Primate Freedom

H5N1: Needed conversaton ...

2012-01-29T13:14:00.000-08:00

Sunday Dialogue: Bird Flu Experiments
The New York Times
January 28, 2012

Excerpt:

. . . The potential benefits of the research do not justify the potential dangers, so the research should be discontinued. While in almost all circumstances basic research should be fully disseminated in the science community, in this case the results should not be published in a way that allows them to be replicated by others. If allowed to continue, the research should be performed only in pursuit of concrete, urgent goals under international approval and the greatest possible safety conditions.

TOM INGLESBY
Baltimore, Jan. 24, 2012

The writer, an infectious-disease doctor, is director of the Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

More . . .

UW's Power: Sex, alcohol, and criminal animal cruelty

2012-01-26T16:06:00.000-08:00

Chris Rickert: Chadima saga reveals much about UW's power
Wisconsin State Journal. January 26, 2012.

... I feel pretty confident a primary factor behind the incident and the university's response to it is clear enough: hubris.

UW football is a powerful, beloved institution, and this wouldn't be the first time men of powerful, beloved institutions thought the usual rules didn't apply to them. ....

Chris Rickert is a columnist for the Wisconsin State Journal. The incident he's writing about is the embarrassing revelation that senior UW-Madison football staff have for years been providing liquor to under-aged students and apparently in some cases have been using their authority to force the students into having sex with them; and as far as the drunken parties alone are concerned, the head coach and the sports director have known about it for years.

The crazy thing is that Rickert says that the athletic senior staff think the usual rules didn't apply to them. Hello?

The university administration and much of the senior staff doen't think the usual rules apply to them, and they are right. It's not an opinion limited to the football staff.

When it was discovered that university vivisectors were matter-of-factly breaking state law by killing sheep with atmospheric decompression, the university went to the Legislature, snapped their fingers, and just like that, pop, without any opportunity for public discussion, the state's anti-cruelty laws no longer applied to them.

They simply don't believe the usual rules apply to them. And they are right. We live in a tiered society where rules and laws that govern people like me and Rickert are unimportant to the likes of institutions like UW-Madison.

The rather sad thing is that Rickert has not noticed this until now and probably will always imagine it's something unique to the athletic department.

H5N1: Emerging Rationality? Let's Hope.

2012-01-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

Caution urged for mutant flu work
Public-health benefits of controversial research questioned.
Declan Butler. Nature. 25 January 2012

.... More than a dozen flu experts contacted by Nature say they believe that the work opens up important vistas in basic research, and that it sends a valuable warning about the potential for the virus to spark a human pandemic. But they caution that virus surveillance systems are ill-equipped to detect such mutations arising in flu viruses. As such, work on the viruses is unlikely to offer significant, immediate public-health benefits, they say.

That tips the balance of risk–benefit assessment in favour of a cautious approach, says Michael Osterholm, who heads the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis, and who is a member of the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).

...

Again... where was the initial thoughtful, insightful oversight that is claimed to guide and regulate taxpayer-funded research?

I repeat: We ought to destroy all the petri dishes, all the records, everything we have that might allow us to move forward with this line of research. The researchers themselves ought to be forced into retirement and banned for life from having any contact with any germ lab. Oversight committees that approved the research ought to be disbanded and new more rational people selected to serve on them. Agencies that approved and funded the research ought to be purged of anyone who voted for or signed off on the approval of funding this absolute insanity.

Interesting related bit:
Virus in one controversial H5N1 study wasn't lethal
Jan 25, 2012 (CIDRAP News) – Breaking a prolonged silence, the author of one of two controversial studies dealing with mutant H5N1 viruses said today that the virus his team created went airborne to spread among ferrets, but it didn't kill them.

Vivisection Victim Speaks Out

2012-01-25T13:38:00.000-08:00

Ten Years of Guantanamo: One of the Prison’s First Detainees Breaks His Silence
Care2 Causes Editors
January 10, 2012

Excerpt:

When I was injected in the back of the neck I was being held in isolation, so I was unable to discuss what had happened with other detainees. A year passed before I was eventually able to see and communicate with fellow detainees, and I am unable to remember today if I discussed that particular personal experience with them. We did discuss medical experimentation in general however. A detainee with UK citizenship described being injected daily, resulting in one of his testicles becoming swollen and racked with pain. Along with these daily injections he was subjected to mind games by interrogators, medical personnel, and guards whom worked as a team. Under these conditions they were able to extract written false confessions from him. How I experienced the injection at the base of my neck is described in detail in my book. In a nutshell, I felt my soul had been violated. That is just one experience I had with medication. There were many pills and injections, plus constant blood tests over the years. Everybody regardless of their citizenship should acknowledge that medical experimentation, whether on human beings or animals, is unacceptable. As with animals, we were held as prisoners when these procedures were forced upon us against our will. And as with animals, we were voiceless.

A message that will be lost on many.

Dumb vivisectors

2012-01-25T10:37:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned many times how cruel, dull, insensitive, distrustful, and contriving I find members of the vivisection industry to be. I've mentioned UW-Madison's Harlow Lab director Chris Coe by name a couple times. See for instance The Biology of Iron and Christopher Coe on Res 35. Or, just stick "Coe" into the little search window at the top of the page in the upper left. But I'm going to have to add gullible to my list of descriptive adjectives.

Regular readers may recall that UW-Madison successfully derailed an effort to encourage public involvement in a consideration of the ethics of using monkeys in its research programs. A key component of this deflection of public scrutiny was the promise they made to the Dane County Board of Supervisors to hold a series of public forums that would adequately answer any questions that the public might have about the university's use of animals. (I summarize and paraphrase here; for more, read: "Forum" Keeps Details Hidden.)

The forums have been a sham but they have nevertheless fooled even those they are meant to shield. The most recent forum featured a presentation by Andrew Rowan of the Humane Society of the United States. He gave an interesting talk, but had no specific knowledge about anything having to do with the university's use of animals.

Here's the silly connection with Coe: When he heard that Rowan was coming he sent the members of the forum committee information that he claimed exposed HSUS for what it really is. His information about HSUS was Rick Berman's industry-funded HumaneWatch.org. Really? So much for critical thinking.

H5N1: "the world will hold life sciences accountable"

2012-01-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

Experts debate aspects of H5N1 transmission studies
Lisa Schnirring, Staff Writer
Jan 23, 2012 (CIDRAP News)

Worth reading.

"UW a focus in avian flu controversy"

2012-01-24T12:04:00.000-08:00

UW a focus in avian flu controversy
Lauren A. Michael Science Editor. The Daily Cardinal
Sunday, January 22, 2012

SCIENCE

You may or may not have noticed dramatic headlines over the last few weeks regarding research on the deadly avian flu virus. A variety of news sources have led with titles noting a "mutant killer virus" and "science gone wrong."

It can be really hard to distinguish the truth from the drama, especially when a controversy places your university under the media microscope.

You can read the entire piece here.

I'm not sure what to make of this article. It appears to be simple PR spin rather than actual reporting. But the author is a new grad student who is listed as a research assistant trainee at the INSTITUTE FOR MOLECULAR VIROLOGY which leads me to think that she might actually believe what she wrote. If she were in one of the journalism programs, I'd think she was just completing an assignment on fooling the public.

What makes this article sort of interesting is that she is probably just voicing the chatter she's hears where she works. Lab personnel are particularly susceptible to the negative effects of conforming to group norms, obedience to authority, and the other well researched and documented risks of group identification, particularly when there is a perceived in-group and out-group. This phenomena is on full display whenever one takes the time to observe the group behavior of the university's vivisectors and the administrators, staff and faculty associated with their work. (My favorite work on this dark and interesting part of human behavior is Phillip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. 2007. The second half of the book amounts to a survey of many studies and situations that demonstrate the risks of "situational influences.")

As a result of being a part of a group that probably feels somewhat under attack at the moment, and listening to the likely uncritical self-supporting and self-justifying conversations, its little wonder that she is so confused and feels a need to tell her fellow students the "truth." No matter how limited the local news coverage has been, it is a near certainty that the staff and students associated with the virology labs at UW-Madison are keenly aware of what's being reported elsewhere. The author understandably has projected her personal interest onto the rest of the student body. (I doubt that more than a handful of non-biology students even know that there is a storm raging over the work at their university.)

Anyway, I thought I'd take a moment here to look at her statements because they very likely reflect the opinions of those in the labs she believes to be the "true" authorities on the questions surrounding the invention of what may be, so far as humans and perhaps some other mammals and some birds are concerned, the most dangerous virus on the planet.

She says that the world-wide concern is media-induced. She calls it "media-induced fear." But the risk isn't a media contrivance. I would say that the fear is scientist-informed. The earliest alarms seem to have been raised by people like Ian Ramshaw of Canberra's National Centre for Biosecurity (NCB) and Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Ebright apparently said early on that the research should never have been conducted in the first place because of the grave public health risks.

The outspoken concern by authoritative scientists -- urging the censoring of the details of this work -- is very unusual. Very unusual too, maybe even unique, is the request from the National Institutes of Health (under the direction of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity) to the world's two premier science journals, Science and Nature, not publish papers detailing how this new version of the bird flu was created. (See Fears grow over lab-bred flu: Scientists call for stricter biosafety measures for dangerous avian-influenza variants. Declan Butler. Nature. 20 December 2011.)

Unlike most local Madison news outlets, reporters in other markets, particularly science reporters, took notice and explained to the public why there is such largely unprecedented concern among scientists about this research.

The author then mentions the potential risks, but dismisses them with a claim about the potential benefits of the research.

Throw in the fact that the H5N1 flu has killed nearly 60% of humans who have contracted it (though only 570 people have been infected worldwide) and you can understand the current media-induced fears-that scientists are providing bioterrorists with instructions to create a virus that would kill more than half of the human population.

Again, that's pretty dramatic. Not only does such a statement ignore the practical limitations of flu infection and laboratory science, but also the more important reasons for performing such research and the role of regulatory measures in preventing such a situation.

But her justification is the mantra of all basic biomedical research -- speculative benefits that rarely come to pass. In this case, it's like saying we ought to invent a doomsday time-bomb so that we can learn how to defuse it. That's nuts, but nutty beliefs are one of the common results of the sort of situational influences examined by Zimbardo.

The author seems unable to see what is in front of her, even when she writes it down. She says: "In an introductory article from Science Insider (of the journal Science), Fouchier is quoted saying that his lab created what is 'probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make.'" That seems like a pretty clear statement about the danger given the sometimes high mortality associated with other viruses that are here naturally.

The author has apparently no knowledge of the history of the biosecurity failures in the U.S., abroad, or at her own institution. She says:

Regarding any fears that harmful viral agents could escape from such laboratory spaces, the measures taken by the IIVR represent "the most stringent set of federal guidelines I've ever seen," according to James Tracy, former associate dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, in the On Wisconsin article. Previously, federal research funding agencies, like the National Institutes of Health, would have had to approve Kawaoka's research.

This is an odd statement. A very odd statement. Surely she knows that Kawaoka's lab's most secure space is classified as Bio-Safety Level-3-Agriculture, or just BSL-3-Ag.

A BSL-3-Ag lab is a safer place to handle dangerous pathogens than a a BSL-1 or BSL-2 certified lab. A BSL-3-Ag lb has special requirements because large "loosely" housed animals are used. You can read some of the technical details here.

But as safe and secure as the Kawaoka BSL-3-Ag area is, it's no BSL-4 lab. These two photos from the CDC give some sense of the difference:

Notice that the fellow on the left has the back of his head exposed and is wearing a lab coat over his clothes. The people on the right are more or less in space suits.

James Tracy's comment about a lab at the UW-Madison having "the most stringent set of federal guidelines" that he'd ever seen is silly and either intentionally misleading or based on an absence of knowledge. (Frankly though, I don't think Tracy's comments should be given much weight, regardless of what he says. In my opinion he intentionally mislead the public about what has taken place at the university. Thankfully he's no longer at the university. See my response to a letter to the editor from him here: Millions dead within weeks.

The author provides her readers with a reassuring balm: "With respect to the publication of results, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) has been called in, as it has been for similar situations in the past."

Unfortunately, there has only been one other case that could in any way been seen as somewhat similar, and that was the crazy resurrection of the previously extinct 1918 Spanish flu. Read my essay linked to above for more on Kawaoka's involvement in that affair.

But even that insanity is dwarfed by the craziness of creating even deadlier diseases.

If in fact, the author's opinions reflect those of her superiors and virus lab co-workers, then we ought to be concerned about their faith in the system and their failure to take note of the many problems on their own campus regarding biosafety. I suspect, as I said at the start, that her opinions on this matter give us a very good indication of what's being said in the virus labs on campus. That's not cause for comfort.

I'll give Ms. Michael the last word here. She sums up with her expression of faith and pride. She is one of the insiders, proud to be part of the elite club that sees all the current controversy as just so much media-induced nonsense. You can't argue with faith:

While the NSABB has yet to make a decision, there are many factors for audiences to consider in judging for themselves. Either way, UW-Madison's place in such a debate is an example of its prominence in such worldwide research efforts.

