“If UBC is so proud of its animal research, why is the university refusing to hand over information about its experiments? What does UBC have to hide?”
So said Brian Vincent, spokesperson and head of Stop UBC Animal Research, in a November 15 press release. The release, which alleges that UBC has failed to comply with the provincial freedom of information act, is one of many that the organization has released in the last several months as part of their campaign. STOP was formed in 2008 following an article regarding UBC animal testing published in The Ubyssey.
“Our goal is to ultimately end animal research at UBC,” said Vincent to The Ubyssey.
Full disclosure
STOP’s awareness campaign has intensified this academic year. In addition to filing several requests under BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, STOP recently teamed up with international animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for an event in downtown Vancouver aimed at raising public awareness regarding UBC’s animal testing practices. Currently, their campaign has focused on transparency in animal testing at UBC.
An October 12 letter from the group included signatures from over 60 animal rights and social justice groups from across North America and Europe. In the letter, the groups asked UBC “to fully disclose information about its animal research program, including the numbers and species of animals utilized in experiments at UBC over the last ten years to determine whether the number of animals has increased or decreased.”
“We’re not under any obligation to reveal information,” said Dr John Hepburn, VP Research at UBC, in response to the repeated calls requesting more transparency within animal testing and research at UBC.
The Canadian regulatory system for animal testing is governed by the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC). Their policy is that individual university institutions are not required to disclose specific information related to the numbers of animals they use for testing and research. That has not stopped animal advocacy groups from trying.
According to Hepburn, it is not his choice as to whether or not the university discloses the information that STOP has requested. “Under our regulatory system, we would need the permission of the researchers to reveal the information….and we’re never going to get that permission.”
Vincent said he believes Hepburn’s reason for not revealing the requested information is just a deflection.
“The excuse UBC is using to withhold information for the public is a red herring,” said Vincent. “The real reason UBC doesn’t open its books and labs to the public is because the university knows people would be absolutely horrified by what they saw—the systematic experimentation on tens of thousands of animals every year.
“It is arrogant and condescending of UBC to say research is the ‘intellectual property’ of researchers and that the public wouldn’t understand the information if it was released. UBC’s suggestion that the public is too ‘dumb’ to understand that information is insulting and patronizing.”
Dr Alka Chandna, laboratory oversight specialist at PETA, said that if more people were aware of what was taking place in labs on university campuses across North America, they would be against it. “I think [universities] are aware that public sentiment against what is going on in laboratories to animals has reached a point [where] they recognize that they will not fall on positive favour if the public knew what was going on in these laboratories.”
Hepburn said he will not bow to the pressure from advocacy groups. “[If you] release information without the medical context—in other words, if you ask a member of the public, ‘If I am going to do the following thing to a monkey, or to a cat or to a mouse, what do you think?’—the natural response would be that sounds like something that’s not very nice to do to that animal. If you say I’m going to develop a new treatment for this disease which is affecting you, your relative, your friend, there would be a different answer.”
How transparent should animal testing be?
Hepburn said that if the parameters existed, he would be open to disclosing more information regarding the numbers of animals tested on at UBC.
“Frankly, if it was anonymized data—in other words, this is the stuff that goes on at the university, like we used this many thousand mice last year—other than the amount of work involved, I personally wouldn’t object to that. But that’s not up to me.”
But according to Vincent, STOP is not requesting the names of professors or researchers involved in animal testing—just the numbers of animals used and the invasiveness of the procedures.
“Stop UBC Animal Research has not advocated making their names public,” he said. “We are not interested in the researchers. We are interested in the research.”
Jim Pfaus, a psychology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, says that the CCAC will not disclose the number of animals that individual universities test on “for good reason.” He argues that animal advocacy groups misconstrue numbers to suit their own purposes, taking data out of context. “These numbers from those individuals tend to be misused and misrepresented as they have been for a very long time. It doesn’t matter what the numbers are, the spin’s always going to be the same.”
One reason pressure is mounting on the CCAC and Canadian universities such as UBC to release information is the fact that much of the funding for animal testing and research conducted at Canadian universities comes from the federal and provincial governments.
“UBC researchers work for the public,” said Vincent. “We are their boss because we pay, at least in part, their salaries. Research information is not the property of UBC. It is the property of the people.”
According to the UBC Office of Research Services website, the university received nearly $550 million in the 2009–2010 academic year to conduct research. Of that, nearly $400 million came from the government—although not all of this supports animal testing.
UBC isn’t alone. CCAC Executive Director Clement Gauthier said 89 per cent of CCAC’s funding comes through government grants from Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
“If they are going to take the money…they have to be answerable,” said Chandna. “Animal experimentation is not a right that [researchers] have. Society has given them the ability to use animals but it’s under a social contract. There is a contract that we have with experimenters, that if they are going to use animals…with the understanding that certain guidelines or certain regulations are going to be adhered to… then it’s an expectation that has to be fulfilled by the universities that participate in this.”
The guidelines for animal testing
UBC, along with every other university in Canada, must adhere to strict guidelines put in place by the CCAC. If a university researcher wants to conduct tests involving animals, they must first apply for federal funding, which comes in the form of grants from CIHR and NSERC. If they are approved, the proposal goes to vote in front of an ethics board, called the Animal Care Committee (ACC), which each university has as part of an animal care facility.
These committees are comprised of people from various backgrounds. UBC’s ethics board, for example, contains 21 people, 9 of whom are scientific researchers. However, it also includes four veterinarians and three community members. According to Pfaus, Concordia’s animal research ethics committee includes one member from every faculty that uses animals in addition to one veterinarian and one member from the Humane Society. Chandna, however, believes that these committees cannot be trusted to be objective.
“The institutional bodies that are supposed to provide oversight both in Canada and in the United States are rubber-stamping committees,” said Chandna. “We’re seeing a lot of issues that people on these committees are too intimidated by the experimenters to reject [and] the veterinarians aren’t keeping up to date on what the most humane methods are.”
But Hepburn said not all projects get approved—at least initially.
“Very few protocols are approved outright; most are sent back for revisions,” said Hepburn. “The ACC rarely rejects a protocol, but it does happen. For example, in a five-hour meeting…the ACC reviewed 32 protocols and none were approved outright. One was rejected, meaning it won’t be reviewed again. Four were deferred, meaning the researcher must respond to questions and re-submit the protocol for full committee review. The rest had provisos, meaning they are reviewed in detail by a sub-committee.”
Sub-committees can include the chair, a veterinarian, a community member and a health and safety staff member. Gauthier said that “we take for granted that the majority of the Canadian population wants that animals be used [in testing], but want it to be used properly in a system where you have surveillance happening and peer guidelines and external pairs of eyes.”
Hepburn argued that researchers must be part of these committees so that the projects can be evaluated correctly.
“Let’s say you have a protocol in which some procedure is going to be done on an animal,” said Hepburn. “A researcher with some experience will say ‘That’s actually more invasive, it’s more harmful to the animal than this procedure which would actually do the same jobs scientifically but the animal would suffer less harm.’ If you don’t have an expert opinion, how do you make that call? Now you are relying on somebody with no expertise.”
Dr John Sorenson, who teaches critical animal studies at Brock University, said that the current system is rife with conflicts of interest.
“There isn’t much incentive for them to crack down on others because they’re all working together,” said Sorenson.
But Pfaus claimed that the committees would be attracting more criticism if there was a problem with them.
“It makes logical sense in some superficial way to say, ‘Oh well, this is just a bunch of good old boys scratching each other’s backs.’ But where’s the proof?” said Pfaus. “The only people who come out of the woodwork….are Animal Liberation Front people who either create a problem that doesn’t exist or go there and say that something is happening. If there is someone who is doing something I think is wrong, even if it’s my best friend, I’m going to tell them. You can’t shirk tha responsibility.”
