists in the spring, they said, the reptiles were emaciated and dehydrated, some were covered with red and black mites and some dead animals remained on display. In addition, they said snakes and large lizards had escaped from their cages and were crawling around the rafters, a potential threat to visitors. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Link ID: 4611 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MARK DERR Polar bears, lions, tigers, cheetahs and other wide-ranging carnivores do so poorly in captivity that zoos should either drastically improve their conditions or stop keeping them altogether, biologists from Oxford University report today in the journal Nature. Zookeepers have long recognized that some species thrive in captivity while others languish. Today the researchers, Dr. Georgia Mason and Dr. Ros Clubb, say the problems — including high infant mortality and a tendency to pace around and around in the cage — are directly related to the size of the animal's home range in the wild. The typical zoo enclosure for a polar bear is one-millionth the size of its home range in the wild, which can reach 31,000 square miles, the authors said. Some captive polar bears spend 25 percent of their day in what scientists call stereotypic pacing, and infant mortality for captive animals is around 65 percent. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Link ID: 4324 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DAVID GONZALEZ CANCÚN, Mexico — Thousands of tourists come here every year to swim with dolphins, expecting mystical encounters or unmatched educational experiences. Whether at water parks or even at a mall, the price for an hour's swim is about $100 — not counting the videos, photographs, T-shirts or dolls to commemorate fleeting moments riding atop the snouts of two sleek creatures. But the real cost is much higher, according to a growing international protest movement of environmentalists and animal rights advocates who say there is nothing educational about turning wild animals into lucrative rides and who are outraged over the recent deaths of two captive dolphins at an amusement park. Their past protests led the Mexican government to ban the capture of local dolphins, and the legislature is considering prohibiting imports as well. Now the protesters have turned the tourist-rich Yucatán Peninsula, where there are now nine swim programs, into the front lines of the dolphin wars. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Link ID: 4323 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN UNITED NATIONS, — Monkeys experimentally infected with a new coronavirus have developed an illness similar to the mysterious human respiratory disease SARS, and it is now almost certain that the coronavirus causes the disease, a World Health Organization official said here today. Dr. David L. Heymann, executive director in charge of communicable diseases for W.H.O., said the agency "is 99 percent sure" that SARS is caused by the new coronavirus based on the monkey experiments in the Netherlands. Experiments on animals are necessary because the lack of an effective treatment for SARS and the relatively high death rate make it unethical to conduct such experiments on humans. Preliminary findings show that the monkeys developed an illness resembling SARS after the coronavirus was put in their nostrils. Some monkeys developed pneumonia, and examination of their lungs under a microscope showed that the coronavirus caused a pattern of lung damage similar to what affected humans have suffered. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Link ID: 3696 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By IVER PETERSON PRINCETON, N.J., — An odd teaming of animal rights advocates and sports hunters have at least temporarily derailed Princeton Township's ambitious program to thin its deer population by using professional sharpshooters. On Thursday, the state's Fish and Game Council, a majority of whose voting members represent hunting interests, narrowly voted to stop the five-year program after its second year because they were offended by some of the methods used by White Buffalo Inc., the professional hunters, and because they wanted Princeton to open its public lands to sports hunting instead. "They were concerned that the town and the White Buffalo group were killing deer that hunters should be able to kill," the council chairman, W. Scott Ellis, said today. Mr. Ellis said he had been surprised by the 5-4 vote, with one member abstaining and Mr. Ellis, as chairman, not voting. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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Link ID: 3316 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Dave Munger The recent fatal attack of a SeaWorld trainer by the orca Tilikum has led to renewed questions about how humans should deal with potentially intelligent animals. Was Tilikum’s action premeditated, and how should that possibility influence decisions on the animal’s future treatment? Orcas, like their close relatives, dolphins, certainly seem smart, though researchers debate just how intelligent these cetaceans are and how similar their cognition is to humans. Should we ever treat such creatures like people? For centuries it seemed obvious to most people what separated them from other animals: Humans have language, they use tools, they plan for the future, and do any number of things that other animals don’t seem to do. But gradually the line between “animal” and “human” has blurred. Some animals do use tools; others solve complicated problems. Some can even be taught to communicate using sign language or other systems. Could it be that there isn’t a clear difference separating humans from other life forms? Last week, Brian Switek, a science writer who blogs about biology and paleontology, found a study demonstrating that tool use in chimpanzees isn’t a new phenomenon. For decades, scientists have been observing chimps using sticks and other objects as tools. They have even seen chimps modifying these tools and transporting them for anticipated use in the future. But until recently, there had been no evidence that tool use among chimps had a very long history. Wild chimpanzees in the Tai National Park in Côte d’Ivoire have been observed using stones as hammers and anvils for cracking large nuts. A team led by archaeologist Julio Mercador found evidence that these tools were being used as long as 4300 years ago: Ancient stones shaped similarly to those being used today as tools. Their research was published in PNAS in 2007. ©2005-2009 Seed Media Group LLC

