Alison Abbott German police seized documents in a raid on Tuesday on the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, as part of an investigation into alleged violations of animal-protection laws. The investigation was launched last year after a video shot by an animal-rights activist who infiltrated the institute was broadcast on television in September. An independent investigation carried out by the Max Planck Society found no systematic problems, and this month the state government of Baden-Württemberg said that, following its own investigations, it saw no reason to revoke any animal licences. A spokesperson for the Max Planck Society in Munich, who asked not to be named, told Nature that activists were carrying out an unjustified campaign against the institute, where some scientists use monkeys in their research on how the brain works. “There is an agreed consensus within society about how much research can be done with animals and in what conditions,” the spokesperson said, adding that society wants researchers to tackle diseases such as dementia — but that this cannot be done without using animals. “The work is carried out correctly in Tübingen — we have nothing to hide.” Friedrich Mülln, head of the Augsburg-based activist group SOKO Tierschutz — which last year pledged to continue actions against the institute until it stopped its monkey research — says that the Max Planck Society is lying about the animals' treatment, and that the Tübingen institute is a “black mark on an otherwise admirable organization”. He added that his group is working closely with police. © 2015 Nature Publishing Group,

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Link ID: 20539 - Posted: 02.02.2015

Sara Reardon The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has modified the way a controversial lab studies stress in monkeys in response to criticism by animal-rights activists and members of Congress who say that the research is inhumane. At issue are experiments led by Stephen Suomi, a psychologist at the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in Poolesville, Maryland. Suomi’s lab studies how removing newborn rhesus macaques from their mothers affects biological processes such as brain activity and gene expression, and behaviours such as alcohol consumption in the infants. He has performed similar experiments for about three decades, and has received roughly US$30 million over the past seven years for the work, according to the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which obtained documents and videos from the lab through a freedom-of-information request. In September, PETA began posting ads in the subway station near NIH’s Bethesda, Maryland, campus, and in newspapers condemning the experiments as “cruel and archaic”, and arguing that they yielded results that were not relevant to human health. The group also posted video of NIH monkey experiments on its website. PETA’s campaign drew the attention of Congress. In December, four Democratic members of the House of Representatives wrote to the NIH, demanding that the agency’s Bioethics Commission investigate the Suomi lab’s practices and the justification for the experiments. “We know what the impact is when children are taken from their parents,” says one of the lawmakers, Lucille Roybal-Allard (Democrat, California). “While [animal] research is necessary in many cases, we can’t just do it without evaluation and having a clear purpose.” © 2015 Nature Publishing Group

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
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Link ID: 20530 - Posted: 01.29.2015

Alison Abbott Activists calling for an end to research using non-human primates have stepped up activities in Germany and Italy. An estimated 800 animal-rights activists demonstrated in front of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, on 20 December, calling for an end to the research with monkeys that takes place there. A smaller group maintained an all-night vigil. Friedrich Mülln, head of the activist group SOKO Tierschutz, which organized the action, told Nature that the group would continue actions against the institute next year “until the department that does this research is closed down.” In September, SOKO Tierschutz, which is based in Augsburg, Germany, posted a video on its website that included material filmed secretly in the institute by a former animal carer. The footage was used in a television report that claimed malpractice in the laboratory, but a preliminary investigation commissioned in response by the Max Planck Society did not reveal systematic problems in animal welfare. The society says that the Tübingen scientists contribute importantly to global research efforts to understand the human brain. In a similar undercover operation, an anonymous person took smartphone footage of caged monkeys in a primate laboratory at the Sapienza University of Rome. The popular show Striscia la Notizia, which mixes exposé with entertainment, used the footage in an 18 December report which claimed that scientists at the university conducted their work in secret and without oversight. The TV report also said that its producers contacted the Italian ministry of health and the local health office, and that neither was able to explain what the lab's experiments are about. © 2014 Nature Publishing Group

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Link ID: 20437 - Posted: 12.23.2014