Pfaus said this included criticizing UBC when he came to investigate animal testing facilities as part of an CCAC inspection conducted every three years. “We said a couple of things, and there were people there that didn’t like what we were saying and they didn’t like what that meant for them.”
Yet some argue that since these committees are appointed, all this does is create an illusion of ethical behaviour towards animals.
“They try to limit that participation to people who are sympathetic to their stance,” said Sorenson. “For quite a few years, I tried to get on the committee at Brock University but I was simply excluded.”
Chandna said that the presence of committees is still no excuse for the current lack of disclosure.
“What we really need is to see the records of animal care…and veterinary care for the animal,” said Chandna. “Often the minimum that is required by law or required by guidelines in the case of the CCAC—those things are not being done.”
However, the Canadian situation is very different than that in America. Animal research in the US is governed by the Animal Welfare Act, which was instituted in 1966.
According to Vincent, the American system is significantly more transparent than Canada’s.
“In the states, if a federal agency like the National Insititute of Health or the US Department of Agriculture does the inspection [and] says that a university is in compliance, they have to back that up by putting their inspections online so that the public can review them,” he said. “We have no such system in Canada. It’s not that I don’t trust the CCAC or UBC, but it doesn’t allow for the public to verify if what they’re saying is true. [It’s] not a system that allows for public oversight.“
The big picture
Animal rights groups such as PETA and STOP believe all research and testing conducted on animals should be eliminated. However, in Canada, the law requires testing on animals before clinical trials can occur on humans.
According to the Health Canada document ‘How Drugs are Reviewed in Canada,’ “Research for new drugs begins with scientists developing various chemical or biological substances. Once a substance has been isolated and purified, it is administered to tissue cultures or to a variety of small animals to see whether or not there are significant changes.”
Animal rights groups take the view that deriving medical benefits at the expense of animals is unethical and scientifically fruitless. For example, STOP UBC argues that “animal research is unnecessary, cruel, at odds with society’s sense of compassion, and scientifically indefensible. [It] is like tossing darts with the lights off. There’s a remote chance you’ll even hit the dartboard, never mind score a few points. All the while countless animals, including cats, mice, primates, piglets, rats and other animals endure terrible suffering.”
Chandna argued that the pain and suffering animals experience during testing outweigh the perceived benefits. “I think that empathy requires that we require that their lives matter to them as much as our lives matter to us…Even if we benefit from exploiting animals and using them as a means to an end…we think that it’s wrong. There may be pieces of information that we can’t get except for via animal experimentation but we would still reject them.”
To prove her point, Chandna referred to a news release from the US Food and Drug Administration, published January 12, 2006, in which Commissioner Mike Leavitt is quoted as saying that “nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies.”
Regarding the rights groups’ concerns, Pfaus also added that not all animal testing is harmful to animals.
“[In] my experiments, [the animals] have sex and take drugs and eat food,” said Pfaus. “I wish I could come back as a rat. They have way more sex than I have. And I would get government-grade cocaine…not [the] bullshit you get on the streets.”
Sorenson believes that there is a correlation between animal and human rights. “Any animal activist that I know is concerned about human rights and human suffering as well. It’s only the people who are exploiting animals who make it an either-or proposition. I think more people are thinking about their relationship with nature, with the planet and becoming more aware of the consequences, the way animals store food…and the environmental damage caused by animal exploitation.”
Conversely, Hepburn considers the abolition of all testing and research on animals unrealistic. “We’d all be vegetarians if we all held that view. The fraction of vegetarians in our society is a small minority.”
He also believes that animal activists are making UBC researchers nervous. As a result, he recently sent out an email to all staff and students urging them to be more vigilant around the campus. Hepburn said this was because, “researchers were getting concerned that UBC wasn’t defending them.”
Fear on both sides
Dr David Jentsch has been the victim of violence. In 2009, his car was firebombed in front of his home. He said the attack has changed his day-to-day life “profoundly.”
Jentsch is a professor in the department of psychology and psychiatry and associate director for the Research of the Brain Research Institute at the University of California Los Angeles. He believes he was specifically targeted because activists are trying to stop research on larger animals such as cats, dogs, cows and monkeys.
“A fraction of my own research involves non-human primates, and when they learned my identity through records requests, they made a specific attack on me,” he said.
Jentsch said that the bombing is just one example of actions taken against him as an individual. “[Los Angeles animal rights activists] come and protest at my house once or twice a month for three hours at a time.”
Jentsch knows several researchers at UBC who live in fear of being attacked. “I have colleagues at UBC who have said, ‘We’re afraid. We’re not going to go out there and talk about it. We’ll get bombed.’”
Vincent is also worried. He believes he and his group STOP are under surveillance. In a report entitled ‘Extremist Watch,’ there is a picture of Vincent from his Facebook group, which is private. The report was published by Information Network Associates, Inc. (INA) which, according to their website, “has been a licensed private detective agency in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania since 1983. INA provides premier services for government, private enterprise and private citizens.”
The report describes in detail STOP’s campaign, in addition to Vincent’s attendance at the Animal Rights 2010 Conference.
Jentsch, who is trying to develop new treatments for schizophrenia, said that he will not give in to the activists’ demands. For this reason, he founded the UCLA branch of Pro-Test.
“The fundamental concept of the Pro-Test group is the idea of public engagement,” said Jentsch. “Get out there, tell people what’s going on, tell people what your work is about and what you’re hoping to accomplish and people will understand it and accept it.
“My work is intended to help humanity and make the world a better place and I’m not going to let someone bully me out of doing it. Never.”
(+6 rating, 6 votes)
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Dr. Hepburn, you may not have a choice about releasing information about UBC’s animal research. UBC must comply with regulations set under BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, including responding to information requests within specific deadlines. UBC has failed to met those statutory deadlines. As a result, Stop UBC Animal Research recently filed a formal complaint with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. That complaint is currently under review. If the OIPC rules in STOP’s favour UBC will be directed to respond to the campaign’s request for information. UBC cannot simply ignore provincial law.
1/ The researchers are paid by the University who gets grants from the government via taxpayers. Therefore the ‘intellectual property’ belongs to Canadian citizens.
2/ We wouldn’t understand? We do understand right from wrong. We do understand the arrogance of UBC who apparently believes it has the right to decide what the public can and cannot know.
3/ We do understand cruel and barbaric, and inhumane behaviour.
4/ I wish Pfaus could come back as a rat too..at UBC….tomorrow.
5/ UBC researches are trembling in their booties because activists are criticizing them, they fear for their lives…WHAT BIG BABIES! Yet every day they brutally torture innocent animals without a thought. They are the modern day Nazi SS.
6/ We understand that the torturing of animals is WRONG, UNETHICAL AND DEMEANING TO THE HUMAN RACE.
Maybe they are the ones who do not “Understand”
Barbara, I would take issue with your description of UBC researchers as “modern day Nazi SS.” While Stop UBC Animal Research vehemently disagrees with experimentation on animals and believes UBC researchers have ignored the values of non-animal alternatives, such characterizations of researchers as “Nazis” undermines serious debate.
The issue of animal research is certainly a controversial one. But our campaign believes resolving conflict over this sensitive topic can only be accomplished through compassionate, respectful dialogue. Tossing out ugly labels does the animals, the public, and the UBC community no good. I urge all who care about animals to communicate with compassion in their hearts.