The new H5N1: "There’s nothing else in its league,"

2012-01-23T10:35:00.000-08:00

A Call to Stop H5N1 Research
Sabrina Richards. The Scientist. January 23, 2012.
...
Among the changes needed, “we should have in place a system of prior review,” Ebright said, such as a group of disinterested parties tasked with weighing the risk of such studies.

There's an idea! And it puts the lie to the tired claim made by every U.S. vivisector, university, and the other institutions involved in similar work, that there is already extensive prior review.

This is comforting:

Steinbruner argues for keeping “professional regulators” out of the picture for now in order to come to a conclusion more quickly. “Scientists must take the initiative to find an arrangement [of regulations] they can live with” before disaster strikes, he said. Though the name may not inspire the same nightmares as Ebola or anthrax, influenza may be the perfect agent for a pandemic, with H5N1 showing greater than 50 percent mortality in the five hundred people who have contracted the virus directly from infected poultry—well above the 2.5 percent mortality rate of the 1918 flu, which killed over 50 million people. “There’s nothing else in its league,” Steinbruner said.

Wouldn't you think that brewing up something this dangerous ought to be a topic of serious discussion in Madison, home of one of the two labs in the world with this bomb on the shelf? The fact that it hasn't been has a lot to say about how well local media are keeping the public apprised. It says something about local media's reluctance to say anything that could lead to negative opinions about the university. The risk to the public, coupled with the past problems in Yoshihiro Kawaoka's lab with Ebola, would seem a reasonable and important topic for public discussion.

Wouldn't you think that the state's university where this research is occurring ought to be holding public forums about it? Maybe public education isn't a high priority for them.

Maybe they don't care what the public knows or thinks.... that's how it looks to me.

Fears of mutant virus escape halt bird flu study

2012-01-22T10:33:00.000-08:00

Fears of mutant virus escape halt bird flu study
Sharon Begley. Reuters
1-20-2012

Researchers studying a potentially more lethal, airborne version of the bird flu virus have suspended their studies because of concerns the mutant virus they have created could be used as a devastating form of bioterrorism or accidentally escape the lab.

Much more...

Bird flu: Terrorists aren't the the real danger

2012-01-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

Keeping superbugs away from terrorists

LAURIE GARRETT. January 11, 2012. Capital Times.

When flu scientist Ron Fouchier, of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, announced in September that he had made a highly contagious, supervirulent form of the bird-flu virus, a long chain of political events unfolded, mostly out of the public eye. Fouchier told European virologists at a meeting in Malta that he had created a form of the H5N1 avian flu — which is extremely dangerous to both birds and mammals, but only contagious via birds — that was both 60 percent fatal to infected animals and readily transmitted through the air between ferrets, which are used as experimental stand-ins for human beings. The University of Wisconsin’s Yoshihiro Kawaoka, one of the world’s top influenza experts, then announced hours later that his lab had achieved a similar feat. Given that in some settings H5N1 has killed more than 80 percent of the people that it has infected, presumably as a result of their contact with an ailing bird, Fouchier’s announcement set the scientific community and governments worldwide into conniption fits, with visions of pandemics dancing in their heads. Read more....

This is an interesting and informative piece; it's good that the Cap Times published it.

As interesting and apparently well-researched as this article is, it fails to call attention to the history of accidents associated with research involving dangerous infectious diseases. The level of risk from terrorists using germ warfare seems low when considered against the history of problems that have resulted from things like poor maintenance of rubber seals and ventilation systems in supposedly secure laboratories, workers becoming blasé about biosafety, and plain old mistakes and accidents.

Plum Island

Lyme disease takes its name from Lyme, Connecticut. (I marked Lyme and Plum Island on the map above.) Some people consider it more than coincidental that tick-borne diseases were being studied at USDA's Animal Disease Center on Plum Island, when the disease emerged in the US population. Plum Island, "The Safest Lab in the World" has also been suggested as the US doorway of West Nile virus, and duck enteritis. For much more on this see Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Laboratory.

Pirbright

The likely cause of the 2007 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom, which resulted in thousands of animals being destroyed and costing billions of pounds, apparently was traced to leaky sewage pipes damaged by tree roots. The laboratory itself maintained good biosafety standards apparently, and still, a breach occurred. (See too 'Safety incidents' at animal lab. May 2011. BBC.) Even after the 2007 disaster, accidents continue. Accidents are just a part of life; they happen, accidentally. There are no absolutely fail-safe systems.

Madison Aerosol Chambers

Faulty Aerosol Chamber Infects Three

NIAID Encourages Use of Leaky Device in Biodefense
Chambers are Located in Nine US States, India, New Zealand, and Northern Ireland

(Austin, 18 April 2005) - A leaky aerosol chamber manufactured by the University of Wisconsin at Madison was responsible for three laboratoryhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif-acquired tuberculosis infections in a Seattle BSL-3 lab last year. The infections have not been made public until now. Nearly twenty Madison chambers exist across the US and in India, New Zealand, and Northern Ireland. While tuberculosis is not a biological weapons agent, the accident underscores the inherent dangers when working with dangerous disease agents, and the grave safety risks of the US biodefense program, which is encouraging more scientists to deliberately aerosolize bioweapons agents in Madison chambers and similar equipment.

Presumably, the UW-Madison engineers who designed and oversaw the production of these foolproof biosaftey cabinets had absolute trust in them. And yet, many accidents involving very dangerous infectious diseases involved them. Accidents happen. See too: Texas A&M University Violates Federal Law in Biodefense Lab Infection.

The Madison aerosol exposure chamber was developed by the University of Wisconsin in 1970 as a stand-alone system designed for total body exposure of animals as small as mice or as large as rabbits. The chamber, which can hold up to 90 mice, allows researchers to simultaneously infect large numbers of animals. It is essentially a pressure vessel that contains a nebulizer, which is filled with a particular agent that is drawn through the chamber to completely expose the animals. During exposure, the aerosol is contained within the system and a purge cycle following aerosolization reduces lingering agents. The chamber, designed for specialized BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs, is being used today to study tuberculosis, bioterrorism agents, anthrax, and any research that requires the infection of a large number of animals.

As a stand-alone system, the chamber poses potential exposure risks to researchers working with pathogens. (From "Selecting the Most Suitable Aerosolization Equipment." August 01 2007.)

The most rigorous in the world

In recent media coverage of this new-to-the-world most-deadly-flu-ever, UW-Madison's William Mellon, who oversees the university's program for pathogens and toxins, has been saying that biosafety and security at UW-Madison "are among the most rigorous in the world."

I don't know whether Mellon is intentionally lying, but he isn't being entirely forthcoming. And while, if given the chance, the UW-Madison biosafety oversight system might function as well as similar systems elsewhere ("most rigorous in the world" is clearly hyperbole) accidents and mistakes still occur.

Today, biologists can insert genes directly into germs' genetic codes and give them characteristics that do not occur in nature. One of the characteristics that can sometimes be inserted is a resistance to the antibiotics used to control the germ. Research involving the artificial of creation of antibiotic resistant germs is termed a "Major Action" under the NIH Guidelines, and requires specific permission to do so from them.

This makes good sense. A disease easily controlled with a specific antibiotic could quickly become a world-wide scourge if it was no longer able to be controlled. But, in spite of having the "most rigorous in the world", the creation of antibiotic-resistant germs took place on the UW-Madison campus without permission from the NIH and without university approval. Mistakes happen. (See: Scientist, Banned From Lab, Blames U. of Wisconsin for Biosafety Lapse. The Chronicle of Higher Education. May 19, 2010. See too: Say no to new UW-Madison germ lab: Mishaps suggest the facility would put the public at risk. Rick Bogle . Isthmus. 2009.)

Mistakes happen

The claimed benefits from inventing new-to-the-world diseases may or may not be accurate, but the risks are real. The scientist at UW-Madison involved in the invention of the new deadlier-than-ever bird flu is Yoshihiro Kawaoka. Kawaoka knows a lot about viruses, but he has a history of being a little too unconcerned about the risk to his neighbors.

He was working with Ebola in his UW-Madiswon lab, and asked the NIH for permission to reduce the level of biosafety measures he was using.

In 2005 and into the summer of 2006, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW) made and manipulated copies of the entire Ebola virus genome without proper safety precautions. Although federal safety rules required a maximum protection Biosafety Level Four (BSL-4) lab for the research, UW allowed it to proceed at the much less safe and secure BSL-3 level. The rules that UW broke are intended to ensure that agents that are easily transmissible and usually incurable don't escape maximum containment. They prohibit working at BSL-3 with Ebola (and similarly dangerous) virus material that has not been rendered irreversibly incapable of reproducing. UW does not have a BSL-4 lab suitable for handling Ebola virus, which is one of the most dangerous pathogens in the world.

Despite the contrary provisions of the NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules, permission for UW scientist Yoshihiro Kawaoka to perform the Ebola genome work at BSL-3 was granted by the University of Wisconsin Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC). This significant violation of NIH Guidelines was not detected in a timely manner by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or, apparently, by the CDC Select Agent Program staff that inspect the Kawaoka lab....

... The research was not halted until Kawaoka remarkably repeatedly pushed for permission to lower it to biosafety level two (BSL-2), which is used for diseases that are comparatively mild and easy to treat. Kawaoka's persistence in requesting the even lower BSL-2 standard prompted a UW official to consult with the National Institutes of Health, whereupon it was determined that UW did not have appropriate facilities and should never have approved the studies at all. Ebola Error in Wisconsin Shows Lax Federal Biodefense Oversight: Similar Violations Mhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifay be Undetected Elsewhere. The Sunshine Project. News Release. 2007

The 1918 Spanish Flu

The country was gearing up to go to war. The lesson had been learned. The main killer in war, at the time, wasn't the enemy, it was disease:

Twice as many men died of disease than of gunshot wounds in the Civil War. Dysentery, measles, small pox, pneumonia, and malaria were the soldier's greatest enemy. The overall poor hygiene in camp, the lack of adequate sanitation facilities, the cold and lack of shelter and suitable clothing, the poor quality of food and water, and the crowded condition of the camps made the typical camp a literal breeding ground for disease. Conditions, and resulting disease, were even worse for Civil War prisoners, who were held in the most miserable of conditions. (From Civil War Medicine.)

Hospital beds were ready; isolation wards at hand. This time, the country would take care of its soldiers and get them back in action as fast as possible. We had learned the lesson: hygiene and quarantine were key.

But then came the 1918 Spanish flu. Before men were sick enough to be diagnosed and isolated, they had already infected others:

The lowest estimate of the pandemic's worldwide death toll is twenty-one million, in a world with a population less than one-third today's. That estimate comes from from a contemporary study of the disease and newspapers have often cited it since, but it is almost certainly wrong. Epidemiologists today estimate that influenza likely caused at least fifty million deaths worldwide, and possibly as many as one hundred million.

...Although the influenza pandemic stretched over two-years, perhaps two-thirds of the deaths occurred in a period of twenty-four weeks, and more than half of those deaths occurred in even less time, from mid-September to early December 1918. Influenza killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the middle ages killed in a century; it killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years. John M. Barry. The Great Influenza. (2004) pp 4-5 passim

The 1918 Spanish flu is the most deadly disease yet encountered during historical times. The new-to-the-world super-flu invented by Kawaoka and Ron Fouchier is thought by some to be just as deadly, and perhaps even worse. The institutions, labs, and the researchers that already have and those that might might gain access to the recipe for making this potentially species-eliminating new plague are mere humans, possessing all the weaknesses of distraction, hubris, and greed that affect everyone else. No knowledge is so valuable, so important, that its possession trumps such grave risk. The history of biosafety failures -- many more than are mentioned here -- ought to give us pause.

We ought to destroy all the petri dishes, all the records, everything we have that might allow us to move forward with this line of research. The researchers themselves ought to be forced into retirement and banned for life from having any contact with any germ lab. Oversight committees that approved the research ought to be disbanded and new more rational people selected to serve on them. Agencies that approved and funded the research ought to be purged of anyone who voted for or signed off on the approval of funding this absolute insanity.

Research ... without scrutiny

2012-01-13T16:20:00.000-08:00

We need to fix the holey biosafety net. NewScientist
13 January 2012
Research into lethal flu should not have got so far without scrutiny

PHYSICS lost its innocence on 16 July 1945, when researchers involved in the Manhattan Project witnessed the first detonation of an atomic bomb. Years later, Robert Oppenheimer recalled that he was haunted by a verse from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Ron Fouchier and Yoshihiro Kawaoka haven't yet revealed their thoughts on learning that they had created flu viruses that could potentially kill tens of millions of people (see "One mistake away from a worldwide flu pandemic"). But with opinion divided on the wisdom of running the experiments, biology may have crossed a similar line.