By Agata Blaszczak-Boxe When it comes to lab animal welfare, rats and mice aren’t the only creatures of concern. In 2013, the European Union mandated that cephalopods—a group that includes octopuses and squid—be treated humanely when used for scientific research. In response, researchers have figured out how to anesthetize octopuses so the animals do not feel pain while being transported and handled during scientific experiments, for instance those examining their behavior, physiology, and neurobiology, as well as their use in aquaculture. In a study published online this month in the Journal of Aquatic Animal Health, researchers report immersing 10 specimens of the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) in seawater with isoflurane, an anesthetic used in humans. They gradually increased the concentration of the substance from 0.5% to 2%. The investigators found that the animals lost the ability to respond to touch and their color paled, which means that their normal motor coordination of color regulation by the brain was lost, concluding that the animals were indeed anesthetized. The octopuses then recovered from the anesthesia within 40 to 60 minutes of being immersed in fresh seawater without the anesthetic, as they were able to respond to touch again and their color was back to normal. The researchers captured the anesthetization process on video, shown above. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 14: Biological Rhythms, Sleep, and Dreaming; Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 20311 - Posted: 11.15.2014

Fiona Fox Last week the UK Home Office published the findings of its investigations into allegations of animal suffering, made after undercover infiltrations at two animal research facilities. You will not find coverage of any of the conclusions in the national news media. Instead any search for media coverage will unearth the original infiltration stories under headlines such as: “Horrific video shows distress of puppies and kittens waiting to be dissected at animal testing lab”; “Graphic content: horrifying video shows puppies and kittens tested at UK laboratory”; and “Rats beheaded with scissors and kept in ‘pitiful state’.” These “shocking exposés”, brought to the newspapers by the animal rights group BUAV, include distressing images, links to videos that are difficult to watch, and quote allegedly secretly recorded researchers saying terrible things about the animals in their care. The newspapers seem in no doubt that the allegations they are carrying add up to “appalling suffering on a very large scale”, and appear to be proud of their role in bringing the abuses to light: “The Sunday Express today publishes details of an undercover investigation … that shines a light on the secret world of vivisection laboratories.” You may well see these articles as reassuring evidence that we still have public interest journalism in the UK. These animal rights supporters have done exactly what investigative journalists used to do in a time when newspapers had enough money to shine a light on the darker corners of our institutions and uncover hidden abuses. And you would be right, but for one thing: we now know that the stories were largely untrue. © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited

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Link ID: 20165 - Posted: 10.07.2014

By Jeffrey Mervis Embattled U.K. biomedical researchers are drawing some comfort from a new survey showing that a sizable majority of the public continues to support the use of animals in research. But there’s another twist that should interest social scientists as well: The government’s decision this year to field two almost identical surveys on the topic offers fresh evidence that the way you ask a question affects how people answer it. Since 1999, the U.K. Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) has been funding a survey of 1000 adults about their attitudes toward animal experimentation. But this year the government asked the London-based pollsters, Ipsos MORI, to carry out a new survey, changing the wording of several questions. (The company also collected additional information, including public attitudes toward different animal species and current rules regarding their use.) For example, the phrase “animal experimentation” was replaced by “animal research” because the latter is “less inflammatory,” notes Ipsos MORI Research Manager Jerry Latter. In addition, says Emma Brown, a BIS spokeswoman, the word research “more accurately reflects the range of procedures that animals may be involved in, including the breeding of genetically modified animals.” But government officials also value the information about long-term trends in public attitudes that can be gleaned from the current survey. So they told the company to conduct one last round—the 10th in the series—at the same time they deployed the new survey. Each survey went to a representative, but different, sample of U.K. adults. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Scienc

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Link ID: 20041 - Posted: 09.06.2014