I beg to differ. I agree that animal torture is wrong and they should cut back on it as much as possible, however I feel UBC is doing a good job of that already and that there’s nothing wrong here. I encourage everyone to step back and think about the whole situation without caving in to the bias that “animal research is wrong, therefore no matter what the reason, UBC sucks because they do animal research”. Activist groups tend to always be extremists that do take everything out of context and make everyone against them sound bad simply because they have a moral argument and that if you disagree with them, you are a bad person.
Numbers of animals used are fine to disclose, but not the research shouldn’t be. Yeah, so we taxpayers pay them and the government gives them the money to do the research. So what? Put yourself in a researcher’s shoes. You come up with a great idea, great new invention that could change the world. But you have to disclose it to the public. What’s to stop other people from stealing his idea as their own? It’s the same reason why the government allows companies to patent new innovations so that no-one else can use it until the company itself makes enough of a profit to encourage them to keep coming up with new ideas. This is no different. If you disclose researcher’s experiments and information, you are simply asking for them to take their research elsewhere or just flat out take away their incentive to do research. If you don’t see why this is important, go take a first-year econ class and come back to this idea. And I see that Ricardo in the post beneath has pointed out things about this too.
You also state that “UBC apparently believes it has the right to decide what the public can and cannot know”. Alright, take an extreme example and say you slept with your brother. Should everyone be allowed to know even if you don’t want them to? No, it’s personal information. It will seem right to you because you have your own reason, maybe you two are in love. But everyone else would mortified because it’s “socially wrong”. No matter how much you loved him, no matter how much he loved you, society as a whole will look down upon it and think it’s “wrong”. Try explaining your side of things to the public and have them listen. So why not just stay silent? You may say we understand “right from wrong”, “cruel and barbaric behaviour”. So don’t we also encourage and understand that love is the most beautiful force in the world that should overcome all? Except apparently when social morals are involved, am I right? Bias is strong in society as a whole. The only thing wrong would be the high rate genetic defects that could be present in the child if they were to have one, but society still looks down on this “socially wrong” act and think it’s disgusting even if the siblings knew the consequences. So I agree with Hepburn on this issue that if he were to say anything at all, the extremists would be able to skew it to their advantage.
And to your point of that “torturing of animals is wrong, unethical and demeaning to the human race”, I’d like to say, have you even looked at all the guidelines and laws that PROTECT the animals? There are so many things UBC researchers have to go through before being allowed to research you don’t even know. And since Universities are major research sites the government most likely follows closely on what they do. What are you guys trying to do, chase off all the good profs and have them move to another place to do their research that might not care at all about ethical treatment of animals at all? Because I’m sure UBC, as bad as you guys think they are right now, follow these ethical guidelines much more closely than others. If you guys are so dedicated to helping the animals, hey here’s an idea, volunteer to be tested on yourself. Maybe this will help you “understand”.
I’m not for the torture of animals, but I do understand that in order to further research. Contrary to what the activists want you to think, UBC doesn’t torture animals for the heck of it and unless you want to volunteer to try experimental drugs on yourself, you have to accept that sometimes it’s necessary.
/rant
Sorry Brian. You are of course right.
People need to read BC’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
“Article 17:
(1) The head of a public body may refuse to disclose to an applicant information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to harm the financial or economic interests of a public body.
[...]
(2) The head of a public body may refuse to disclose under subsection (1) research information if the disclosure could reasonably be expected to deprive the researcher of priority of publication.”
As a grad student, I’m proud that UBC is protecting us, and would be strongly discouraged from coming here otherwise. Academia is vicious and disclosure of research can potentially undue years of research by prompting competing researchers to rush to publication or undermine fundamental assumptions.
All information regarding animal research is released following completion of the research (as required by the act) so I don’t understand how a 1-3 year delay in disclosure is relevant to the arguments of animal activists.
Ricardo, as Grace noted, FIPPA also requires an institution to meet deadlines for responding to information requests. The university has failed to do so.
I’m curious, what do you think of the system in the US, which is far more transparent? The USDA posts online all inspection reports of labs, including reports of non-compliance and violations, necropsy reports, and veterinary care records. In addition, the NIH posts online comprehensive information about animal research, including the numbers and species of animals at each institution, research protocols, grant awards, and more. Why can’t Canada adopt the same system the US has? Canada promotes itself as being such an open country. Yet, when it comes to animal research in Canada, the information is largely hidden from the public. Does Canada really want to be known as being a more secretive and closed society than the US?
I hope that those that are against Animal Testing never have to make the choice between saving their child, and letting their child die because the life saving measure was discovered from Animal Testing.
With the sleazy slogan – “Your pet or your baby” – the researchers threaten us again with dire consequences if animal research is banned. Michaeljwjr – Truth is, your hope will not be dashed, no one will ever have to make such a choice, for the simple reason that animal testing is totally ineffective in discovering anything but useless knowledge, immoral and destructive to health, misleading clinicians naive enough to try to make use of it – with TRULY dire consequences. There really exists no logical basis for translating the results of animal experiments to human beings.
No good ever came out of vivisection since the world began, and, in my opinion, no good ever will or can.
PS. Perhaps Michaeljwjr can explain what went wrong with, oh say for example, the “miracle drug” Vioxx, withdrawn in 2004, after an estimated 140,000 Americans developed heart and vascular disease from Vioxx – though “proved safe” in monkeys and mice and rats. “Monkey tests were a special problem. After human studies indicated that Vioxx was more dangerous than another painkiller, naproxen, Merck used experiments on African green monkeys to try to show that Vioxx wasn’t the problem. The monkey tests showed that Vioxx was neutral for the heart, while naproxen seemed to have a special heart-protective effect. Merck’s falsely optimistic animal tests led the company to disregard the deadly problems emerging in humans.” – See http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/gm05autumn/vioxx.html
No good ever came out of vivisection….
The link posted presents one side of the argument in a lawsuit very well. What was the final verdict of the lawsuit?
Seeing as it looks like a bunch of STOP people jumped on the usually vacant discussion boards of the Ubyssey, I thought I would throw in an alternate idea so that it doesn’t seem like everyone is against animal research.
How about an easy example: the discovery of insulin. How many millions of people around the world have diabetes which requires them to take insulin? Insulin was discovered through testing on animals.
After all PETA (the group STOP has aligned itself with) would be without a Vice President if it were not for insulin, as Mary Beth Sweetland is a type 1 diabetic. For myself STOP looses legitimacy when it teams up with PETA, who protests against killing animals, while it performs euthanasia on hundreds of animals every year.
“Sometimes the only kind option for some animals is to put them to sleep forever.” – President of PETA.
And yes in preparing this comment all I did was go back to my favorite Penn and Teller episode, season two episode one.
THE TRUTH BEHIND THE DISCOVERY OF INSULIN http://www.vivisectionresearch.ca/insulin1.htm
I have just completed reading Michael Bliss’ The Discovery of Insulin (the University of Chicago Press: 1982) which contains several revealing passages.
On page 245, Bliss states that the miracle of insulin was not “the overnight achievement of unsung genius, but … the culmination of a world-wide, thirty-year search involving hundreds of researchers spending millions of dollars.” That translates into a lot of dogs (indeed, the most encountered phrase in The Discovery of Insulin is “de-pancreatized dogs” in all its variations).
Well, after all this “research”, and after 244 pages of praising dog-mutilators and calling antivivisectionists “surely some of history’s most misguided idealists” (page 193), Bliss unwittingly spills the beans. On pages 245-246 he states:
“Because insulin enabled diabetics to live and propagate, and because the disease had a strong hereditary component, the effect of the discovery of insulin was to cause a steady increase in the number of diabetics. Other factors, such as rising calorie intake in the twentieth century, worked in the same direction. This increase, combined with the ongoing difficulties of insulin therapy, and with the changing mix of threats to life and the incidence of infectious disease declined, meant that diabetes posed more medical problems after the discovery of insulin than before.”