The circumstances are very different, of course. Oppenheimer and his colleagues were trying to defeat tyranny. Fouchier and Kawaoka were motivated by a desire for knowledge that they argue will make the world safer.

The trouble is that in the wrong hands, or if handled carelessly, these viruses may be just as dangerous as a nuclear bomb. More....

The unspoken, unasked, perhaps unnoticed question with the gravest implication, is why didn't local "experts" see the clear risk -- the lunacy -- in the scientists' plans and stop them?

As if you can't can't guess why..... Such craziness won't stop as long as greedy madmen are at the helm.

Local coverage of the locally-created new super flu

2012-01-09T13:55:00.000-08:00

After reading my repeated postings about the local newspapers' silence about the now world-wide concerns about the invention of the new deadlier-than-ever flu virus invented at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and in Holland, a friend of mine sent an email to a reporter at the Cap Times, Todd Finkelmeyer, and to an editor at the Wisconsin State Journal, Scott Milfred, asking them why they weren’t covering this story.

Finkelmeyer wrote back pointing to his work on this (which I had completely missed), and to my chagrin, Finklemeyer has done a good job:

Bird flu research like that done at UW called ‘recipe for disaster'
TODD FINKELMEYER | The Capital Times | December 1, 2011

Feds ask that bird flu study conducted at UW-Madison be censored
TODD FINKELMEYER | The Capital Times |Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The Capital Times also published this opinion piece:

Anthony S. Fauci, Gary J. Nabel and Francis S. Collins: Dangerous flu virus research a risk worth taking ANTHONY FAUCI, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; GARY NABEL, works in NIAID virology lab; and FRANCIS COLLINS, director of National Institutes of Health | January 3, 2012.

The Wisconsin State Journal editor wrote back to my friend and said that they too had published a piece (from AP) so they weren’t staying silent either:

Feds asked researchers at UW to withhold details about bird flu creation
Associated Press, State Journal, December 21, 2011

You can decide whether the Wisconsin State Journal coverage has been significant or sufficient, but they’ve at least written something, and clearly, Finkelmeyer and the Cap Times have tried to keep the public informed on this matter.

Mea culpa. And happy to say so.

"the research should never have been undertaken"

2012-01-07T14:27:00.000-08:00

Editorial

An Engineered Doomsday

Published: January 7, 2012

Scientists have long worried that an influenza virus that has ravaged poultry and wild birds in Asia might evolve to pose a threat to humans. Now scientists financed by the National Institutes of Health have shown in a laboratory how that could happen. In the process they created a virus that could kill tens or hundreds of millions of people if it escaped confinement or was stolen by terrorists.

We nearly always champion unfettered scientific research and open publication of the results. In this case it looks like the research should never have been undertaken because the potential harm is so catastrophic and the potential benefits from studying the virus so speculative. [My emphasis.]

Read more...

Where are the Madison medias' stories on this? Their silence is deafening -- and potentially deadly. They ought to be ashamed.

Translation

2012-01-04T12:53:00.000-08:00

Vivisectors uniformly argue that medical progress is dependent on their continued access to animals. Their lobbying organizations work diligently toward more or less unfettered freedom for vivisectors to treat animals as they wish. They never make the claim so baldly, but their actions -- like the University of Wisconsin successfully lobbying state lawmakers in 2011 to exempt them from the state's anti-animal cruelty laws -- speak volumes.

How perplexed they must be when the director of NIH -- the gravy train that keeps the vivisectors in cars, boats, and vacation homes -- says that vivisection might not be all that the vivisectors themselves claim it to be.

Director Francis S. Collins understandably dances around the matter; the nation's large universities and the giant suppliers of animals, cages, and tools of torture, are a hornets nest that only the stouthearted would disturb without care. Even the director of the NIH hopes not to lose his job.

Nevertheless, it's hard to look at the gigantic failure of the American biomedical research endeavor and pretend not to notice the key detrimental role that vivisection has played.

The quotes below come from Director Collins's Commentary: Reengineering Translational Science: The Time Is Right. www.ScienceTranslationalMedicine.org 6 July 2011.

Collins: "The average length of time from target discovery to approval of a new drug currently averages ~13 years, the failure rate exceeds 95%, and the cost per successful drug exceeds $1 billion, after adjusting for all of the failures."

Collins: "The upstream component of this developmental pipeline is progressing vigorously, aided by dramatic technological advances and associated basic insights into disease mechanisms ... The downstream end—premarket clinical trials—is traditionally the strong suit of the private sector because of its considerable expertise in assessing promising interventions. However, serious problems exist in the middle zone, in which attrition rates for candidate products are horrendously high. Many of the complex steps in this middle zone have been performed in the same way for a decade or more and have not been subjected to the kind of bold innovation that has characterized other branches of biomedical science."

Collins: "Current trends are indeed disturbing. Over the past 15 years, the annual rate of approval for drugs that address a new target class has not kept pace with the substantially increased investments that have been made in research and development."

Collins: "The use of small and large animals to predict safety in humans is a long-standing but not always reliable practice in translational science. New cell-based approaches have the potential to improve drug safety prediction before use in patients."

Collins: "The use of animal models for therapeutic development and target validation is time consuming, costly, and may not accurately predict efficacy in humans. As a result, many clinical compounds are carried forward only to fail in phase II or III trials; many others are probably abandoned because of the shortcomings of the model. Building on a potentially extensive network of collaborations with academic centers and advocacy groups, NCATS will aim to develop more reliable efficacy models that are based on access to biobanks of human tissues, use of human embryonic stem cell and induced pluripotent stem cell models of disease, and improved validation of assays. With earlier and more rigorous target validation in human tissues, it may be justifiable to skip the animal model assessment of efficacy altogether." Sacrilege!

Collins: "Using as few as one or two human volunteers, phase zero trials allow in vivo testing of very low doses of appropriately labeled novel therapeutics to assess appropriate distribution to the desired target. Through access to academic research centers that received NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs) and the NIH Clinical Center, NCATS can encourage further development of phase zero technologies such as positron emission tomography–ligand–assisted molecular imaging and metabolomics to provide a more direct pathway toward optimizing formulation, dosing, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics rather than depending so heavily on animal testing."

These observations can't be good news to many within the industry.

NIH Research Involving Chimpanzees

2012-01-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

NIH Research Involving Chimpanzees

Release Date: December 21, 2011

Issued by

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Purpose

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is informing the research community that it accepts the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in its report Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity. As a result, NIH announces that it will not fund any new projects for research involving chimpanzees while the Agency considers and issues policy implementing the IOM’s recommendations.

Fast-moving, Homo sapien-eliminating, global, viral epidemic

2012-01-01T09:05:00.000-08:00

Go ahead, call me a silly wide-eyed optimist, but if enough people knew what was being brewed in Yoshihiro Kawaoka's University of Wisconsin, Madison laboratory, I think they'd raise an eyebrow.

No local media outlet seems disposed to do much reporting on Kawaoka's apparently successful invention of what may well be a virus even more deadly than the 1918 Spanish flu, the most deadly disease yet encountered by humans, which he helped resurrect from extinction. His newest creation is likely to be even more deadly: a very fast-moving, global, species-eliminating, viral epidemic, should his newest invented virus escape from his lab.

No local media outlet seems disposed to mention his Ebola problems, or UW-Madison's history of biocontainment problems, or researchers' biosafety problems, or the university's misleading public statements about potential risks to the public.

University officials work for an institution which skims literally millions of dollars from Kawaoka's NIH-funded research -- they skimmed over $500,000 in 2011 alone. (Universities negotiate what are called "indirect costs" with the NIH, and then take that amount from NIH grants received by grant recipients. UW-Madison is taking about 40%.) The institution is too financially vested to fairly evaluate the risk to its neighbors -- and every other person on the planet -- and defends Kawaoka's very dangerous work by saying that his lab is absolutely, 100% safe and secure. Pay no attention, they say, to this ticking bomb.

If you think I'm being a little too pessimistic about Kawaoka's lab's or the university's inability (or will) to safeguard public health, you just haven't been keeping up-to-date. Here's a somewhat recent timeline of biosafety related matters involving the university and its staff:

Gene from 1918 virus proves key to virulent influenza
(UW-Madison press Release)
Oct. 6, 2004

University of Wisconsin-Madison
Institutional Biosafety Committee Meeting Minutes
Closed Session
November 2, 2005

University of Wisconsin-Madison
Institutional Biosafety Committee Meeting Minutes
Closed Session
December 7, 2005

Dunn is done for
December 1, 2006

Study uncovers a lethal secret of 1918 influenza virus
(UW-Madison Press Release)
Jan. 17, 2007

The Poisoned Plum
February 3, 2007

Courting Cash-Tajima-ushi Risks Deadly Return to 1918.
April 2, 2007

Madison Chambers
April 19, 2007

NBAF Fiasco Reveals Idiocy of UW Decision-Makers
May 10, 2007

Experts fear escape of 1918 flu from lab
May 15, 2007

Did New TB Case Come From CDC?
June 2, 2007

Biocontainment
August 6, 2007

Biocontainment update.
September 7, 2007

Ebola Error in Wisconsin
September 19, 2007

Ebola Error in Wisconsin Shows Lax Federal Biodefense Oversight
Similar Violations May be Undetected Elsewhere

In 2005 and into the summer of 2006, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW) made and manipulated copies of the entire Ebola virus genome without proper safety precautions.

Mishandling of Germs on Rise at US Labs
October 3, 2007

Mishandling of Germs on Rise at US Labs
By LARRY MARGASAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing as more labs do the work.

The Mother of All Targets
November 3, 2007
H1N1, known colloquially as the 1918 Spanish flu, is the most deadly disease ever encountered.

An unanswered letter:
January 23, 2008

Richard E. Besser, MD.
Director, Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
1600 Clifton Rd
Atlanta, GA 30333

Dr. Besser:

I am writing with concern regarding the recently completed BSL-3 Agriculture laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I understand that the university will be seeking a required CDC inspection of the lab prior to its commission.

As you may know, this lab will be dedicated to research conducted by Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka. Recently, it was discovered that Dr. Kawaoka was conducting research with Ebola at the university in a BSL-3 lab and asked for permission from NIH to conduct the research in a BSL-2 lab. NIH responded that the research should be conducted in a BSL-4 lab.

Prior to that, Dr. Kawaoka was apparently conducting research using the 1918 Spanish flu in his Madison lab, and was ordered to stop.

It has come to light that Dr. Kawaoka has continued working with an “altered” Ebola strain in his BSL-2 lab and that neither he nor the University of Wisconsin biosafety committee sought guidance from NIH. (See “UW scientist gains a step on Ebola,” Wisconsin State Journal. 1-22-08. pg 1.)[MSNBC article.]

It seems that there is a general tendency in Dr. Kawaoka’s lab to ease biosafety regulations.

This is worrisome given the deadly nature of the organisms he studies.

I urge the CDC to deny the University of Wisconsin’s request for an inspection of the lab. I urge CDC to find some way to drastically limit the agents that Dr. Kawaoka will be allowed to bring into any lab.

The last thing we need is a 1918 outbreak or the release of a mutated strain of Ebola.

Sincerely,

Rick Bogle

If you are not the appropriate CDC official regarding this matter, please forward this letter to the appropriate officer.

cc Julie Louise Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H.

UW Experts Dead Wrong, again
July 28, 2009

Infectious Diseases Study Site Questioned
Tornado Alley May Not Be Safe, GAO Says

BSL-3s are Hazardous to Your Health
October 12, 2009
This is an addendum to an opinion I had published in the Isthmus on October 8, 2009: “Say no to new UW-Madison germ lab.”

BSL-3 Labs "Multiplying Like Rabbits"
December 14, 2009
UW-Madison: Bumbling Oafs or Big Fat Liars?
August 22, 2009

The Public's Safety
November 27, 2011

Scientists Brace for Media Storm Around Controversial Flu Studies

The Dangers of a Company Town
November 30, 2011

NIH Makes Rare Wise Decision
December 21, 2011

Feds asked researchers at UW to withhold details about bird flu creation

local media mute on public health risk: won't mention university's disturbing history of biosafety violations and misleading claims
December 31, 2011

World Health Organization 'Deeply Concerned' by Bird Flu Research
By Kate Kelland.

Say what you will, but when others are all coughing up blood, unable to drag the dead from their homes, and are wondering what in the hell happened, I'll be dying too, but at least I'll know more or less what happened and more than a few of those who are to blame.

local media mute on public health risk: won't mention university's disturbing history of biosafety violations and misleading claims

2011-12-31T13:39:00.000-08:00

World Health Organization 'Deeply Concerned' by Bird Flu Research
By Kate Kelland. The Atlantic. Kate Kelland is a reporter for Reuters.

Dec 31 2011.

Some scientists have engineered a form of the deadly H5N1 virus that is easily transmissible and could cause lethal human pandemics.
The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a stern warning on Friday to scientists who have engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying their work carries significant risks and must be tightly controlled.