By ALEX HALBERSTADT Dr. Vint Virga likes to arrive at a zoo several hours before it opens, when the sun is still in the trees and the lanes are quiet and the trash cans empty. Many of the animals haven’t yet slipped into their afternoon ma­laise, when they retreat, appearing to wait out the heat and the visitors and not do much of anything. Virga likes to creep to the edge of their enclosures and watch. He chooses a spot and tries not to vary it, he says, “to give the animals a sense of control.” Sometimes he watches an animal for hours, hardly moving. That’s because what to an average zoo visitor looks like frolicking or restlessness or even boredom looks to Virga like a lot more — looks, in fact, like a veritable Russian novel of truculence, joy, sociability, horniness, ire, protectiveness, deference, melancholy and even humor. The ability to interpret animal behavior, Virga says, is a function of temperament, curiosity and, mostly, decades of practice. It is not, it turns out, especially easy. Do you know what it means when an elephant lowers her head and folds her trunk underneath it? Or when a zebra wuffles, softly blowing air between her lips; or when a colobus monkey snuffles, sounding a little like a hog rooting in the mud; or when a red fox screams, sounding disconcertingly like an infant; or when red fox kits chatter at one another; or when an African wild dog licks and nibbles at the lips of another; or when a California sea lion resting on the water’s surface stretches a fore flipper and one or both rear flippers in the air, like a synchronized swimmer; or when a hippopotamus “dung showers” by defecating while rapidly flapping its tail? Virga knows, because it is his job to know. He is a behaviorist, and what he does, expressed plainly, is see into the inner lives of animals. The profession is an odd one: It is largely unregulated, and declaring that you are an expert is sometimes enough to be taken for one. Most behaviorists are former animal trainers; some come from other fields entirely. Virga happens to be a veterinarian, very likely the only one in the country whose full-time job is tending to the psychological welfare of animals in captivity. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
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Link ID: 19796 - Posted: 07.04.2014

BERLIN—A national ad campaign targeting the work and person of neuroscientist Andreas Kreiter has caused an uproar in the German scientific community. Today, the Alliance of Scientific Organizations in Germany published a sharply worded statement against the full-page ads, which appeared in regional and national newspapers in April. The ad “crudely hurts the personal rights” of the scientist, the organizations write, and “defames biomedical research as a whole.” “The ad aims for personal annihilation,” Kreiter says, “and it is not acceptable for a state founded on the rule of law.” A professor of animal physiology at the University of Bremen (UB), Kreiter studies the neurophysiology of the macaque brain. His work has met with fierce resistance since the 1990s, but Kreiter says hostility peaked after he won a series of protracted legal battles over his work. The most recent trial finished in February, when the Federal Administrative Court of Germany confirmed earlier decisions that the animal distress caused by Kreiter’s research is justified given its scientific significance. A group called Tierversuchsgegner Bundesrepublik Deutschland (the German Association for Opponents of Animal Research), whose proclaimed goal is to end animal experimentation in Germany, has used advertising as a weapon for several years. But the most recent one (click here for a larger version in PDF) is the most personal and aggressive yet, Kreiter says; headlined “Kreiter continues in cold blood,” it features a photo of the researcher as well as a picture of a macaque, sitting immobilized in an experimental laboratory setup. It ran in many outlets on 16 and 17 April, including in leading newspapers such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Zeit. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science

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Link ID: 19585 - Posted: 05.08.2014

Daniel Cressey Organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have been campaigning for the disclosure of more information on animal research in the United Kingdom. The government of the United Kingdom wants to jettison rules that prevent it releasing any confidential information it holds about animal research, as part of a continuing push towards openness about such work. Animal-rights groups have long complained about what they characterise as a “secrecy clause” that prevents details of animal research in the UK being made public. The Home Office collects huge amounts of information such as the type of work done, the people and institutions doing it, and the results of inspections at laboratories. However it is currently prevented from revealing anything potentially considered confidential under ‘section 24’ of the rules governing animal research. Today the government said that it would like repeal this blanket ban on information disclosure, as it has previously promised, and requested comment on its proposal. In place of section 24, it would like to introduce a new rule prohibiting disclosure only of information relating to “people, places and intellectual property”. Home Office minister Norman Baker said in the consultation document released today, “To maintain public trust we must be as open and transparent as possible about activities under the regulatory framework.” If implemented, the new rule would still keep names and locations of animal research out of the public domain — a key concern of many researchers who fear protests or even violent attacks from extremist animal rights protestors. © 2014 Nature Publishing Group