John R. Abraytis, Attorney at Law
So you’re saying that the existence of an unforeseen/unintended negative consequence of a clear case where animal testing resulted in a new treatment option for humans invalidates the argument that animal testing can result in new treatment options for humans?
Logic fail?
… so? Should we prevent every person who is genetically more at risk for a disease to stop having kids? I mean, that’s what I am getting from your argument.
Fascinating article–thanks for showing both sides of the situation. I’m inclined to believe that UBC is being sketchy. The joke from Pfaus is particularly dumb–all the animals do is have sex, eat, and take drugs? Ah yes, the Canadian dream: to be on mass doses of cocaine all the time. Hurray.
The animals are from the Jersey Shore?
Great article. I am a UBC alumn and a Canadian tax-payer who believes it is our right to know how our money is being spent. To continually use the argument that researchers would be vulnerable to harm if information was disclosed is a way to deflect the conversation away from the issue that UBC is experimenting on animals.
And when does the investigation begin into any equally expensive research area? Chemistry…? Physics…? Genetics…? Of course no one cares how much money is spent there.
Ricardo, it is not necessarily a question on how much is spent, though in these economically challenged times I’m sure most taxpayers would welcome more fiscal restraint. The more important question is: for what is the money be used?
You didn’t address my question: Why can’t Canada have a system that is as transparent as the US? Does Canada really want to be seen as being more secretive than the US?
UBC hides in fear. STOP is exposing myths and demanding change. If animal experiments are as marvelous as some would like us to believe then surely after more than 200 years of cruel experiments we would have eternal life by now. Or at the very least, a cure for the common cold. We are no longer living in the dark ages, we now have modern nonanimal methods to pursue studies. These have already proved superior to animal use. There are in vitro tests in which human cells can be bombarded with diseases and show results in a matter of hours. Computer technology allows us the use of virtual organs, whole human DNA and computer assaying. Mass spectrometry, miscroscopy which allows us to detect minute , even precancerous tumors. With all these humane methods at our disposal, the only obstacle now standing between animals rights and cruel vivisection is the mighty dollar. It’s a multi billion dollar a year industry, paid by accepting taxpayers. Scientists need to be redirected, our money should be going into far superior research methods. We no longer need to kill a bunny to see if a woman is pregnant, nor do we need to give cocaine to a rat to see if he’ll get high. We can STOP this madness by questioning unethical cruel experiments and demand our health care dollars be spent in humane productive ways!
“Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
Hmmm… I’m neither for or against animal research, but it’s hard for me to believe animal testing is useless, as some of the comments have claimed.
Wasn’t there a guy who won a Nobel Prize by altering stem cells or DNA in mice? His research led to genetic targeting and they were able to give these mice diseases found in humans, study how they progressed in different organs and tissues, and created new drug therapies. I don’t think it’s fair to say animal research is entirely useless.
Jennifer, I enjoyed your comments. As they caused me to remember something I once read. It was in regard to giving diseases to animals to find new drug therapies. All animals, not unlike humans harbor viruses. Therefore experimenting on animals, or their tissue or using their organs in transplant experiments carries a serious risk of disease transmission. Once such virus, HTLV,( leukemia causing) has crossed the species barrier. It now has led to the deadly Marburg disease and Lassa fever. A virus found in Baboons, SV40, is believed to have infected people causing brain cancer in a polio vaccine in the 1950′s. Their are virus’s in pigs which are fatal to humans, and the same goes for many other animal diseases (avian flu). Animal exploitation is a slippery slope, in the’ hopes’ of curing one ill, we may unwittingly cause one even more deadly. Mankind is primitive in his thinking, that he can use another species to cure the sickness of his own. Animals do not exploit us, they only require our respecting their lives. I believe it’s no longer a question of “whether we can do this”… It’s a question of “whether we should.”
Shelly, are you saying that animal research has caused viruses to bridge the species gap? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say this is likely due to changes in human behavior over that past century, where our populations moving into their habitats has caused an increased interaction between humans and animals?
Regarding your post I wanted to correct some misinformation. HTLV is a retrovirus which is a completely different viral family from the Marburg virus which is in the ebola virus family… As well Lassa fever is in the Arena virus family, again completely different in every way from HTLV. Would you please provide the species which HTLV came from as I am having trouble finding any type of transmission other than sexual for this virus.
You are correct that SV-40 was found in a small portion of one type of polio vaccine back in the 50′s, fortunately “Recent studies by scientists at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), one of the National Institutes of Health, provide further evidence that exposure to simian virus 40 (SV40) is not associated with cancer in humans”
Thankfully that vaccine did more than inject people with harmless SV40 virions, it saved millions of lives from debilitating and fatal poliomyelitis… And I think it did so with the aid of animal models… Thank you Wikipedia they did in fact use monkey kidney tissues to develop the Salk vaccine.
When you talk about viruses in pigs which are fatal in humans I am assuming you are talking about influenza. Pigs serve as a “mixing pot” for influenza strains as they are susceptible to both human and avian strains. Genomic recombination events in pig cells can cause new strains to arise leading to pandemics, however this has nothing to do with animal testing. As well the threat posed by avian flu was that it was able to bridge the gap between birds and people without pigs. This could be dangerous as avian strains of influenza appear novel to our immune systems. As it does not involve pigs in any way it doesn’t make for a very good example of a virus carried by pigs posing a threat to humans. Again this cross species transmission is in no way related to animal testing.
As for your question,I believe we should continue testing on animals if it means improving the quality of life for man kind.
Hi Lionel, thanks for your rebuttal. My info sources are as follows. M.Peter-Bull Soc Pathol Exo, 2000. BBC report on virulent and cross-species viruses, Frontiers, radio 4. JS ALLAN, Xenograft Transplantation And the Infectious Disease Conundrum, ILAR Journal, 37.
Mae-Wan HO, Genetic Engineering, Dream or Nightmare, The Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business. In regard to continued animal experimentation. I believe it is now a fruitless endeavor. Millions of people continue to die every year from disease we now know how to prevent. How much better it would be to focus the use of our money on prevention, rather than cure. People are dying from preventable illnesses, man made famine, lack of drinking water, urban poverty and poor nutrition. We need to advance health care with prevention, the old adage reminds us ‘it’s worth a pound of cure.’ I wholeheartedly agree with Charles Mayo, founder of the Mayo Clinic, who said ” I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery that could not have been attained without barbarism or cruelty. The whole thing is evil.”… respectfully added
That’s an impressive list, could you connect the points in your piece to these articles. I have looked over the list and didn’t have much like finding the sources of your information. I would especially like to see specific passages where HTLV caused Marburg and Lassa fever.
I looked for “M.Peter-Bull Soc Pathol Exo, 2000″ on pubmed and didn’t get any hits…
Could you post a link for:
BBC report on virulent and cross-species viruses, Frontiers, radio 4
Couldn’t find anything with google so I stopped looking.
I found “Transplantation And the Infectious Disease Conundrum, ILAR Journal, 37.” and it is a very interesting read. It mostly centers on what I mentioned, changes in human behavior causing cross species transmission. What I find confusing is that in your original comment you mentioned nothing about xenotransplantation, which is the focus of this article. As well it does mention HTLV, but much to my relief it says nothing about this virus being associated with Marburg of Lassa fever, so I should do alright on my virology final. A problem I have with this article is that it contains typos “Picornaviruses. Although baboons carry several picomaviruses” which is unusual in scientific literature. Lastly the article is written by a “scientist” with no mention of a masters degree or post-doctorate, and I can’t find an articles referencing this article. All of this seems suspect.