The United Nations health body said it was "deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences" of work by two leading flu research teams who this month said they had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily transmissible form capable of causing lethal human pandemics.

The rest of this worrisome article...

Rather than repeat my many observations about all of this, just stick Kawaoka or biosafety into the little search window above provided by Google.

Where are the vivisectors?

2011-12-27T09:45:00.000-08:00

A question posted to an email list I'm on got me to thinking about the groupthink that leads to vivisectors' perceptions of themselves. If you've had the opportunity to speak with very many vivisectors you have probably heard them say that they consider themselves animal welfarists, or even animal advocates, that they consider it a privilege to use animals, that they respect the animals they use, or that they wish they didn't have to hurt and kill them.

The question posed to the list came from a vivisector. She wrote:

I'm a veterinarian and scientist at the University of [anywhere] interested in exploring the issue of compassion fatigue and burnout in people working with animals. I'm brand new to this list. A critical aspect of animal welfare is taking care of the people who care for animals.

Someone else on the list suggested that she ought to have used "dilemma fatigue" rather than "compassion fatigue." I'll wager that Dr. X genuinely believes that compassion fatigue is a more appropriate term; she probably believes that the people involved in the industry are genuinely compassionate people who have been forced by their love of humanity into hurting and killing animals.

But I've yet to run across one of these vivisecting animal lovers at an anti-cruelty protest or even a public meeting about some non-vivisection related animal cruelty issue.

When the possibility of a citizens' panel to investigate the ethics of the University of Wisconsin, Madison's use of monkeys was discussed at county committee meetings, the vivisectors turned out in droves to talk about how much they care about animals and how hard they work to keep them happy while they are experimenting on them. And how dare anyone assume that they don't care as much about animals as the people asking for the creation of the citizens' panel.

But when something else happens, like a fur protest or a county hearing about the use of elephants in circuses, these vivisecting animal lovers are nowhere to be found.

Makes one wonder. The answer is groupthink. The vivisectors tell one another how much they care, but in their bones, they don't. They're zombies reciting what they've been told.

A hole in a dam signals possible collapse

2011-12-27T08:17:00.000-08:00

December 27, 2011. The Sacramento Bee

When ethics and science must not be divided
By KATHY GUILLERMO
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

The federal government's recent decision to suspend funding for new experiments on chimpanzees, and to re-evaluate all current studies, has just knocked out a big chunk of the wall that is the species barrier.

Chimpanzees used to be considered "others" - creatures who, despite their human-like qualities, were different enough for experimenters to use in violent and deadly crash tests, to infect with debilitating diseases, and, in a twisted attempt to make them more like us, teach them human sign language. Now the others are us.

The National Institutes of Health based its decision to halt funding for chimpanzee experiments on the conclusions of an expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine whose express purpose was to examine the scientific validity of using chimpanzees. The committee was comprised primarily of scientists, including some animal experimenters, and determined that "most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary."

But make no mistake: The report and subsequent take-down of the chimpanzee grant gravy train has its roots in compassion.

The question of scientific validity was raised only after the massive outcry over NIH's decision to return more than 200 retired chimpanzees, many of them elderly, from quasi-retirement in a facility in Alamogordo, N.M., back into prison-like conditions in laboratories for use in infectious disease studies. NIH said they weren't really retired; they just hadn't been used for more than 10 years. The contract for their care was nearing its end. Why not just stick them back in isolation cages, infect them with painful, debilitating conditions, stab them with needles, watch their demise and, essentially, use them up until they die?

Because it's wrong, was the response from the public, animal groups, many scientists and some legislators. Why must these wonderful, sensitive individuals, who have already been subjected to more physical pain and emotional deprivation than any being of any species should have to endure, be returned to the hell they had already miraculously survived? Why must the United States be the only nation on the entire globe, with the exception of tiny Gabon, still to use chimpanzees as though nothing about them mattered but their perceived usefulness as tools?

Last New Year's Eve, in the face of this outcry, NIH announced that it was suspending the transfer of the chimpanzees (though tragically, at least 14 had already been sent to a laboratory) and had asked the Institute of Medicine to investigate the importance or lack thereof of chimpanzees to research. The committee stated that it would not deal with the ethics of the issue.

But here's the elephant in the living room: The question was only asked because so many people, indeed so many nations, believe it is unethical to experiment on chimpanzees.

While the committee found that nearly every use of chimpanzees in laboratories today is scientifically unjustifiable, the immorality of the practice was the subtext. At the briefing during which the Institute of Medicine announced its findings, the committee chair bioethicist Jeffrey Kahn of Johns Hopkins University, even stated, "We understand and feel compelled by the moral cost of using chimpanzees in research."

Chimpanzees are so like us that most people cannot ignore their desire to be free from subjugation.

Like the Berlin Wall, the barriers that separate humans from all the other species, including those who don't look like us at all, will crumble. Perhaps one day, and I hope not too far from now, the cages and other implements of animal experimentation will, like the Wall that once separated one group of nations from another, be found only in the Smithsonian and other museums.

News on the Torture, Kill, and Eat Them Cabal

2011-12-24T09:25:00.000-08:00

FBI Says Activists Who Investigate Factory Farms Can Be Prosecuhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifted as Terroristshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
by Will Potter on December 20, 2011

The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has kept files on activists who expose animal welfare abuses on factory farms and recommended prosecuting them as terrorists, according to a new document uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act.

Much much more...

Student learns how guarded UW Madison actually is about discussion of controversy

2011-12-21T17:11:00.000-08:00

December 15, 2011

Sean Becker

ILS 252

Final Paper

How do we go about making the world a better place? “The world” is quite a diverse place. Often times discussions about “improving the world” revolve around making the world better for humans to live in. But because humans are biological entities embedded in an environment with which they must constantly interact, humans have – over the arc of history – been increasingly concerned with the welfare of the environment and other organisms. And with the rise of the environmental and animals rights movements, there has – perhaps for the first time – been broad human concern for the welfare of the environment and animals beyond those concerns that would have immediate repercussions for humans. That is to say, humans have arguably become concerned over the welfare of non-humans for non-selfish reasons. read more...

NIH Makes Rare Wise Decision

2011-12-21T08:29:00.000-08:00

The story below is from the December 21, 2011, Wisconsin State Journal It was published in the newspaper and on their website. The article is a modified story from the Associated Press.

Feds asked researchers at UW to withhold details about bird flu creation

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government asked scientists at two research centers, including UW-Madison, not to reveal all the details of how to make a version of the deadly bird flu that they created in labs in the U.S. and Europe.

Bill Mellon, UW-Madison associate dean for research policy, said virology professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka has gone through several iterations of a manuscript to the journal Nature to comply with the recommendations.

"That is an awkward situation to be in because, obviously, we're interested in disseminating science," Mellon said. Read more ...

This was a good decision. They ought however, to have stopped funding such total craziness.

The Wisconsin State Journal's article failed to bring up Kawaoka's history of biosafety violations. In this regard, the newspaper failed in its responsibility to its readers and the community. See:
UW-Madison: Bumbling Oafs or Big Fat Liars?
Ebola Error in Wisconsin
Millions dead within weeks
When Spin Turns Deadly

On another note, Bill Mellon's claim about "disseminating science" is pretty much just institutional-self-aggrandizing blather.

In fact, UW-Madison has an active program in place to limit the public's knowledge of what goes on in its labs. An example of the scale of this active white-washing and censorship is their willful destruction of almost 15 years of scientific data simply to keep the public from seeing what is going on in their labs. You can read the sordid tale here.

Let's Hope this Slope is Very Slippery

2011-12-16T14:29:00.000-08:00

The New York Times reports that the National Institutes of Health on
Thursday suspended all new grants for biomedical and behavioral
research on chimpanzees...

In making the announcement the director of the N.I.H. said that the
agency was accepting the recommendations of an expert committee of the
Institute of Medicine, which concluded that most research on
chimpanzees was unnecessary.

A remarkable achievement.

2011-12-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

Chimps bid farewell: Last of Coulston primates leave for Florida
By Elva K. Osterreich, Associate News Editor, Alamogordo Daily News.
12/12/2011

The Great Chimp Migration has come to an end.

Almost 300 chimpanzees have moved from their cages in New Mexico at the former Coulston Research Facility on LaVelle Road in Alamogordo to Florida islands built especially for them.

more...

Experimental Biomedical Research Fails To Bridge The Gap Between Test Tubes, Animals, And Human Biology

2011-12-04T10:13:00.000-08:00

Reasoning used in many highly cited cancer publications to support the relevance of animal and test tube experiments to human cancer is questionable, according to a study by researchers from Universite Libre de Bruxelles published in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology on October 20th 2011.

Read more here, and the cited paper, here: Venet D, Dumont JE, Detours V, 2011 Most Random Gene Expression Signatures Are Significantly Associated with Breast Cancer Outcome. PLoS Comput Biol. I don't understand every detail of what the authors are saying, but it is clear that they question the validity of applying many assumptions about the meaning of usually animal-derived gene signatures associated with human breast cancer, and by extension, in much research looking at the genetics of cancer. They note: "Proving that research findings from in vitro or animal models are relevant to human diseases is a major bottleneck in medical science." Indeed.

A Slate three part article looking at the use of mice, rats, and naked mole rats in medical research (The Mouse Trap: The dangers of using one lab animal to study every disease. Daniel Engber. November 16, 2011. ) noted:

It's hard to measure such things in aggregate, of course, but science and health policymakers have reached an uneasy consensus on this fact: We're at a moment of crisis in drug discovery. Last winter, current NIH director Francis Collins established a new institute (his agency's 28th) to address the "pipeline problem" in biomedicine: Despite pouring billions of dollars into research every year, our rate of innovation has slowed to a trickle.

Did you get that? The Director of NIH admits that billions of dollars have resulted in a trickle of innovations in medicine.

While Collins's awakening might be news, the fact that medical research isn't paying off isn't. Sharon Begley, Newsweek magazine's science writer, said in her 2010 article "Desperately Seeking Cures: How the road from promising scientific breakthrough to real-world remedy has become all but a dead end," that:

From 1998 to 2003, the budget of the NIH—which supports such research at universities and medical centers as well as within its own labs in Bethesda, Md.—doubled, to $27 billion, and is now $31 billion. There is very little downside, for a president or Congress, in appeasing patient-advocacy groups as well as voters by supporting biomedical research. But judging by the only criterion that matters to patients and taxpayers—not how many interesting discoveries about cells or genes or synapses have been made, but how many treatments for diseases the money has bought—the return on investment to the American taxpayer has been approximately as satisfying as the AIG bailout.

Many observers and assessments of actual bedside care to patients have come to the same conclusion. In spite of gazillions of dollars spent: on basic research, mostly vivisection, the payoff has been next to nil.

What this means, or ought to mean to a normal rational observer, is that the likelihood of any, even all animal-based basic research approved by a university oversight committee -- no matter how many animals are harmed and/or killed -- is almost certain to yield no benefit. None. (Well, it is a job. So there's that.)

But university oversight committees are comprised of people who claim to believe that their approval of some hideous experiment is justified by the potential benefit. But the potential benefit is so low, so unlikely, that their publicly-voiced justifications must be either self-deception, lies, or else faith based.

I'm not opposed to either faith or science; but when literally millions of animals a year are subjected to mentally-damaging deprived housing conditions, endless injections and tissue collections, having chemicals forced down their throats, of being restrained for long periods, of having damaging surgeries performed on them, to being starved, electro-shocked, infected with deadly diseases, frightened, and killed because someone has faith that something good might come of it -- in the face of clear evidence that the probability of such an outcome is vanishingly small, well, then, in that case, both faith and science have gone awry, in somewhat the same way that the fear of Satan and evil resulted in the Inquisition.

The unfortunate reality is that science and rationality don't seem to be at work in academia's embrace and promotion of vivisection. No, the one straightforward undeniable matter-of-fact justification for experimenting on animals and for approving those hideous activities is money. Until that single confounding ingredient is constrained, a bloom of ethical thoughtful decision-making in the nation's universities' animal research oversight and approval committees is about as likely as is an experiment on mice leading to a real breakthrough in treating cancer.

Vivisectors think you are an idiot and that they are God’s gift. You damn well better be grateful.

2011-12-03T12:29:00.000-08:00

During one of my methods classes, the chair of the School of Education told us that he believed a careful observer could infer a teacher’s philosophy of education – their beliefs about how people learn and how we ought to teach – by watching them teach. I don’t know that he was right to the degree he imagined, but I do think it possible to get some sense of someone’s opinions or beliefs about others by the things they do.

More to the point, I think we can get a sense of what someone believes about the opinions of someone else by looking at the things they do.

For instance, someone may dress a certain way, not so much because they like a certain style, but because they believe others will judge them one way or another based on how he or she looks. This is a driving force, I think, behind fashion trends, political affiliations, the way one keeps their yard, and on and on. We often act the way we do because of our beliefs about others’ potential or actual opinions.