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Link ID: 19572 - Posted: 05.05.2014

Josh Fischman Dogs and cats, historically, have been people’s property like a couch or a toaster. But as they’ve moved into our houses and our hearts, courts of law have begun to treat them as something more. They can inherit your estate, get an appointed lawyer if your relatives challenge that inheritance and are protected from cruel acts. Your toaster can’t do any of that. As these animals inch closer to citizens' rights, the trend is being watched with worried eyes by biomedical researchers who fear judges could extend these rights to lab animals like monkeys and rats, thereby curbing experimentation. It also disturbs veterinarians who fear a flood of expensive malpractice suits if pets are worth more than their simple economic value. David Grimm, deputy news editor for Science magazine, explores this movement in his book Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs (PublicAffairs Books, 2014), published this month. He explained to Scientific American why scientists and animal doctors have good reason to be concerned. An edited transcript of the interview follows. In what way have dogs and cats moved beyond the status of property? They can inherit money, for one thing. And since property cannot inherit property, that makes them different. Legal scholars say that is the biggest change. About 25 US states have adopted the Uniform Trust Code, which allows animals to inherit.* Also judges have granted owners of slain animals awards of emotional damages. You cannot get emotional damages from the loss of a toaster. In 2004 a California jury awarded a man named Marc Bluestone $39,000 for the loss of his dog Shane; $30,000 of that was for Shane’s special and unique value to Bluestone. © 2014 Nature Publishing Group

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Link ID: 19521 - Posted: 04.23.2014

Animal rights activists have dramatically shifted their tactics over the last decade, targeting individual researchers and the businesses that support them, instead of going after their universities. That’s the biggest revelation to come out of a report released today by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), the largest coalition of biomedical research associations in the United States. The purpose of the report—The Threat of Extremism to Medical Research: Best Practices to Mitigate Risk through Preparation and Communication—is to provide guidance to scientists and institutions around the world in dealing with animal rights extremists. That includes individuals and groups that damage laboratories, send threatening e-mails, and even desecrate the graves of researchers’ relatives. In 2004, for example, Animal Liberation Front activists broke into psychology laboratories at the University of Iowa, where they smashed equipment, spray-painted walls, and removed hundreds of animals, causing more than $400,000 in damage. In 2009, extremists set fire to the car of a University of California, Los Angeles, neuroscientist who worked on rats and monkeys. And other researchers say activists have shown up at their homes in the middle of the night, threatening their families and children. “We wanted to create an international document to get people thinking about the potential of animal extremism,” says Michael Conn, a co-chair of the committee that created the report and the senior vice president for research at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock. “These activities can happen to anybody—no one is immune.” © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science

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Link ID: 19355 - Posted: 03.13.2014

The battle over animal experimentation in Italy took a nasty turn this week when anonymous activists posted fliers showing photos, home addresses, and telephone numbers of scientists involved in animal research at the University of Milan and labeled them as "murderers." The leaflets, which appeared in the night of 6 to 7 January, triggered widespread condemnation in academic and political circles. The posters targeted physiologist Edgardo D'Angelo, parasitologist Claudio Genchi, pharmacologist Alberto Corsini, and Maura Francolini, a biologist. The texts say they are “guilty” of performing animal experiments; Corsini is said to "have tortured and killed animals for more than 30 years.” His flier ends with his phone number and the suggestion to "call this executioner and tell him what you think of him." Although the fliers didn't contain a specific call to violence, the implicit threat is unmistakable, Italian scientists say. Pro-Test Italia, an organization that seeks to defend and explain animal research, has likened the campaign to a witch hunt. “It's unacceptable that those who work for the good of science and public health are called murderers by someone who publicly incites violence against them,” says Dario Padovan, a biologist and president of Pro-Test Italia. Many politicians condemned the new tactic as well. "I wish to express my deepest sympathy and support to the researchers in Milan for the intimidation and threats they suffered," Italy's minister of education, universities and research, Maria Chiara Carrozza, tweeted yesterday. The University of Milan has filed a complaint and the city's police department has started an investigation. “We will strengthen our commitment to the defense of research as a tool to improve knowledge and care for sick people,” Gianluca Vago, the university's rector, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science