I think you meant “Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare?: Turning the Tide on the Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business” and not “Genetic Engineering, Dream or Nightmare, The Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business.” Not a big difference between the two but it made it much more difficult to find. Could you specify which part of this book you are referencing? I managed to find an intro to it on Amazon, and the author simply seems hostile to every type of science or advancement of medicine. In some cases, such as the Monsanto bovine growth hormone incident I completely agree, however on a feel good note the Canadian government did not allow the product to cross the border. So if you could point out which part of the book you are referencing from it would be appreciated. All in all the book in general doesn’t really focus on the debate at hand.
Now getting away from the shotgun spread selection of sources, I am curious as to whether or not you would have thought animal experimentation was fruitless endeavor one hundred years ago. Many of the diseases killing people which we know how to prevent were found through animal research, and I have no reason to believe many more won’t be found in the future.
I agree that prevention over cure is a fantastic idea. One great type of prevention is VACCINATION, and where would vaccination be without animals. You can’t even make the yearly influenza shot without eggs.
As far as vivisection goes, I think the term is more of a shock tactic used by animal rights groups than anything else. Used to convince people that animal testing is entirely immoral. This article in the Ubyssey does not once mention vivisection, however the term is running rampant in the discussion board. From this I have three questions. 1 I wonder what amount of research around the campus involves vivisection? 2 Why isn’t it mentioned in the article if it is a problem on campus? 3 If vivisection does exist on campus, and it was next abolished, would you, Shelly, support animal testing to improve the quality of life for people with illnesses, and to aid in novel forms of prevention?
Make that 4 questions, what exactly is your definition of vivisection? This question goes out to John as well, who I believe was first to mention it in the discussion on this article.
I know this was a long post, thanks for taking the time to read it in its entirety before posting a reply.
We don’t study mice to gain knowledge about dogs, do we? I think we easily agree that this would be foolish. Why then should it be reasonable to study cats to gain knowledge of human beings? In scientific medicine there’s no such thing as close enough!
Doctors expressing their opposition to
vivisection and vivisectors have the last word with me, since they have no turf to protect but only the interest of their patients. For instance, Dr. med. Olga Lautreppe wrote in Tier und Mensch (No.6, 1932): “Vivisection is based on two false notions. One is that the experimental method – so successful when applied to inanimate bodies – should also be applied to living bodies. But the great Cuvier, the glory of France and of Science, totally rejects the application of the experimental method to the science of life processes (physiology) and disputes the justification for vivisection, saying: All parts of a living body are linked with one another, and only function correctly when they are acting together. To separate one organ from the whole means putting it in the class of inanimate matter; this means totally altering its nature.
The second false idea is that we can draw conclusions from experiments on animals in relation to the human being, because animals have a certain similarity to humans. In fact, however, there are more dissimilarities than similarities between human beings and animals”
This reminds me of an interesting quote I picked up from a Prof last year, it goes something like “What is true for E.coli is true for the Elephant, however what is true for E.coli is not true for E.coli.” The point is that you cannot draw absolute conclusions about one from the other, however you can learn things. Much of what we know about the cellular processes in our own bodies is the result of studying bacteria. In the same way much of what we know about medicine for humans has resulted from animal research.
As well, when did vivisection enter the discussion, it is not mentioned in the article, and ‘Sigh’ makes a pretty convincing case that it does not occur on campus. I believe vivisection is a scare term used by animal rights groups to sway public opinion, and on this entire page you were the first person to mention it…
Vivisection; comes from a latin term, meaning alive/cutting. But I believe, as seems to be the general consensus among people who are opposed to animal experimentation, that it has taken on a broader meaning , any procedures that involve pain/ and or needless suffering inflicted on an animal.
Here in lies the problem. When you begin to give words broader meanings than they literally have you are being dishonest. Saying that so-and-so’s lab is performing vivisections to someone on the sidewalk may leave them with the literal interpretation that perhaps a mouse is being cut open while it is still alive, when what you actually meant was a small shock causing some pain was inflicted on the mouse. These of course are two very different things to that person on the sidewalk whom you are trying to rally to the cause, and it is dishonest.
Of course I don’t mean you are the person responsible for this tricky bit of wordplay, but hopefully you discourage it from discourse.
It is great to see some debate here regarding the merits of animal research. It leads to the hope that we could very soon take things to the level of an actual dialogue on campus between those UBC scientists/grads who support animal experimentation and some of the many medical researchers who maintain that basing human medicine upon animal models is an excercise in irrelevance.
Sigh. This is so much better solved if we just ignore people like those behind STOP. They’ll just go away once they realize that they have no leg to stand on. Just cause the US is doing it doesn’t mean that we have to. The US also has a 2 party system and crazy right wing propaganda. Doesn’t mean we should do it too.
Stop feeding the trolls. That’s all they are. They can act like parrots all they want and just post their speaking notes over and over.
Sorry, Sigh, but Stop UBC Animal Research is here to stay.
You can try to ignore the group but STOP isn’t going anywhere. The campaign will continue to blow the whistle on UBC and generate public and media scrutiny of UBC’s animal research. If you haven’t noticed lately, the STOP campaign has been featured on every major Vancouver TV news station, in the Vancouver Sun, Province, national and international news wires, Macleans on Campus, CBC, CKNW, and News1130 radio, and, of course, regularly in the UBYSSEY. This trend is likely to continue. And the group is growing, gaining a lot of public support.
Interesting how you refuse to address the very substantive posts by John, Shelly, and others on this thread. Rather than simply dismissing their claims why not try to engage in a dialogue and provide some fact-based rebuttals. Insulting people is the lazy approach. Why not try real debate instead?
Because real debate has never worked with fear-mongers who firebomb cars, threaten the livelihoods of everyday Joes, and attack those who are only related to the researcher through their son (see the last Ubyssey article about the researcher’s son’s girlfriend being harassed).
Timmy, painting all animal advocates with a broad brush isn’t constructive dialogue either.
I am a supporter of STOP and have never engaged in any of the actions you describe. I’m a 65 year old grandmother, retired nurse who cares about animals. Are you saying I’m an “extremist?”
Are you accusing every person on this post who objects to animal research of fire bombing cars? Are you saying that some UBC faculty and staff, who are members of STOP or have contributed donations to the group are “terrorists?” Absolutely ridiculous. Even slanderous.
You certainly are free to avoid discussing substantive issues but STOP, as well as the broader public, will continue to raise issues about UBC’s animal research.
Grace,
Most. Not all. But all it takes is most.
STOP becomes difficult to support when it joins forces with PETA who quietly supports the ALF, a terrorist group.
Slander, extremism, and sensationalism are certainly concepts that STOP and its buddies are very familiar with; after all, they’ve been using these cheap tactics for about 3 months now to mislead the public into misinformation. The research process goes MUCH beyond divulging information before results are published, and with millions at stake, no researcher in the right mind will risk their grant money to appease a tiny majority that will go away when the next big thing happens.
As an aside, I don’t care who you are – you could be Dr. Hepburn, my roomie, or the grannie that you claim to be; you’re making posts in support of a group that’s been known to make shit up, and as a result, I question everything that you and STOP says.