By looking at what they do, what might we surmise about vivisectors’ beliefs about other people’s opinions?

I don’t think vivisectors have a particularly high opinion of “the public.” Their behavior suggests that the opposite is more likely.

They seem to believe that the majority of people who might someday or who already do suffer from some malady want them to experiment on animals.

I hope their judgment about people’s wishes isn’t right. If I were to get seriously sick, I wouldn’t want someone else hurt just because I was suffering. Wanting others hurt just because I’m sick would be darkly egocentric. The belief that a majority of people would want others hurt and killed to benefit themselves is a very unflattering vision of humanity.

Moreover, if one really believed that this is how most people feel, then catering to that base and viscous personality characteristic might be evidence of an affinity with it.

I think its fair to say that vivisectors probably think that humans are grotesquely selfish.

At the same time, vivisectors are obsessively worried about the public’s reaction were the realities of the lab better known. We see this fear reflected in the industry’s uniform resistance to releasing the gory details of what they do to the animals. Photographs and video recordings only very rarely come to light. Active and aggressive steps are taken to shield the vivisectors' activities from public scrutiny.

They must also believe that the public is made up mostly of complete dolts.

How else could they hold these apparent diametric opinions? On the one hand, they believe that the public wants them to experiment on animals, but on the other hand, they believe that if the public finds out what that really means, they will rise up in opposition.

I think it fair to say that vivisectors probably think that humans are grotesquely selfish idiots.

Vivisectors must believe that they are above both the law and what "the public" thinks of as common and expected ethical behavior, things like basic honesty.
In the case of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a number of examples can be pointed to. The longest-running and best documented instance from there of vivisectors as a group lying to the public is the Vilas Monkey scandal. The nav bar to the right has links to some of my essays about this affair.

The biggest repeated lies were made to the County in official correspondence. Given that many vivisectors knew that the university was lying to the County, we can fairly surmise, I think, that vivisectors hold local governments in contempt. They seem to view themselves as outside the norms of basic ethical behaviors, like honesty.

This idea that vivisectors don’t believe they need to be honest when dealing with the public or its representatives, and the corollary – that the public is too stupid to notice – was seen very clearly when the Wisconsin Primate Center director at the time, Joseph Kemnitz, lied matter-of-factly about the Vilas affair to a student reporter. See too some documentation about this affair: http://www.madisonmonkeys.com/Kemnitz_ethics_violation.htm

I think it fair to say that vivisectors probably think that most humans are grotesquely selfish idiots below some imagined threshold requiring their ethical treatment.

Vivisectors think they are above the law, probably because they think the law applies only to the public – a group they seem to hold in great contempt.

Vivisectors routinely break the law. The USDA has documented the number of violations discovered to be occurring in labs around the country. They note that:

An estimated 600 to 800 facilities have had trouble with the search for alternatives, 450 to 600 with review of painful procedures, and 350 to 400 with monitoring for compliance.

Vivisectors at the New Iberia Primate Center in Louisiana violated the federal ban on breeding chimpanzees. Even the editors of the journal Nature recognized the vivisectionists' disdain for the public when they wrote about the NIH shrugging off these violations: “By failing to explain why a moratorium on breeding chimpanzees seems not to have been enforced, the US National Institutes of Health risks a further loss of public support for chimp research.”

At UW-Madison, the vivisectors said matter-of-factly that the state’s laws against cruelty to animals dodn’t apply to them. And, when the district attorney said they did, they exerted the very power that fuels their belief that they needn’t follow the same rules as the public must, and simply had the laws changed to exempt themselves from such niceties.

So, I think it reasonably fair to say that vivisectors probably think that most humans are grotesquely selfish idiots far below some imagined threshold requiring their ethical treatment, and that they themselves are above the nuisance of local, state, or national law.

A word in their defense, it does seem that the public remains very gullible - no matter how many times they are told that they have been lied to and treated like chumps. To the person doing the repeated lying, this must result in some degree of contempt and feeling of superiority. In this regard, the vivisectors are responding predictably to the circumstances in which they find themselves. Poor babies.

Vilas Monkeys in the News

2011-11-30T19:45:00.000-08:00

The history of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Primate Research Center is somewhat unusual. Harry Harlow, was instrumental in the creation of the Primate Research Center system and when Wisconsin received its initial grant he demanded that part of the money be used to build a monkey holding facility and exhibit at Madison's Henry Vilas Zoo.

Over the years, as the public got to know the 150 or so monkeys housed there, two rhesus macaque colonies and a stump-tailed macaque colony, concerns about the use of the monkeys in the university labs escalated and resulted in a written agreement signed by the primate center director and animal-care staff promising that the monkeys at the zoo would no longer be used in any harmful experiments.

Over about 8 years time there were three (probably four) written agreements that the Vilas monkeys were off limits to harmful experimentation. In 1997, documents were leaked that demonstrated in trumps that within weeks of the first written promise that the university had started again using the monkeys in its own labs and selling them to labs around the county.

(For much more about all of this, just search this blog. In 2009, Joseph Kemnitz, the Primate Center Director and acting-Director when the Vilas scandal was at it's peek in the news in 1998, told a reporter from a campus newspaper that the Primate Center had never entered into such an agreement. Unbelievable. What absolute unabashed liars these people are.)

The stump-tailed macaques ended up being sent to the Wild Animal Orphanage (WAO) in San Antonio, an irony-filled event. Primate Center staff set themselves up as overseers of WAO's program to rescue ex-lab monkeys. They did this, in my opinion, to shield themselves from the criticism that they were dumping the monkeys at a facility they had previously branded a roadside zoo when they stridently argued before the Dane County Board of Supervisors that it would be grossly irresponsible and unethical to send the rhesus monkeys there. (They thought it more ethical to send them to the Tulane Primate Center where they were infected with various tropical diseases and then killed.)

As public scrutiny of the situation died down (I moved the Bay Area), the primate center staff abandoned their involvement with WAO. WAO began experiencing various difficulties, all too common with sanctuaries housing hundreds of animals, and as a result, the care of the animals was compromised.

The Vilas stump-tailed monkeys started dying from exposure to the elements, poor quality food, and lack of adequate veterinary care when they became ill. The university did nothing to help.

The situation worsened; more animals died. USDA finally intervened. Wild Animal Orphanage (WAO) Board of Directors unanimously voted on August 31, 2010, to dissolve the organization and relocate all the animals. The university stood by doing nothing.

A recent press release from Born Free, the current operators of the Texas Snow Monkey Sanctuary, announced that they have provided homes for the remaining stump-tailed macaques from WAO, some of whom are the monkeys abandoned by the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

It is additionally ironic that Primate Center staff continue to claim in public that they care about the monkeys under their control.

See: 112 monkeys, baboon to get new home after bankruptcy
They 'would otherwise likely be euthanized,' Born Free USA says of transfer
msnbc.com
updated 11/21/2011

Covance news...

2011-11-30T13:56:00.000-08:00

... unlikely to be reported on by the Madison media:

Animal rights group complains of injured monkeys at Alice research supplier

* By Mark Collette
* Corpus Christi Caller Times
* November 28, 2011

ALICE — A group that opposes laboratory research on animals filed a complaint Monday with federal regulators alleging mistreatment of monkeys at a drug development company's facility in Alice.

The group, Stop Animal Exploitation Now, cited records from the University of California in San Francisco showing that primates shipped from the facility arrived with injuries including muscle wasting, missing fingers and damaged ears.

Covance, the global drug development service company that owns the facility, responded with a prepared statement saying its U.S. facilities have undergone more than 40 unannounced federal inspections in four years with few instances of noncompliance. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is the federal agency that inspects animal facilities.

"In the few instances where the USDA report cited areas where they found concerns, Covance has taken all necessary steps to assure that the issues identified by the USDA were thoroughly addressed and resolved," the statement said.

Michael Budkie, director of the watchdog group, said the federal Animal Welfare Act prohibits transporting animals for commerce that are obviously sick or injured.

Of 31 animals cited in the university records, 19 had injuries, Budkie said.

One of the reports involved a monkey that showed signs of self-injury so severe that it had to be euthanized within 24 hours of arrival at the university laboratory, Budkie said.

Budkie filed his complaint with the USDA. Agency spokesman Dave Sacks had not seen the complaint but said the agency usually sends inspectors to facilities in response to such complaints.

Covance's Alice facility supplies macaque monkeys used in laboratory research. It had 13,325 animals in June when the USDA last routinely inspected the site. A USDA review of medical records at the facility showed a recurring problem with frostbite on the tails of many of the animals.

The facility, which uses heated, outdoor enclosures, was in the process of constructing buildings that would provide further protection from the elements, the report said.

The USDA conducted four other routine inspections since 2009 and found no violations.

"Our Alice, Texas, facility has been in operation for more than 35 years and its experienced veterinary staff and technicians provide a healthy and comfortable environment for the animals in our care," the company's statement said.

New Jersey-based Covance has annual revenues of more than $2 billion, with more than 11,000 employees in 60 countries.

The Dangers of a Company Town

2011-11-30T10:43:00.000-08:00

News yet to be covered by the Madison media.

I have yet to see any news anywhere in Madison about UW researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka's role in the creation of the new potentially human race-eliminating air-borne species-jumping super strain of the bird flu. I wonder why. Maybe it has something to do with his lab's history of biosafety problems or that his lab is in the middle of town. Or maybe it's just that he brings in lots of tax dollars for his town boss employer. ($17,106,532 since 2008.)

The people living in and around Madison, ought to be told that the NIH National Security Advisory Board on Biosecurity is worried about research being conducted by UW-Madison scientist Yoshihiro Kawaoka and that the Advisory Board's chair, Paul Keim, says that he "can't think of another pathogenic organism that is as scary as this one. ... I don't think anthrax is scary at all compared to this."

A Company Town

That's where I live.

Local media self-censors coverage of events and situations that might embarrass the town bosses.

Here in Madison, some of the town bosses are deeply invested in cruel animal exploitation.

For instance, Madison.com (a website owned and operated by the company town newspaper, the Wisconsin State Journal) has a list it calls the Star(s) of Madison (chosen by its readers of course.) The third largest employer in the city is Covance. Here's their entry:

Employer: Covance Inc.
Number of employees: 1,575 employees
Address 3301 Kinsman Blvd.
City: Madison
Zip code: 53704
Phone number: 241-4471
Web site: www.covance.com
Details Pharmaceutical, nutritional, agricultural, chemical and scientific testing

There's no mention of the 7,000 monkeys and 6,000 dogs they use every year in their "scientific testing," but it makes sense that a business dependent on advertising from local businesses doesn't want to offend them.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is the largest employer and the most powerful player in city and county politics.

Even media outlets like WXXM, the Mic 92.1 FM, "Madison's Progressive Talk" radio station is nervous about angering some of these bosses. I know this because a friend used to have a program on the Mic, and was always willing to host a discussion about UW-Madison's use of animals, but always warned that I couldn't mention Covance.

Likewise, the Wisconsin State Journal appears loath to cover stories that might embarrass the University of Wisconsin but is quick to sing their praises, in spite of the paper's claim of being "Wisconsin's Independent Voice."

In many cases, these potential embarrassments involve animals, and because the university and Covance are financially dependent on the consumption of so many animals every year, any potential threats to their unbridled access to them -- like public discussion about what they do to the animals they consume -- are probably not favorably looked upon by these very powerful town bosses.

Media's self-censorship in this arena is noticed by only a few people, and since media controls almost exclusively what people know about current events, they are able to keep their self-censorship a secret, if they even recognize that they do it.

When this censorship involves blacking out news of a serious threat to the public's health, or even to its survival, there can't be much doubt about whose interests are put first. The public's come second or maybe even last.

This apparent self-censorship of coverage reminds me of the similar absence of news about the very serious problems at the USDA Plum Island infectious disease lab when the university pushed hard, but unsuccessfully, to have its replacement built in the Town of Dunn, just outside Madison.

Media, the Fourth Estate, has an unequivocal first obligation to the public. This obligation ought to precede its self-imposed arbitrary obligations to its advertisers and friends.

The people living nearby ought to know that the NIH National Security Advisory Board on Biosecurity is worried about this line of Kawaoka's research and that the Advisory Board's chair, Paul Keim, says that he "can't think of another pathogenic organism that is as scary as this one... I don't think anthrax is scary at all compared to this" when asked about this newly invented disease.

The Public's Safety

2011-11-27T11:12:00.000-08:00

Read this:

Scientists Brace for Media Storm Around Controversial Flu Studies. Martin Enserink. American Association for the Advancement of Science. November 23, 2011.

If you live near a university or other facility involved in infectious disease research, I suggest you move somewhere else; especially if you have children.

Frankly though, there may be nowhere to go.

We call the strain of influenza that swept around the world in a matter of months the 1918 Spanish Flu because it killed so very many people in such a very short time. Unlike other diseases, it didn't single out the sick or the elderly; it killed healthy young adults as readily as it did the elderly and infirm.