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Link ID: 19116 - Posted: 01.11.2014

Three lawsuits filed last week that attempted to achieve “legal personhood” for four chimpanzees living in New York have been struck down. The suits, brought by the animal rights group the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), targeted two chimps on private property and two in a research lab at Stony Brook University in New York. They were the first step in a nationwide campaign to grant legal rights to a variety of animals. NhRP had spent 5 years honing its legal strategy. It picked what it thought would be the most favorable jurisdictions and petitioned the judges with a writ of habeas corpus, which allows a person being held captive to have a say in court. Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice W. Gerard Asher denied the writ for the Stony Brook chimpanzees, writing in a brief decision that the animals did not qualify for habeas corpus because they were not “persons.” Both chimps are used in locomotion research at the university in work that is attempting to shed light on the origin of bipedalism in humans. Asher did not meet with NhRP lawyers; he issued his decision via a court clerk. The other judges were more accommodating. Fulton County Supreme Court Justice Joseph Sise and Niagara County Supreme Court Justice Ralph Boniello both allowed NhRP lawyers to make oral arguments in the courtroom. “As an animal lover, I appreciate your work,” said Sise, who handled the case of a chimpanzee named Tommy living in cage on his owner’s property in Gloversville, according to an NhRP press release. The group made “a very strong argument,” Sise said, according to the release, but he did not agree that habeas corpus applied to chimpanzees. Boniello, who oversaw the case of a chimp named Kiko living on his owner’s property in Niagara Falls, said he did not want to be the first “to make that leap of faith” equating chimpanzees with human beings. © 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Link ID: 19016 - Posted: 12.11.2013

This morning, an animal rights group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a lawsuit in a New York Supreme Court in an attempt to get a judge to declare that chimpanzees are legal persons and should be freed from captivity. The suit is the first of three to be filed in three New York counties this week. They target two research chimps at Stony Brook University and two chimps on private property, and are the opening salvo in a coordinated effort to grant “legal personhood” to a variety of animals across the United States. If NhRP is successful in New York, it could be a significant step toward upending millennia of law defining animals as property and could set off a “chain reaction” that could bleed over to other jurisdictions, says Richard Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and a proponent of focusing on animal welfare rather than animal rights. “But if they lose it could be a significant step backward for the movement. They’re playing with fire.” The litigation has been in the works since 2007, when animal rights attorney Steven Wise founded NhRP, an association of about 60 lawyers, scientists, and policy experts. The group argues that cognitively advanced animals like chimpanzees and dolphins are so self-aware that keeping them in captivity—whether a zoo or research laboratory—is tantamount to slavery. “It’s a terrible torture we inflict on them, and it has to stop,” Wise says. “And all of human law says the way things stop is when courts and legislatures recognize that the being imprisoned is a legal person.” NhRP spent 5 years researching the best legal strategy—and best jurisdiction—for its first cases. The upshot: a total of three lawsuits to be filed in three New York trial courts this week on behalf of four resident chimpanzees. © 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science

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Link ID: 18993 - Posted: 12.03.2013