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Link ID: 13904 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Randy Harris THE first farm animal Gene Baur ever snatched from a stockyard was a lamb he named Hilda. That was 1986. She’s now buried under a little tombstone near the center of Farm Sanctuary, 180 acres of vegan nirvana here in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. Back then, Mr. Baur was living in a school bus near a tofu factory in Pennsylvania and selling vegetarian hot dogs at Grateful Dead concerts to support his animal rescue operation. Now, more than a thousand animals once destined for the slaughterhouse live here and on another Farm Sanctuary property in California. Farm Sanctuary has a $5.7 million budget, fed in part by a donor club named after his beloved Hilda. Supporters can sign up for a Farm Sanctuary MasterCard. A $200-a-seat gala dinner in Los Angeles this fall will feature seitan Wellington and stars like Emily Deschanel and Forest Whitaker. As Farm Sanctuary has grown, so too has its influence. Soon, due in part to the organization’s work, veal calves and pregnant pigs in Arizona won’t be kept in cages so tight they can’t turn around. Eggs from cage-free hens have become so popular that there is a national shortage. A law in Chicago bans the sale of foie gras. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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Link ID: 10531 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Andy Coghlan Experiments on non-human primates are the only option for some areas of medicine, according to a report published by the UK’s Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust on Friday. The report lists medical advances that they claim would have been impossible without experiments on monkeys. The publication of the report looks set to aggravate a bitter propaganda war between pro- and anti-vivisectionists trying to win public support on the issue of primate experiments. On Monday, a report is expected to be launched by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection calling for a complete ban on monkey experiments in the UK on moral as well as scientific grounds. At the heart of the debate is a controversial animal testing laboratory under construction at the University of Oxford, which will be used to investigate neurological diseases through experiments on monkeys. It has been the focus of ongoing protests by animal rights campaigners and more recently by pro-vivisection groups such as ProTest. Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Wellcome Trust director Mark Walport told journalists: “No one likes doing primate experiments, but some research can only be done on monkeys.” © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

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Link ID: 8998 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Notebook by Mick Hume TO BE HONEST, I never expected to find myself in bed with Esther Rantzen. I now discover, however, that she is a patron of Patients’ Voice for Medical Advance (until recently known as Seriously Ill for Medical Research), a fine organisation that defends animal experimentation. Which puts us on the same side on one of the most divisive issues of the day. “Whose side are you on?” is a famous slogan of the old Left-Right divide, which you don’t often hear in our age of soulless managerial politics when, as the Monty Python song predicted, accountancy really does seem to make the world go around. But there are different divisions that matter today, drawing new lines in the political and cultural sands. One such divide is embodied by two protests around animal research due to take place in Oxford tomorrow. On one side will be the usual anti-vivisection demonstration against the building of Oxford University’s biomedical research laboratory. On the other side will be a demonstration in support of the lab and animal research. It has been called by a group called Pro-Test, set up by a 16-year-old from Swindon and now run by Oxford students, that stands for “science, reasoned debate, and above all, the welfare of mankind” (www.pro-test.org.uk). Neither of these is likely to be a mass demo. But the clash does symbolise something bigger, and to declare which side you are on is to make a statement about the sort of world in which you want to live. Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.

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Link ID: 8601 - Posted: 06.24.2010