The 1918 Spanish Flu was and remains the most deadly most virulent disease humanity has ever encountered. Ever. It was essentially extinct until idiot scientists receiving salaries sucked from average people's paychecks traveled to the Canadian permafrost, dug up the remains of people who had died from the Spanish Flu, and revived the virus.

As idiotic as these grave robbers were, they couldn't have done their dirty work without the support and backing of university research oversight committees and government funding.

In other words, these weren't mad scientists working in the dark of night; these were mainstream researchers acting under the auspices of respected and fully authorized public institutions, like the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Here's a January 18, 2007, backgrounder from the BBC:

Lethal secrets of 1918 flu virus
Millions were killed by the virus
Scientists who recreated "Spanish flu" - the 1918 virus which killed up to 50m people - have witnessed its remarkable killing power first hand.

The reconstitution of the 1918 Spanish Flu occurred very recently. The results of the resurrection remain to be seen.

But, as deadly and dangerous as the Spanish Flu was, and now is once again, it killed only 8 to 10 percent of all the young adults on the planet. Only.

Thanks to the work of scientists like the University of Wisconsin's Yoshihiro Kawaoka we now have at our finger tips the opportunity to kill many, many more people.

I'm not suggesting that Kawaoka or anyone else is preparing to unleash this newest plague upon us, but Kawaoka and many other researchers around the world have proven themselves unable to maintain the security needed to keep such deadly organisms contained.

The most well known recent case is the hoof and mouth disease outbreak in England. But, unfortunately, and very disconcertingly, serious bio-containment breaches and failures of judgment regarding bio-containment of serious and deadly diseases aren't unusual. And, of course, even a single slip-up could lead to wide-spread disease and death.

But hey, there's money in it, oodles of it, so the institutions pocketing the associated tax-payer dollars rationalize their way out of the apparent cul-de-sac of a possible global pandemic. After all, we can trust scientists to do the right and prudent thing. Like building a hydrogen bomb.

The thing that drives me nuts about all of this (nuttier, some might say), is that the system of oversight in place today, the system that the involved institutions tell us we can rely on and ought to trust, is made up of people who have a vested financial and professional interest in promoting and defending the interests of the institution they work for.

The people approving things like the serial passage of deadly viruses through animals in order to create a super-deadly disease, are the same people who say they consider the morality -- that is, they fairly weigh the costs to the animals -- of doing things like keeping them hungry for their entire life, infecting them with diseases certain to kill them, keeping them in barren cages for decades, staging fights between them, causing deformities, or any of the myriad ways they think it appropriate and just to hurt them in the name of science.

Approving the creation of potentially human species-eliminating viruses strongly suggests that all other decisions made by any institution or government ought to be looked upon with serious and probing skepticism.

Bioethics

I imagine that nearly every university and research institution receiving federal tax dollars has a bioethics department or at least someone on staff who claims to be a bioethicist. This is certainly the case at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The Chair of the UW-Madison College of Letters and Sciences Animal Care and Use Committee (ACUC) is a bioethicist.

The public relation interests of institutions like the UW-Madison are clearly well-served by having "bioethicists" approve experiments of questionable morality.

I had a recent very brief conversation with the College of Letter and Sciences ACUC chair Robert Streiffer at a purportedly pubic forum on the ethics of using animals -- particularly monkeys -- in the university's (lavishly and publicly-funded) research.

I asked whether he had yet read veterinarian Andrew Knight's new book, The Costs and Benefits of Animal Experimentation. (The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, 2011.) He hadn't, but said he would have to add it to his need-to-read list. (I empathize with him.)

As far as I know, Knight's book is the most comprehensive compilation of systematic reviews of the utility of animal-based research as a means of advancing human clinical care yet published. The studies included in Knight's book seem to show that animal-based research isn't a very productive methodology. I mentioned to Strieffer that according to the reviews cited by Knight, that most animal-based research papers are never cited by other scientists.

Streiffer's response was that while that might be true, the UW-Madison researchers seeking approval from his committee produce papers that are highly cited, and so, their proposed experiments are justifiably approved.

Time did not permit me to probe his opinion of Knight's citation of evidence showing that even highly cited animal-based research findings infrequently translate into meaningful improvements in human health care.

I mention this apparent sidetrack from the issue of putting humanity's survival at risk because Streiffer, as a bioethicist, ought, one might suppose, be more sensitive to the potential repercussions of research like Kawaoka's. But no one at the UW-Madison seems to have voiced any concern what-so-ever about Kawaoka's and his ilk's potentially devastating creations.

This might be because Kawaoka's research is highly cited. And even a university-level bioethicist is unable to escape the corrupting power of the seeming authoritative approval of such a fact. Publishing papers that are highly cited is deemed sufficient reason to approve painful and deadly experiments on animals -- no matter the benefit to humans.

It isn't surprising then that a high number of citations is also sufficient to gain approval for the creation of diseases capable of exterminating the very species for whose benefit the unending torture of so many other animals is defended.

If you live near a university or other facility involved in infectious disease research, I suggest you move somewhere else; especially if you have children.

Frankly though, there may be nowhere to go.

Just in case you're confused about motivation...

2011-11-26T14:14:00.000-08:00

Project Number: 1C06RR032709-01
Contact PI / Project Leader: CAPUANO, SAVERIO VINCENT
Title: IMPROVING WNPRC INFRASTRUCTURE TO SUPPORT HIV/AIDS RESEARCH
Awardee Organization: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON
FY: 2011
Award Amount: $915,523

Abstract Text:
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Wisconsin National primate Research Center (WNPRC) supports an active HIV/AIDS research program with greater than $8,000,000 in funding from the National Institutes of Health and private entities. WNPRC investigators infect rhesus macaques of Indian ancestry and cynomolgus macaques of Mauritian origin with Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) to study HIV pathogenesis and vaccine development. Currently, 205 macaques (153 rhesuses, 52 cynomolgus) assigned to 27 individual projects covered by 20 different animal care and use protocols are utilized for HIV/AIDS research at the WNPRC. WNPRC investigators acquire macaques for HIV/AIDS projects from the Center's own Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) breeding colony. This proposal seeks to acquire funding to replace aging stationary caging in the SPF breeding area with contemporary mobile caging. The proposal also seeks funding to augment the existing mobile caging to improve the psychological well being of the SPF colony and the SIV-infected macaques housed at the WNPRC. Finally, this proposal also seeks funding to upgrade the physical infrastructure (e.g., doors, flooring) of the SPF and SIV-infected macaque housing areas of the WNPRC. Successful completion of the aims outlined in this proposal will ensure that WNPRC investigators performing ZHIV/AIDS research are provided with quality animals and that the psychological health of these animals is protected.

Stupid is as stupid does...

2011-11-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

Forest Gump was not a fool; the same simply can't be said for experimental biologists who diligently toil in their bunkers trying to create ever more deadly strains of disease or the various entities who pay for and build their deadly labs.

One of these dim bulbs is UW-Madison's star virologist, Yoshihiro Kawaoka. I've written a couple short essays about the incredibly dangerous nature of his and his numb-skull colleagues' tax-payer-funded research. See:
Courting Cash-Tajima-ushi Risks Deadly Return to 1918. Posted on April 2, 2007.
Millions dead within weeks. Posted on May 15, 2007.
Experts fear escape of 1918 flu from lab. Posted on May 15, 2007.
Ebola Error in Wisconsin. September 19, 2007.
The Mother of All Targets. November 3, 2007.
And a bit about biosafety at UW-Madison generally from an August 22, 2009 post: UW-Madison: Bumbling Oafs or Big Fat Liars?

A new report "Man-made super-flu could kill half humanity," November 24, 2011, suggests that the 1918 Spanish flu, the most virulent and deadly disease yet encountered by Homo sapiens might now be considered small bananas when it comes to raw killing power, and we can thank the experimental biologists for bumping the 1918 Spanish flu out of first place. I know I'll sleep better, and I'm sure you will too. (See too: Genetically Altered Avian Flu Experiments Under Review by Biosecurity Board – Major Controversy Brewing. November 25, 2011.)

Kawaoka is mentioned in the articles above. He apparently thinks it would be a good idea to publish the details -- the recipe so to speak -- of how one can go about making this new super-deadly infulenza. Jeepers.

This is like a scientist trying to justify his or her new doomsday device or mega-planet-busting-neutron bomb by arguing that without it, we just wouldn't have the tools needed to learn how to fight it. It's a dark and deadly circular argument; but, it's also one that has resulted, in Kawaoka's case, in the U.S. government pouring millions of tax-dollars into the research, and the UW-Madison building him a bigger specialized lab.

See too: Scientists Brace for Media Storm Around Controversial Flu Studies Martin Enserink. November 23, 2011. AAAS.

Dumb. And dumber.

UW Research Forum No. 5

2011-11-19T12:43:00.000-08:00

I do not want to belabor the point, but the UW-Madison Animal Research Forums that came about as the direct result of the university's absolute terror that a non-aligned citizen's panel empowered by a local governmental body to look at at and form an opinion about their use of monkeys has failed miserably to live up to the stated and implicitly promised goals of the series.

Nevertheless, and in spite of the near complete failure of the "forums" to educate the public about what is happening to animals in the university labs, I've enjoyed them. But entertainment wasn't the goal.

For more of my informative and incredibly insightful observations on this series, I'm sure you'll want to review these comments:

"Forum" Keeps Details Hidden October 22, 2011.

This is Jeopardy! April 2, 2011.

Dr. Lawrence Hansen's Visit Frightens UW Vivisectors into Hiding February 27, 2010.

So far, the forum speakers have been, from first to most recent:

Lawrence Hansen, M.D. An animal advocate from California with no knowledge of the university's use of animals.
Gary Varner, Ph.D. A philosopher from Texas A&M with no knowledge of the university's use of animals.
Charles Snowdon, a professor in the Psychology Dept who used tamarins, but who said he has no real knowledge of what is currently happening to monkeys at the university.
Paul Kaufman, M.D., who uses monkeys in his invasive glaucoma and presbyopia experiments, but who avoided talking about the monkeys themselves.
Andrew Rowan, Director of The Humane Society of the United States' Pain & Distress Campaign; adjunct professor at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine; senior fellow at the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy; faculty member at the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing. He too had no knowledge of the university's use of animals.

I had always heard that Rowan was a matter-of-fact welfarist who embraced the efficacy of animal models. I was quite surprised by his talk. I was either wrong, or else he has come around.

Watch his presentation here or below.

Andrew Rowan animal ethics forum from luciano M on Vimeo.

Guiding Principles

2011-11-19T11:06:00.000-08:00

In my previous post I argued that one could morally and ethically use various ill-gotten gains and still be justly opposed to the methods used to acquire them.

The folks over at the misleadingly-named “Speaking of Research” website were understandably nonplussed by my argument since it undermines a key tenet of their quasi-religious faith in and defense of the serial sacrifice of innocents at the altar of $cience. [They ought to use the more specific terms: vivisection or animal sacrifice.“Speaking of Animal Sacrifice”]

They believe (in the religious sense) that anyone critical of hurting and killing animals in the name of $cience ought not avail themselves of or allow a loved one to receive pretty much any medical care.

They make this claim based on their belief that: a) all (or at least most) of modern medicine rests squarely on animal sacrifice, and b) taking a drug or receiving medical care is hypocritical if one opposes hurting and killing animals.

In their response to my argument, they posted a link to a funny little PR device called the “Animal Rights Identification Card.” I was unable to locate this document when I was composing my argument, and thank them for linking to it. It reads:

So as not to violate my animal rights principles, I hereby request that in the event of an accident or illness, all medical treatments developed or tested on animals be withheld, including but not limited to: blood transfusions, anesthesia, pain killers, antibiotics, insulin, vaccines, chemotherapy, coronary bypass surgery, reconstructive surgery, orthopedic surgery, etc.

It’s an odd little thing. It supposes, apparently, that an emergency room doctor will be conversant with the history of medicine to such a degree that they will know what did and did not come about as a result of experiments on animals. (Literally everything has been tested on animals: water, paint, milk, uranium, etc. A few medical advances may have been absolutely dependent on animals.)

The difficulty with knowing the history of the development of every medical intervention is a problem that probably isn’t noticeable to a true believer because they have faith that all of medicine is pretty much the direct result of and absolutely dependent on animal experimentation. They must hold this belief, because otherwise, they wouldn’t point to this industry lobbiest-authored silly little wallet card.

I particularly like the “etc.”

You have to imagine that the authors of a list like the one on the card would name the really important, absolutely indisputable examples of the fruits of vivisection. I don’t imagine that many people are conversant with the history of every single medical intervention or drug in use today, I’m certainly not, but one might imagine that the authors would be sure of the items on their list.

And while I’m no authority on each and every medical advance, I have read about some of them.