By MICHAEL WINES NEW HOLSTEIN, Wis. — Next to their white clapboard house on a rural road here, in long rows of cages set beneath the roofs of seven open-air sheds, Virginia and Gary Bonlander are raising 5,000 minks. Or were, anyway, until two Saturdays ago, when the police roused them from bed at 5 a.m. with a rap on their door. The Bonlanders woke one recent morning to find thousands of the creatures zipping across their lawn. Outside, 2,000 minks were scampering away — up to 50 top-quality, full-length and, suddenly, free-range mink coats. “The backyard was full of mink. The driveway was full of mink,” Mrs. Bonlander recalled a few days ago. “Then, pshew” — she made a whooshing sound — “they were gone.” And not only in Wisconsin, the mink-raising capital of the United States. After something of a hiatus, the animal rights movement has resumed a decades-old guerrilla war against the fur industry with a vengeance — and hints of more to come. In New Holstein; in Grand Meadow, Minn.; in Coalville, Utah; in Keota, Iowa; and four other states, activists say, eight dark-of-night raids on mink farms have liberated at least 7,700 of the critters — more than $770,000 worth of pelts — just since late July. That is more such raids than in the preceding three years combined. Two more raids in Ontario and British Columbia freed 1,300 other minks and foxes during the same period, according to the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which bills itself as a conduit for messages from anonymous animal rights activists. “What we’re seeing now is unprecedented,” Peter Young, a Santa Cruz, Calif., activist who was imprisoned in 2005 for his role in raids on six mink ranches, said in a telephone interview. Though still an outspoken defender of the animal rights movement and mink-ranch raids, Mr. Young says he has no contact with those who raid fur farms or commit other illegal acts and, in fact, does not know who they are. © 2013 The New York Times Company

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Link ID: 18797 - Posted: 10.17.2013

At the TEDx conference in Detroit last week, RoboRoach #12 scuttled across the exhibition floor, pursued not by an exterminator but by a gaggle of fascinated onlookers. Wearing a tiny backpack of microelectronics on its shell, the cockroach—a member of the Blaptica dubia species—zigzagged along the corridor in a twitchy fashion, its direction controlled by the brush of a finger against an iPhone touch screen (as seen in video above). RoboRoach #12 and its brethren are billed as a do-it-yourself neuroscience experiment that allows students to create their own “cyborg” insects. The roach was the main feature of the TEDx talk by Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo, co-founders of an educational company called Backyard Brains. After a summer Kickstarter campaign raised enough money to let them hone their insect creation, the pair used the Detroit presentation to show it off and announce that starting in November, the company will, for $99, begin shipping live cockroaches across the nation, accompanied by a microelectronic hardware and surgical kits geared toward students as young as 10 years old. That news, however, hasn’t been greeted warmly by everyone. Gage and Marzullo, both trained as neuroscientists and engineers, say that the purpose of the project is to spur a “neuro-revolution” by inspiring more kids to join the fields when they grow up, but some critics say the project is sending the wrong message. "They encourage amateurs to operate invasively on living organisms" and "encourage thinking of complex living organisms as mere machines or tools," says Michael Allen Fox, a professor of philosophy at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. © 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
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Link ID: 18755 - Posted: 10.08.2013

Daniel Cressey Killing research animals is one of the most unpleasant tasks in science, and it is imperative to do it as humanely as possible. But researchers who study animal welfare and euthanasia are growing increasingly concerned that widely used techniques are not the least painful and least stressful available. This week, experts from across the world will gather in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, to debate the evidence and try to reach a consensus. “There are lots of assumptions made about the humaneness of various techniques for euthanizing animals,” says Penny Hawkins, deputy head of the research animals department at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a charity based in Southwater, UK. “Sometimes an animal might not appear to be suffering, but might be conscious and suffering.” Much of the debate centres on rodents, which make up the vast majority of research animals. Current techniques for killing them include inhalation methods — such as chambers that fill with carbon dioxide or anaesthetic gases — and injecting barbiturates. Physical methods include cervical dislocation (breaking of the neck), or decapitation with specialist rodent guillotines (see ‘Methods used to kill lab rats’). Experts hotly debate which method is preferable. The most-discussed question at the meeting is likely to be about the use of CO2. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

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Link ID: 18469 - Posted: 08.07.2013