Timmy, I wholeheartedly agree with you. Change will not happen by threats of violence or the removal of anothers civil liberties ( be they human or animal) What STOP is trying to do is create awareness of Animal Testing and it’s perceived benefits, be they pro and con. As Canadian Taxpayers we have the right to know where our money is being spent. We also have the right to know whether animal testing protocols are current and ethical, or for that matter, even necessary. For millions of years human beings have been evolving and will continue to do so. During this time, history has proven that ‘we resist change’. We have fought healthy change, even to our own detriment. A paradigm shift is in order. Scientific advancement itself is not evolutionary, but is rather a ‘series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions’, and in those revolutions “one conceptual world view is replaced by another”. Let’s open up a dialogue , and pursue needed change. Contemporary Animal Experimentation has not shown any sizable benefits to mankind. Instead of fearing change, we can discuss and employ viable alternatives to benefit mankind. Ones that don’t involve the destruction of other sentient beings.
Hey Shelly,
With regards to “We also have the right to know whether animal testing protocols are current and ethical, or for that matter, even necessary.”
You will find a lot of up to date information on protocols here: http://www.ccac.ca/en/CCAC_Programs/CCAC_Programs_Main.htm
I think everyone agrees that these protocols are in fact necessary.
Timmy, I think these people just don’t get it. When you’re dealing with people who never even did research and are basing their claims on things they’ve heard through the grapevine, there’s no debate to be had.
I know the group doesn’t support violence- but they also don’t think that animal research should exist at all. That in and of itself makes them people worth ignoring because by saying that one thing, all their arguments fall. If we could replace animals with things like tissue cultures (which are already very widely used), we would. But we don’t cause it doesn’t give us information. These people will just never understand that. They’re from a different generation. They lived in times when animals were tortured. Or they’re members of the public who just don’t have a clue and who listen to garbage that people spew. And even if what STOP says is true about stuff like vivisection, they have no idea why that research is being done and the lengths to which researchers have to prove their experiments worthwhile.
And Grace- you know who else is on the news all the time? People like Sarah Palin. People like Paris Hilton. They’re not going anywhere, but it doesn’t mean that they’re going to be listened to. The media will get tired of you too, don’t worry. And the university is backed by the government on this and doesn’t have to change a thing.
But if they do, then you all suffer for it. Because no animal use and fear mongering leads to the death of people like you and me. You can’t have it both ways, you really can’t. Because you call everything- every surgery under anesthesia, every induction of a disease in a rat/mouse- cruelty and torture. And if that’s your approach, you can just go to any hospital now and tell each patient that you personally believe they should die because mice are too precious to be experimented on.
Sigh, Timmy, what would be your response to Dr. Charles Mayo, founder of the Mayo Clinic, who said, ”I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery that could not have been attained without barbarism or cruelty. The whole thing is evil.”
Would you ignore his words, his expertise as a researcher?
I have never argued for or against vivisection; I simply argue against those that decide to violently bully people out of their jobs or their families/friends. I argue against sensationalism and the fact that STOP is accusing UBC of something very serious when the argument has no base to stand on.
“TRUE science can be compared to a superb salon, resplendent with lights, which one can reach only through a long and horrible kitchen.” – Claude Bernard, Introduction a la Medicine Experimentale, 1865, p.44)
CLAUDE Bernard (1813 – 1878), France’s national hero and apostle of the modern
animal experimentation cult, had an oven built, that would leave the head of an animal outside while the body was roasting inside. This enabled him to write one of his many psuedo-scientific works: Leçons sur la chaleur animale, sur les effets de la chaleur et sur la fièvre (1876), meaning “Lessons on animal heat, on the effects of heat, and on fever.” The founder of today’s vivisectionist method actually hoped to discover through that oven “the
secret of the fever”: as if body heat caused by baking in an oven were the same thing as a fever caused by an infection. Neither Bernard nor his disciples ever realized that he was confusing cause and consequence – that in a patient the high heat is the consequence of the malady, not the cause.
Bernard described in detail the slow death of dogs and rabbits roasted alive, his oven’s only contribution to science being the information that a dog with its head outside the oven takes longer to die than one which is entirely locked in.
Of course such things (was it “vivisection” or “basic research”?) are not done any more in our enlightened times, according to Sigh. But, hero or not, Claude’s long and horrible kitchen has had to be thoroughly whitewashed by modern very ethical ethics commitees – who say they don’t like to vivisect but can’t avoid it. They say animals, all of them, from armadillo to mouse, are perfect models for man, woman and child. Is that clear? STOP bugging the fine, altruistic scientists, like Sigh, who are so very busy curing all those pesky diseases that plague us today.
The Canadian Council on Animal Care is made up of guvment and quasi-guvment agencies, the drug companies, research charities—and a sprinkling of lay people to make it look good, in the form of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, which claims animal experiments are necessary. The Council purports to offer a national standard of ethics for the usage of animals in laboratories.
Regarding the Council, the ethics code itself claims that burning, freezing, fracturing, staging predator-prey encounters, electrical shocking, inducing of extremely high or low temperatures, and striking or beating unanaesthetized animals–among other things specified–is permissible, so long as an external review is obtained. However, that review will be carried out by other animal researchers or research interests, by-and-large, and it is arguable that such parties have a conflict of interest. Indeed, the scientists have been trained to regard the animals in a desensitized manner, as experimental models. Peers tend to support each others work, partly because whoever one judges may one day judge one’s own work. The allowable practices also indicate that no harsh treatment of animals is explicitly prohibited, so long as it is approved by animal researchers’ peers.
In other words, to vivisect or not to vivisect, suit yourself. The light is green and the financial rewards miraculous.
Careful John, while you may be making valid points, a lot of this post is plagiarized (unless your name is actually David Sztybel, PhD)
Try to steat clear of Copy/Paste in the future.
Grace, obviously I don’t think vivisection should be done unless it’s absolutely necessary, and I would be hard-pressed to think of a circumstance in which it’s necessary. Which is why it’s not done. In all my years of research at UBC, I have never heard of anyone either wanting to perform a vivisection or actually doing one. I can’t guarantee what was done 50 years ago, but the reality is that it does not happen now. If it does, then there are probably really, really good reasons for it because ethics boards (which, btw, often have animal activists sitting on them) would not approve the experiments otherwise.
Also, quoting one person doesn’t necessarily prove your point. There is a researcher who has won a Nobel prize who thinks that evolution doesn’t exist. Just fyi for the future. I don’t really care what some researcher said, though. I said explicitly that you have to justify every procedure to an ethics board. I don’t think vivisection should happen, but if it does I’m going to trust that the very long and complex mechanisms that external bodies (including the federal government) have in place to ensure that animals aren’t abused or tortured unnecessarily work. If there’s evidence to the contrary, then we can question things. But right now, people are just quoting a few papers or talking about things that don’t even happen without actually knowing the facts of what happens and why.
Sadly, telling people what happens and why doesn’t tend to assuage fears and concerns, especially with an emotionally charged topic. No one- no researcher- wants to work on animals if it can be avoided. But they do because it can’t. You can’t get too data about systemic effects of an illness when you have no system to work with. Unless we can invent animals without brains or something, animal research will just have to happen. People recognize that, and then try to limit unnecessary experimentation with animals.
Hey Sigh, what is your area of study?
I’ve done research in biochemistry, psychology, physiology, and microbiology.
Sadly Sigh sighs and says: “Unless we can invent animals without brains or something, animal research will just have to happen.” ????!!!
We’re up againsts a giant intellect here!
Because calling someone names is a real sign of maturity. Maybe I was writing this when I was really tired. Your being rude and insulting can’t be explained by tiredness.
Actually, Sigh, you are very much mistaken.
Vivisection is happening under our very noses
and I prefer not to simply ‘trust’ that ‘animals aren’t being tortured or abused unnecessarily’. I prefer to ensure through proper public oversight that animals are not being tortured or abused, period.
Anne,
If you are in a position on campus where you can prove vivisection is occuring, why don’t you blow the whistle on the whole thing? If you can’t prove it, or you just heard it from someone, or you just have a gut feeling that it is happening under our noses, you don’t make a very convincing point.