An interesting easy read is Robert E. Alders Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome. (John Wiley & Sons Inc. 2004.) In the chapter on anesthesia, “Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On: The Discovery of Anesthesia,” Alders explains that pain-reducing and -eliminating drugs were in long use prior to the discovery of the pain-eliminating properties of nitrous oxide or the anesthetic properties of ether, or a method for its administration. The development of neither nitrous oxide nor ether involved the use of animals.

The inclusion of reconstructive surgery on this list is odd and also wrong. As far as I know, the earliest examples of reconstructive surgery come from India. Here’s an interesting little article about the history of this branch of medicine. http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/surgery/reconstructive.aspx

It starts like this:

Plastic surgery since 1600 BCE

Surgery has the power to cure and repair. It can also be used to minimise deformity after injury or illness. This is called reconstructive or plastic surgery and, surprisingly, has been with us since around 1600 BCE - surgical papyri have been found describing methods for repairing a broken nose and providing instruction in suturing to minimise scarring.

It is true that at some point in time, vivisection became so much the rage that animals were subjected to every new drug and device; there is however, significant disagreement as to the degree any of this quasi-science was or continues to be necessary.

The history of vaccines is interesting. It's true that many (most, all?) modern vaccines are based on organisms grown on animal tissues, but vaccines were invented in prehistoric antiquity, at least no good record of the origin remains so far as I am aware. An interesting book on the introduction of vaccination (variolation) into Europe and the American colonies is Jennifer Lee Carole's The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox. New York: Plume, 2003.

But the gist of the “Speaking of Research” rejoinder to my argument isn’t dependent on their mistaken beliefs about the value of animals in medical research.

They claim that it is unethical for an animal research critic to avail his or herself of a medical treatment if animals were used during its development but unproblematic to use the fruits of hurting or killing humans, if the practices that led to those advances are no longer sanctioned.

This paints them once again into a difficult corner. They must be getting comfortable in their tight quarters.

They say, under their “Guiding Principles” that:

Speaking of Research believes that animal research should be conducted with the utmost care, responsibility and respect towards the animals. All personnel involved in animal research should strictly follow the pertinent guidelines, regulations and laws.

It seems then, by their measure, that data from a researcher or lab, or even an institution in some cases, is poisoned if research there wasn’t conducted “with the utmost care, responsibility and respect towards the animals,” or if anyone there did not “strictly follow the pertinent guidelines, regulations and laws.”

Utmost care, responsibility, and respect are somewhat subjective. In my opinion, forcing a chemical down an animal’s throat when you expect it will probably die as a result, isn’t respectful, but I understand that opinions about the meaning of words like utmost care, responsibility, and respect are subjective. But breaking the law, no so much.

Violations of the pertinent guidelines, regulations, and laws are widespread and fairly common.

According to the 2000 "USDA Employee Survey on the Effectiveness of IACUC Regulations":

An estimated 600 to 800 facilities have had trouble with the search for alternatives, 450 to 600 with review of painful procedures, and 350 to 400 with monitoring for compliance. The high level of problems reported by VMOs supports the need for a review of Policy 12, “Search for alternatives.”

A more specific example: In 2010, it was discovered that the University of Wisconsin, Madison had been breaking the state law for many years that banned killing animals by means of decompression. It was later discovered that the university had also been breaking the state law that banned staging fights between animals, and had been doing so for a number of years.

These crimes mean that the university had also been in violation of its Public Health Service (PHS) Animal Welfare Assurance, which stipulated that the university’s use of animals complied with The Guide to the Use and Care of Laboratory Animals (the Guide), which says in three places that all local, state, and federal laws governing the treatment of animals must be obeyed.

What this means is that specific researchers were violating state law, and the university, by promising in writing that they were following the Guide which states clearly and repeatedly that all law applicable laws must be obeyed, was violating the PHS regulations and thus lying to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on all the grant applications from researchers at the university. This was fraud because their false assurance resulted in (massive) financial reward.

The problems at the University of Wisconsin, Madison are not unique, but using that example, it appears that “Speaking of Research” might be in some ethical hot water.

The UW-Madison vies with the University of California, San Francisco as the largest recipient of NIH funding. (Johns Hopkins is always the top recipient.) It’s hard to name a disease or malady that at least someone there isn’t claiming to be using animals to study.

“Speaking of Research” will have to duck and dodge to explain how availing themselves of some medical treatment for some malady that is being investigated and written about by a researcher there fits in with their “Guiding Principle.”

There are a couple of honest ways out of this predicament. They could:

1. Argue that just because someone uses animals in their (name the disease) research, it doesn’t mean that their published papers have contributed anything at all to current medical care. (They would be right; this is one thing that makes it hard to accurately trace the real path of development.)

2. Argue that no animal research conducted at the university since the time the state laws against killing animals by means of decompression or staging fights between animals were passed has contributed to current medical practices. (This would require a level of investigation I doubt they are capable of -- I couldn't do it either.)

3. Argue that their “Guiding Principles” don’t actually guide them.

In any case, it seems that they have a problem on their hands. They say it’s OK to use drugs or knowledge gained through immoral methods so long as those methods are now illegal. And, they claim to hold as a guiding principle that all personnel involved in animal research should strictly follow the pertinent guidelines, regulations, and laws.

But in fact, the pertinent guidelines, regulations, and laws are violated with some regularity, as the USDA points out.

Somewhat as an aside, I think it worthwhile to call attention to an implicit result of their argument. It follows from their position that doing something one believes is immoral makes one a hypocrite.

But I’m not so sure that it’s such a straightforward matter. The case of a dying loved one who might benefit from a drug that was tested on animals seems somewhat akin to the situation known as a choiceless choice.

This is a term coined after World War II by Lawrence Langer as he tried to make some sense of the non-choices that confronted people in the death camps. A related example I read many years ago that has stuck in my head are the accounts of small groups of Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi-held territory, particularly in fishing boats crossing the Baltic Sea.

They hid in false bulkheads and had to remain quiet when the Nazi patrols came along side or boarded their boats. Occasionally, among a small hidden group was a baby or very young child. If they began to cry or make any sound, their mothers or fathers, or whoever was with them, would cover their mouths. In some cases, the child would be smothered to death.

I am hard pressed to call the person holding their hand over the child’s mouth a hypocrite. I think victim is a better term.

Likewise, in the case of a dying loved one who might benefit from a drug that was tested on animals, I don’t believe it would be fair to call the person at the bedside a hypocrite if they sanctioned the use of that drug.

As I said in my previous post on this point, I think one can be absolutely opposed to the use of animals and still avail oneself to a drug that may have been tested on them. I think too, that making choices for another may force one to make decisions that are contrary to one’s morality, and that doing so would not be unethical.

Would you take a drug if ...

2011-11-13T14:36:00.000-08:00

At the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s September 2011 “public forum” on the use of monkeys in its research programs, someone challenged a vivisection critic’s comments with the rather worn question: Would you avail yourself to a treatment if it was developed through experiments on monkeys?

People who ask this question may imagine that an answer in the affirmative necessarily identifies someone as a hypocrite whose opinions should be discounted or dismissed altogether.

If so, then they paint themselves into a very tight and difficult corner.

The unspoken premise is that an ethical person, a genuinely moral person, would forgo any potential benefit that stemmed from some practice they purport to find immoral or unethical. (I think these are interchangeable terms in this context, and thus redundant, but I use them together here because of potential shades of distinction others might believe they imply.)

As reasonable as their challenge sounds – explaining why it continues to be trotted out – it immediately places a difficult burden on those who voice it.

To live true to their own challenge, to avoid being the hypocrite, the cad, who they apparently hope to cast someone else as, they must:

1. Never travel in the Southern U.S., in Rome, and probably quite a few other places. They must do research ahead of time to ascertain that the places they visit and they roads and bridges they will travel on were not built by slaves. Otherwise, they are hypocrites or else really aren’t opposed to slavery.

2. Always query any surgeon who might treat them or a loved one as to whether or not they used or ever referred to Eduard Pernkopf’s infamous Topographische Anatomie des Menschen (Atlas of Topographical and Applied Human Anatomy), and if the potential surgeon did consult the Atlas, then they must find a new doctor. Considered the pinnacle of anatomical atlases and consulted frequently by surgeons prior to a difficult operation, the subjects used in Pernkopf are now believed likely to have been Jews and others killed by the Nazis. If he who makes a challenge about the use of an animal-tested medicine does not make such inquiries ahead of time and turn down treatment if such is the case, then, by his or her own measure, he or she is a hypocrite or else isn't opposed to what was done during the Holocaust.

3. They must never receive, and must never allow their wives (if they are a married man) or daughters to receive gynecological care. The father of gynecology was the American doctor, J. Marion Sims. The Sims position, the Sims speculum, and other similarly named gynecological instruments were devised by him. He developed the first successful treatment for vesicovaginal fistula. He conducted repeated experimental surgeries on slave women without benefit of anesthesia, even after he was using it when treating white women. Allowing their wives or daughters to receive gynecological care must mean that people who believe that antivivisectionists who use animal-tested products are hypocrites must themselves be either hypocrites or else aren’t opposed to experimenting on non-consenting slave women.

There are other examples of the ethical dilemmas facing those who ask whether or not someone opposed to the use of animals in scientific research should avail themselves to a treatment if it was developed through experiments on monkeys. But the problem with such a challenge is clear.

A rational and moral person could oppose slavery and still drive on roads first built by slaves, could oppose non-consenting human experimentation and still undergo surgery conducted by someone who had studied Pernkopf’s Atlas, could visit a gynecologist and still oppose experiments on slaves and oppose slavery, and could take a medicine that had been tested on animals and still be morally opposed to the use of animals in biomedical research.

But the person who makes the challenge could not visit the South, could not fail to quiz a surgeon about their education, could visit a gynecologist, or do myriad other things without being a hypocrite or else a complete moral failure.

Vilas Zoo and Species Survival

2011-11-12T08:37:00.000-08:00

First read this entire article (snipped below):

Beloved orangutan, BB, dies at Vilas Zoo
ROB SCHULTZ. Wisconsin State Journal. November 10, 2011.

The staff members at the Vilas Zoo were obviously distraught when BB the orangutan, one of the most popular animals at the Madison zoo for the past 15 years, died Sunday. But they found solace in the way she died: peacefully while taking a nap after lunch. ...

Her daughter, Kawan, 10, is still at the zoo and was recently paired with Datu, a male transferred from the Rochester, N.Y., zoo. The pairing is part of the Vilas Zoo's partnership to preserve the world's orangutan's population....

One of the comments (by someone using the apt nom de plume of CircusLady wrote: "I hope she will be replaced ...". Like a broken window pane. This shallow wish reflects a far truer perception of zoos than the common industry excuse for keeping these animals confined for their and their future descendants' entire lives.

Menageries have hit on a laudable-sounding excuse for keeping animals in their collections: Preserving the world's species. But they are really just preserving things to gawk at. Very very few reintroductions into the wild ever occur. Species are "preserved" for public display. They attract visitors.

The circumstances orangutans are commonly forced to endure in captive situations like the Henry Vilas Zoo seem inhumane, and increasingly so the more one learns about their natural history.

At the Vilas zoo, they essentially live in a concrete room. They have access to a relatively small outdoor space at times. I suspect they learn more-or-less everything there is to know about that small space in short order. Compare that with what they need to know about the world when they are free and how dull and mind-numbing their lives at the zoo must be.

According to the Orangutan Foundation International:

Orangutan offspring will sometimes be carried until they are 5 years old and be breast-fed until they are 8 years of age! Even when young orangutans are too old to be carried and fed by their mother, they may still remain close to her, travelling with her, eating, and resting in the same trees, until they are about 10 years old. Once they become independent, they will be alone or in the company of other immature orangutans. In the case of females, they frequently return to their mothers to “visit” until they are about 15-16 years old. Studies indicate that Bornean orangutans may “grow up” faster than Sumatran orangutans and may become independent from their mothers at an earlier age.

Orangutan in the tress

Such prolonged association between mother and offspring is rare among mammals. Probably only humans have a more intensive relationship with their mothers. Primatologists believe that orangutans have such long “childhoods” because there is so much that they need to learn before they can live alone successfully.

According to the authoritative Pictorial Guide to the Living Primates (Noel Rowe, Pogonias Press, 1996), orangutans have ranges of up to nearly 2,500 acres.

In the article about BB linked above, a zoo spokesperson says that 40 years of age is considered geriatric in orangutans; the article attributes her death in part to "advanced age."

But the University of Wisconsin's Primate Info Net reports that these animals live 50 to 60 years in the wild. 40 years of age doesn't sound geriatric in an animal that could live into her 60s. And, zoos (and primate labs) frequently claim that animals in the wild usually live shorter lives than they do in captivity, making the geriatric claim even more unlikely.

The Zoo Atlanta website reports: "Wild orangutans generally live to be between 35 and 40 years old; orangutans in zoological settings can live into their 60s." Which again, calls into question the Vilas Zoo claim that "advanced age" was a factor that contributed to BB's death.