By MICHAEL WINERIP PETA, considered by many to be the highest-profile animal rights group in the country, kills an average of about 2,000 dogs and cats each year at its animal shelter here. And the shelter does few adoptions — 19 cats and dogs in 2012 and 24 in 2011, according to state records. At a time when the major animal protection groups have moved to a “no kill” shelter model, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals remains a holdout, confounding some and incensing others who know the organization as a very vocal advocacy group that does not believe animals should be killed for food, fur coats or leather goods. This is an organization that on Thanksgiving urges Americans not to eat turkey. “Honestly, I don’t understand it,” says Joan E. Schaffner, an animal rights lawyer and an associate professor at the George Washington University Law School, which hosts an annual no-kill conference. “PETA does lots of good for animals, but I could never support them on this.” As recently as a decade ago, it was common practice at shelters to euthanize large numbers of dogs and cats that had not been adopted. But the no-kill movement has grown very quickly, leaving PETA behind. In New York City last year, 8,252 dogs and cats were euthanized, compared with 31,701 in 2003. “Through spay, neuter, transfer and adoption programs, we think New York City can close the gap toward becoming a ‘no-kill community’ by 2015,” said Matthew Bershadker, the president and chief executive of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, one of 150 rescue groups and shelters that make up the Mayor’s Alliance for N.Y.C.’s Animals. © 2013 The New York Times Company

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Link ID: 18356 - Posted: 07.08.2013

Posted by Alison Abbott Two months after animal-rights activists broke into an animal facility at the University of Milan and removed hundreds of animals, photographs of many of the mice have appeared on the Facebook page of one of the protestors’ supporters who uses the pen name Jooleea Carleenee. The raid took place on 20 April. Researchers at the university said that they lost years of their work along with the animals, most of which were genetically modified mice serving as models for disease. They said that they did not expect mutants that were particularly delicate, or immunosuppressed ‘nude’ mice, to survive outside controlled laboratory conditions. Carleenee says that she posted the pictures to show that the animals were still alive. But the images of the overcrowded and uncontrolled conditions in which the mice appear to have been kept in her home have fuelled a new row, with scientists posting angry comments, complaining of cruelty. Daria Giovannoni, president of the pro-science lobby group Pro-Test Italia, says: “If these photos show the actual conditions of the stolen mice, we’re seriously concerned about their well-being and health: we don’t think that these animals are faring better now than when they were in the laboratory.” The raid on 20 April spurred the nascent Pro-Test Italia — modelled on UK and US Pro-Test organizations — to action. It arranged a series of demonstrations by scientists in defence of their work on animals. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

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Link ID: 18331 - Posted: 07.01.2013

by Marta Paterlini Tourists visiting the famous Spanish Steps in Rome on Saturday were treated to an unusual spectacle: Some 30 researchers suddenly showed up, unfolded banners and placards in different languages, and stood motionless on the steps for several minutes. Their flash mob was part of an unprecedented series of events across Italy to protest what organizers say is an antiscientific attitude in Italy and widespread "misinformation" about science in the media. Saturday's event, called Italy United for Correct Scientific Information, was organized by young researchers in response to an attack against an animal facility at the University of Milan in April, in which animal rights activists released mice and rabbits and ruined experiments. Some 300 researchers had already demonstrated on 1 June in Italy to defend animal experimentation; the new protests, which included flash mobs and conferences in 15 cities, were aimed more broadly. "We want to show that we do not live in an ivory tower," says organizer Dario Padovan, a biologist at the University of Trieste. "We are not afraid to defend our research and understand the need of communicating it correctly." Press coverage of April's attack showed again that in Italy, important scientific topics "are often addressed and reported by the media in a superficial, or even wrong, way" says Federico Baglioni, one of the organizers of Saturday's events. Previous examples were the conviction of Italian researchers for their failure to warn about the risk of a deadly earthquake in L'Aquila and the recent debate about the Stamina Foundation, which offers stem cell therapies that many scientists say aren't scientifically proven. In such debates, Italian media tend to focus on the emotional side of the story and fail to delve into the scientific facts, Baglioni says. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
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Link ID: 18254 - Posted: 06.11.2013