That’s simply sensationalist hearsay and has no foundation whatsoever in this debate.
If anyone wants to have an actual, reasonable debate about the current standards of animal care they’ll find plenty of people who want to listen. But it’s really hard to have this conversation with a group whose stated aim is to end all animal research, ever. STOP is out to misrepresent researchers and cause a media ruckus, that’s why they’re getting stonewalled.
Laura-
STOP has repeatedly requested a meeting with UBC’s President Toope. He has failed to directly respond to those requests. We aren’t trying to cause a media ruckus. We are trying to facilitate a dialogue with UBC and raise public awareness about the university’s animal research.
We are very open that we would like to see an end to animal experiments at the university. UBC, on the other hand, has veiled its activities in secrecy, ignored calls for transparency, and taken an arrogant attitude that the public is simply too dumb to understand information about UBC’s animal research.
STOP wouldn’t need to go to media if UBC was more forthcoming with information and willing to have a candid discussion about this critical issue.
There isn’t anything stating that researchers must divulge details of experiments to the public. Lots of the money they get comes from personal donations. Most of the tax money that people pay actually goes to subsidize students (not in labs- just tuition, it’s why local students pay so much less than international students). Lots goes to salary professors who teach said students or who do work to improve teaching. Most salaries come from either federal grants, in which case you need to take up your case with bodies like the CCAC and not UBC. You’re really targeting the wrong people.
This probably won’t be a problem if STOP decides to revise their website to rid it of sensationalist crap like “supposed pictures that may or may not be found at a UBC research lab” (see: i killed a mouse, took some pics, and uploaded it onto flickr.) If you’re so keen on establishing dialogue with UBC, then maybe it’s time to change up your tactics and start posting real information about the UBC research community.
Oh, and Brian- so long as that’s your stance (i.e. no animal research at all should take place), you’re really saying that we should kill people instead.
Understand this: it is NOT POSSIBLE to do good research on life-saving drugs/procedures/etc. without using animals at all. Sometimes, you can use cell or tissue cultures (e.g. when working with bacteria or trying to figure out how bacteria affect something in a specific cell). But if you want systemic effects, there is NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE but to use animals.
Do you even know what systemic effects are? Have you ever even been in a lab? Have you ever even taken a science course? Have you ever even gone and found out what standards researchers have to pass to get approval? Reading a document isn’t enough. It will never be enough. You need to be on the committees that look at and evaluate experiments. Without it, you might as well just be Perez Hilton of the “Stop animal cruelty” world. All gossip, no substance, and mostly slander.
I could similarly say that you kill puppies in your spare time or something similarly ridiculous and then tell you to prove it. And then distrust your proof cause you might have made it up and I don’t trust you to be honest. Cause that’s what you’re saying now about all the organizations that look after prevention of mistreatment of animals.
Sigh, in response to ‘we should kill people instead.’ I feel your fear. But the risks of standing still, in regard to continued animal experimentation, are greater than those of moving forward. Cancer still has no cure, heart disease is on the rise ( children as young as 6 are ill) Diabetes 2 has reached almost epidemic proportions and obesity has hit an all time high. All this despite an extensive use of animals in research. In 1971 The National Cancer Act initiated a multi-billion dollar war that they predicted would end cancer by 1976. Why hasn’t cancer been eradicated with the effort and money invested. One explanation is the unwarranted preoccupation with animal research. Crucial genetic, molecular, immunologic and cellular differences between human and other animals have prevented animal models from serving as effective means by which to reach a cancer cure. Robert Weinburg ( leading cancer researcher) has commented, “The preclinical animal models of human cancer, in large part stink. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted every year by companies using these models.” And what about AIDS? Since the 1980′s animals have been used extensively in AIDS research. While monkeys, rabbits and mice born with severe combined immunodeficiency can be infected with the HIV virus, none develop the Human AIDS syndrome. Out of over 150 chimpanzees infected with HIV since 1984, only one developed symptoms resembling AIDS. So instead of testing on the AIDS virus directly Scientists have studied other immunodeficiency syndromes in animals. Aids researcher Margaret Johnston said ” HIV animal models have not yielded a clear correlate of immunity nor given consistent results on the potential efficacy of various vaccine approaches’. Since 1987 more than 100 clinical trials have been funded, with 50 preventative and more than 30 therapeutic vaccines coming out of it, they proved effective in primate studies. Sadly all failed clinical Human trials. Human clinical investigation has isolated HIV, defined the diseases natural course and identified risk factors. In vitro( cell and tissue culture) research using human white blood cells has identified both the efficacy and toxicity of anti AIDS medicines, including AZT and protease inhibitors. Studying genetic disease in animals has also proved fruitless, as animals have different metabolic pathways. The interaction between the defective genes and other genes and the environment is vastly different from a human to an animal. Since 1990 several hundred gene therapies that were successful in animal studies have been tested on thousand of patients worldwide. Yet, only one gene therapy was successful. It was for an immune disorder X-SCID. Out of the ten children treated, three developed leukemia. The animal model failed to predict the therapy to cause Cancer. Animal tests are misleading, they have the potential to, and have caused great harm. Hormone replacement therapy has increased womens risk of heart disease, cancer and stroke. But animal experiments predicted the opposite effect. Despite mandatory and extensive animal testing , adverse drug reactions remain the fifth leading cause of death in the US. Animal experimentation not only squanders scarce resources, but provides misleading results. It poses a great risk to humans. These funds need to go into clinical research, for more effective public health education and prevention programs. This is how we show true compassion to all sentient beings. Let’s focus on alternative research methods and use the wealth of information we have already accumulated from human studies to prevent further diseases. So I agree with you Sigh, we should not advocate killing people. But let go of our fears. We no longer need to be chained to the old ways. We have the competence and intelligence to change.
This post contains a wealth of information, could your provide some sort of reference for these claims. You said that your knowledge of science is extremely limited so I am worried you are using the Ctrl+Copy Ctrl+Paste technique from any source on the internet which suits your needs.
Hi Lionel, I don’t choose info to suit my needs. Although I’m sure there is plenty out there to chose from. Check out some of these resources, Sequencing The Human Genome. Science 1986:231;1055-1056. Biomedical Metatechnology,1987, Nature 1999-400:464-467. Lab Animal- June 2001:30(6) :13. Fortune Magazine, March edition, 2004. The Journal Of Infectious Diseases, 2000:182(4)-pgs 1051-1062 and 2001; 75(3), pgs 1533-1539. nature magazine-1995:1, pgs 290-297, AIDS research AND human retrovirus’s 1992:8: pgs 349-356.Molecular medicine today, -2000:6: 267-270. Clinical research on HIV Vacines, May 2005 edition. Science Magazine: 2003: 302: 1136-1138. Science 1990: 248: 358-361. Advances in Animal Welfare Science 1985/86 109-164. P.Newmak, Nature,1989, October 19,566-567. A.S. Fauci & PJ Fischinger, Public Health Reports, 1988, vol 103, 203-236. new Scientist.1988 March3, 34. J. Robbins, Diet for a new America (Stillpoint 1987). For further information I recommend you visit, what I consider a highly informative site. http://brittlind.com/results.html. Again I don’t pretend to be a scientific authority, but as a compassionate human being who attempts to educate herself on this matter,I have tried to be fair in looking at both sides of this issue. I believe in fairness to all sentient beings. Since animals do not have a voice, I have chosen to, with all my imperfections, to be a voice for them. So despite, any failings on my part, I will continue to do my utmost to defend them by continually educating myself and those around me. Neither you or myself can deny that animals are not given a choice when it comes to experimentation. being that you can not get their permission, I believe ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION SHOULD BE ABOLISHED. Thank you- Shelly
I am curious about whether or not you have read all 18 of these articles. The reason being they all come from 2 places. The first portion (Sequence of Human Genome through Advances in Animal Welfare) are all found on http://www.mrmcmed.org/critref.html from “A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation” and the rest of your sources are found on the link you posted, http://brittlind.com/results.html . I think it is more likely that you chose a handful of references from those provided on “A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation” and from the vivisection website you provided. If this is the case, in the future please simply provide a link to the original articles, and from there people following the discussion can decide for themselves the merits of the references of these articles.
I am acting under the assumption that a lot of your background knowledge comes from “A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation” available here http://www.mrmcmed.org/Critical_Look.pdf as a lot of opinions given in your posts bear striking resemblance to passages from this article.
Due to time constraints I have only been able to read through part of “Critical Look”, and while it is very interesting and provides a lot of ideas, I have found at least on section which I recognized as misleading or false. On page 13 it talks about the simian virus 40 (SV 40) (present in some of the polio vaccines from the 50’s) being found in several human cancers. This point also being made in one of your previous posts. This is frustrating as the article which “Critical Look” references to back up this point (#158 available: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/275/5301/748.full ) actually points to epidemiological data studies as saying SV 40 presence did not cause an increased incidence of cancer! This is blatantly biased and misleading! Leading me to believe that further investigation of “A Critical Look” will reveal many more sections to be misleading and incorrect, as long as it serves the purpose of the author. It also fails to mention that some studies have shown the virus was present in the human genome well before the introduction of the polio vaccine.
I think this calls for a quick virology lesson. Because SV 40 is a ‘DNA virus’, when it is replicating inside a host cell (human cell,) it may randomly be incorporated into the human genome. While it is now present in the genome it is inactive (a huge portion of the human genome is “junk DNA” which is not known to code for anything.) This is why the virus can be “present” in these cancers, however it is only coincidence, and the virus is playing no role in the cancer. As food for thought there are retroviruses which have incorporated themselves into the human genome on a huge scale, yet pose no health risks.
Now then, with the incredible humbleness you show in the second part of your post aside, if compassion for animals inhibits research which may save human lives, I believe that compassion is misplaced. With this in mind ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION SHOULD NOT BE ABOLISHED.
Quick correction, “A Critical Look” does not just say SV40 is present in cancers, it makes the claim that SV40 causes cells to undergo malignant transformations.
Lionel do you have a vested interest in using animals experimentally other than trying to find cures for mankind’s ills? Universities make money from research that uses animals. For example for most grants that a researcher receives,the university receives a percentage of those funds…… Basic research using animals is failing to produce cures. No matter what information you feed me, I’m sure I can find the information refuting your claims. Also, I admit, I’m sure I can also find info supporting it. With animal experimentation being so widespread, due to the financial profitability of it, vivisectors ( I know you abhor that word) claim responsibility for almost all of mankinds medical advancements. Whereas animal experiments are responsible for millions of deaths. A prime example of this is Tobacco. The inability of experimenters to prove that tobacco caused cancer was responsible for a lengthy delay in the issuing of official warnings about smoking. How many lethal drugs have been put on the market as a result of animal tests? Too many to mention… In regard to your comments on cancer, you may appreciate this quote. Giving evidence to the United States Congress, Dr Irwin Bross said “conflicting animal results have often delayed and hampered the war on cancer, they have never produced a single substantial advancement neither in the prevention or treatment of human cancer.” Every time someone points to the benefit of animal testing, they select a date and time in the past, citing, a disease cured with the aid of animal models and then act as if all scientific developments would not have taken place if those things hadn’t happened. One tree doesn’t make for a whole forest. Animal experimentation has hindered progress, it has done man a disservice. You might enjoy a book by Hans Ruesch, he edited a very informative testimonial, which I’m not quite finished reading, it’s entitled ’1000 Doctors ( and many more ) . Against Vivisection’… Shelly
Lionel.. I am not opposed to animal welfare or human welfare. As long as neither cause anyone harm. I cannot pretend to know everything about science… in fact my knowledge is extremely limited. I only know I am passionate about the end to suffering. And I believe in my heart that it is possible without doing harm to fellow sentient beings. I wish people would stop saying, in regard to ending animal experiments, that “it can’t be done”. I would prefer to hear “How can we get it done?” A dialogue needs to open up between UBC and the public. People fear what they don’t know, if what is being done behind UBC’s doors is ethical or not. You seem to be a very knowledgeable individual, I’m sure you’ll agree that animal research has not always been done with the greater good in view. We have all read of horrific things done to animals in the name of science. I can’t condemn those who have done so with pure motives intact. But if we continue to look at animals as disposable, what motivation is there to implement and seek change? ..thank you, Shelly
1. I appreciate that this post does not contain statistics or claimed facts that are incorrect. While I understand you believe in your heart research can continue without harm to sentient beings, this is not the reality. The cell lines and computer models which animal rights advocates often point to did not fall out of the sky, they were created through ingenious scientific experimentation. These allow for experimentation to be done without animals; however they do not remove the necessity of animal models in research. I think ‘Sigh’ picks up this part of the argument best in the November 25, 2010 at 12:05 am post.
So essentially people are saying that since problems with health have been getting worse and we can’t find instantaneous cures to things, we should give up looking in the only models we have (or else resort to using humans as our lab rats).
Here’s the thing: it took decades to find out about insulin. It took about 60 years to find a drug that could treat people with CML (a form of blood cancer). Yes, problems get worse, but we don’t demand instantaneous solutions. Sooner or later, any drug or cure that we invent has to be tested in animal models or in humans. We use animals first because we recognize that it’s better to kill say, 20 mice, then to kill a 10 year old child with leukemia. Maybe we’ll kill both because the animal model didn’t replicate human disease, but it’s better than killing 10 10-year olds because we can’t just test a drug on 1 person and determine whether it works on that one person.
For people without a background in science: please, look into the benefits of animal research. As someone who has worked with animals before, I can tell you that it is necessary. We simply can’t avoid using live organisms, and there are some great animal models out there that can’t be replaced by tissue cultures. If you’re not ok with this, then you need to understand that your desire to save mice and rats means directly letting people die. You need to acknowledge to yourselves that you’re ok with this. And you then need to be brave enough to go to a hospital and tell the kids there that you’d rather not use several dozen mice and give them all a few shots of a drug and then look at what happens to them even if it means that that child or adult will die.
Surreal, confused, illiterate gibberish.
No use trying to get through to this brain.
1000 Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection
http://www.vivisectionresearch.ca/1000.rtf
Are you talking about your brain? Cause that’s the one we really can’t get through to. Obviously, you’re too thick to understand something that makes entire sense.
Also, you’re kind of a jerk, John. I just read a comment of yours above this post and you’re just bullying people.
Wow John this has got to be one of the best, most sensical arguments on this page and you don’t get it?
I think you need a lesson in understanding simple logic, and probably a few English lessons while you’re at it if you think it’s “illiterate gibberish”.
I have been following these arguments with great interest, and hope that we won’t allow frustration to invade what is actually a frank and exciting willingness to discuss our differing opinions. And I do encourage all to go to the link that both Shelley and John mention, the ’1000 Doctors (and many more)Against Vivisection’one. And once there, keep an open mind.
To answer an earlier question, the evidence is in the scientists’ own published papers as regarding the vivisectionist techniques used in their studies. So it is not idle speculation or fear-mongering on STOP’s part: rather, a light is being shone on a corner of UBC where the general public rarely takes a look, even though our tax dollars and charitable donations are involved.