Zoos don't preserve species in any meaningful sense. Only very rarely are animals born at zoos released into the wild. Zoos keep and breed animals for straightforward reasons: money and a desire to collect them. Claims to the contrary are transparently false. A cursory look at how the animals are kept, how frequently they are bred, the fact that they are almost never released, and the commonly poor and profoundly deprived conditions they are kept in casts the species survival claim in better light.

The Henry Vilas Zoo is not able to humanely keep most of the animals it currently has in its menagerie.

The Human Use of Animals

2011-11-10T10:09:00.000-08:00

Vivisectors, hunters, ranchers, and the majority of the rest of the humans on the planet who take the time to try to explain why they think its OK or even fitting that humans should mercilessly exploit every other species on Earth usually appeal to a claim that humans are special in a way that excuses or justifies all we do to every other animal. I think this image fairly characterizes that view:

So, I got to thinking about the things that set us humans apart from every other species. Every species is unique, by definition, but things like the number of toes, or even the presence of toes, don't seem to be the kind of things people mean when they defend the things we do to other animals with an appeal to our special-ness.

Here's a list of things that might be similar to the things people are thinking of when they say humans are special, that we have certain capacities, or behave in ways, or accomplish special deeds, or invent new things, that set us apart from every other animal on Earth:

Napalm; Crucifixion; The rack; The Inquisition; Cluster bombs; Landmines; Nagasaki; Hiroshima; Rape of Nanking; Factory farms; The Indian Wars; American bison slaughter; Dodos; Passenger pigeons; Cambodian killing fields; Sharia; Purdah; Foot-binding; Female circumcision; Nazis; Dresden fire-bombing; Circus Maximus; US fire bombings of Japan; Dog fighting; Bull fighting; Hot iron branding; Sport hunting; Sport killing; Genocide; Child labor; Stalin’s purges; Forced labor; Jim Crow; Vivisection; Sweatshops; Prisons; Social/economic castes; Nationalism; Sexism; Racism; Greed; Thumb screws; Burning at the stake; Bear bile farms; Foie gras; Zoos; Rodeo; Horse racing; Dog racing; Fur trapping; Slaughter houses; Child prostitution; Stoning; Capital punishment; Death squads; Fear mongering; Keel hauling; Cat-o-nine-tails; Cages; Aquariums; Glue traps; Gill nets; Whaling; Leather; Butchers; Pet stores; Puppy mills; Satan; gods; God; Captivity; Clubbing baby seals; Deforestation; Global warming; Desertification; Pollution; Toxic waste; PCBs; DDT; Plutonium; Military drones; Domestic turkeys; Dairy cows; Sadism; Ridicule; Bearing false witness; Electric prods; The electric chair; The Guillotine; Veal; Fish hooks; Bullets; Isinglass; Tail docking; Ear trimming; De-barking; De-clawing; Selective animal breeding; Saddles; Bridles; Soring; Hog nose-rings; Ankuses; Auks; Bataan Death March; Trail of Tears; Political borders; Religion; Demons; Nuclear weapons; Chemical weapons; Biological weapons; Phosgene gas; Flame throwers; Punji sticks; Horse tripping; Tar and feathering; Black ops; Child pornography; Poisoned bait; Bait; Rationalization; Water-boarding; Cover-ups; Animal agriculture; Ear notching; Forced castration; De-horning; Lariats; Shackles.

I suspect that some of the exploiters, priests, ethicists, philosophers, etc., who defend our various uses of animals will take exception to my list. They might argue that I've left out the good things that set us apart from the rest of creation.

Well, I actually tried to come up with that list as well, and just couldn't get very far. Here's the list of the not-necessarily bad things that I think are unique to humans.

Music, highfalutin ideas, the visual arts, advanced technology, civilization, human language, clothing, fashion, patriotism, the sciences.

Unfortunately, none of the items on the unique-to-humans-good list are as clearly good in the same way that most of the the things on the list above are clearly bad.

Music has led people into stupid and vicious battles. Highfalutin ideas have been used to justify many evil deeds. Pro-war antisemitic artists produced very successful advertisements. Advanced technologies are a well-recognized double-edged sword. Human language is regularly put to evil use. We've even used clothing to brand people and to sequester women. Fashion regularly promotes the use of fur and is responsible for the near-extinction of a number of species. Patriotism probably doesn't even belong on a list of good attributes. And the sciences have uncountable evils strewn at their feet.

Many of those who claim to see our special holy nature point to things like love, compassion, concern for others, self-sacrifice, generosity, kindness, and altruism. I thoroughly agree and also celebrate these things in humans; but these things aren't unique to us. They are behaviors and characteristics seen in many animals. So even though these are good things about us, they do not justify the other many uniquely horrible things we do.

We have bad things in common with other animals as well. Things like hate, anger, covetousness, jealousy, fear, pain, arrogance, self-absorption, and loneliness.

And many animals do nasty things to each other. Some animals are eaten alive. Parasitic organisms frequently have really icky life histories and can cause great suffering.

But all told, the planet and all its inhabitants are at grave unremitting risk from us. The evils we have created and caused and continue to heap upon each other far exceed those caused by other animal species.

And so, arguments and explanations for why we ought to feel good or at least justified in keeping calves in small boxes, shooting whales with explosive harpoons, drilling holes into monkeys' heads, force-feeding geese, injecting poisons into mice, or any of the other almost endless number of nasty things we do to animals, those arguments and explanations ought to be very strong and easily understood.

Moreover, the arguments ought to explain why the things animals do as well as or better than we do, or the characteristics and abilities they have in greater measure than we do, or the things they do that we can't, don't matter in an ethical weighing.

The only two arguments I can formulate that take everything above into account are that Might Makes Right, or that God's assertion in Genesis 9:2 isn't mere myth.

Micholito cucciolo agnello

2011-11-06T12:23:00.000-08:00

Mickey is a schnauzer/poodle cross – a designer dog brought into existence by a puppy-miller. He’s old enough to have been born at Puppy Haven, a mill in Sun Prairie, a small town near Madison, Wisconsin. Wallace Havens, owner of Puppy Haven had been crossbreeding and selling dogs for 35 years until the Dane County Humane Society bought him out and closed his dog farm in 2009.

We adopted him from the Dane County Humane Society.

I am writing about Mickey because of an opinion written by Dave Lemery, the night news editor of the Northwest Herald, “Lemery: Wake me when PETA gets to bacteria abuse.” He said a couple of pretty dumb things, and while he singles out PeTA in his comments, I suspect he, perhaps unconsciously, employs “PeTA” as a placeholder for all those who believe that animals other than us deserve basic protections under the law similar to those currently reserved for humans only.

Here’s the first very dumb thing he says: “They think the best way to get their message across is to anger and offend. I tend to think that showing people images of tortured animals will fail to draw much financial support in Anytown, USA.”

He must think the National Holocaust Museum is a poor business model; people will not be moved to support their educational work by showing people images of tortured people. He must think that seeing images of people tortured at the Abu Ghraib prison was pretty ineffective. And he must think too, that showing people images of hungry poor children is the wrong way to go about trying to get people to donate money to feed them, or that showing people pictures of poor children with clef lips and palates won't bring in much financial support for reconstructive surgery.

I doubt that he really believes that showing people pictures of people in dire circumstances is a bad idea. He is simply miffed that anyone would have the gall to do the same for an animal. His dual standard – assuming he thinks seeing people in dire circumstances help us understand their situation – is an example of simple prejudice; just plain old-fashioned bigotry.

I’m used to seeing blatant bigotry toward animals; it is the widespread norm. What caught my eye was this: “We recognize that animals have some dim form of awareness... ” There is clearly a dim form of awareness at work in his article, but his claim is matter-of-factly wrong.

Many animals have an awareness of the world around them that is superior to our own in some ways. Many animals see much better than we do and also see things that we cannot. The same is true for every other sense humans possess: taste, hearing, smelling, and touch. Moreover, some animals perceive things in ways we cannot; they can perceive electrical fields, magnetic fields, and probably other natural phenomena that we have yet to discover.

Lemery says that animals “can feel things like happiness, sadness, fear, etc.” (That undefined etc. is rich with possibility.) I suspect that some animals’ capacity for happiness, sadness, or fear surpasses ours. And that brings me back to my un po' paffuto friend, Micholito cucciolo agnello.

I can’t remember ever being as happy or joyful as Mickey is fairly regularly. His happiness or joy appears immense – unbounded, and the result of really simple things like knowing we are going for a walk, or seeing my wife or me drive up and come into the house. He appears almost overcome with a happiness he seems unable to constrain. His capacity for exuberant joy seems to far exceed my own. Maybe I was able to be almost as happy when I was a child, but right now, his capacity for joy seems well beyond my own, and I'm generally a fairly happy fellow. It is my impression that other dogs whom I have known also have had this superior capacity for joy.

Characterizing their awareness as “dim” is a reflection of Lemery’s limited perceptions.

Sadly, I suspect too that many animals’ capacity for suffering, for fear, loneliness, or pain, also exceeds our own. Some who have written about the plight of animals have observed that humans frequently know that their pain and suffering is temporary. Experience has taught me that I can endure a significant amount of pain without too much mental anguish when I know it will pass. This is why I commonly choose to skip the anesthetic when having a tooth filled.

But an animal recovering from experimental surgery, say, probably has no expectation that the pain will ever cease. An individually caged monkey who self-mutilates must be unable to hold on to hope that he or she might one day again be with other monkeys. The hope for rescue, that apparently buoyed John McCain during his long incarceration and torture, probably isn’t available to animals in most cases.

Lemery concludes with the tired opinion that we should look away. No matter how poorly animals are being treated, we ought to first worry about how other humans are treated.

There is something ironic about this well-worn dismissal of personal responsibility to animals. I hear it most loudly and frequently from those who spend a goodly bit of time trying to derail the animal rights movement (or from people who do almost nothing about any problem facing society.) It seems that people who make this claim are really only trying to give their anti-animal bigotry an air of respectability.

The Henry Vilas Zoo

2011-10-31T14:33:00.001-07:00

About a month ago the Alliance was contacted by a student from the UW-Madison. She explained that she was a little involved with the student animal rights club, she was in the media arts program, and as a class project she was making a documentary about the local zoo. She asked for someone to walk through the zoo and give her their impressions of how the animals were being kept. I volunteered.

I met her and another student in front of the gift shop. We stopped at just about every exhibit. We didn't go into the bird house.

We started at the primate house. The Henry Vilas Zoo has gibbons, orangutans, colobus monkeys, and chimpanzees.

The primate house is the best animal housing at the zoo. And in some ways, it's not so bad. Each enclosure has a large climbing apparatus. The chimpanzees and gibbons have some access to an outdoor area; but overall it must suck to be imprisoned in such a place. The chimpanzees, orangutans, gibbons, and colobus monkeys are doomed to spend decades in an unchanging fixed environment offering very limited interactions with others of their kind. They will spend decades looking at the same flat dull imitation forest painted on the walls, while an endless stream of sometimes loud gawking obnoxious zombies file by. "Ooh, look at the monkey Johnny!"

The colobus monkeys appeared to have no outdoor access. In any case, a couple of the highest limbs of the concrete trees came to abrupt stumps only a few feet from one of the skylights in the ceiling. Perched on top sat a lone monkey. There was no room for a second.

The room they were in, like the rooms of the orangutans and the chimpanzees, was essentially a concrete cell with sad shadows of the world they belong in painted on the walls, more for the patrons than the animals.

I suspect there is almost always a colobus sitting alone at the tip top of the concrete tree in the middle of that concrete room as near to the skylight as possible.

This is the Vilas Zoo description of these animals:

COLOBUS MONKEY

Scientific Name: Colobus guereza

Habitat: Tropical rain and montane (a moist ecological zone located near timberlines and usually dominated by evergreen trees) forests in Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and southwest Cameroon.

Diet: Young leaves, fruit, leaf buds and blossoms.

Life Span: Up to 20 years in the wild or 24-plus years in captivity.

Reproduction: Males reach sexual maturity at six years; females at four years. Each female gives birth to one young about every 20 months after a gestation period of 4-½ to 5-½ months.

Fact: Unlike most primates, the colobus monkey has no cheek pouches and its thumbs are nearly absent. ("colobus" is derived from a Greek word meaning "mutilated.")

I don't believe it is possible to keep these animals humanely indoors. It might be possible to keep a few of them humanely in an outdoor enclosure large enough to provide room for enough large trees to sustain the monkeys' picking their leaves, but this would make it hard for visitors to see them, and zoos are primarily menageries -- collections of animals meant to entertain and amuse visitors.

I was bothered by the gibbon exhibit. White-handed gibbons, the species at the Vilas Zoo, have home ranges of between 30 and a 130 acres. At Vilas, they have a few hundred square feet. Gibbons have very long arms and fingers which they use to swing swiftly through the forest. Here's a video. The relatively tiny enclosure at the Vilas zoo makes it hard, perhaps impossible, for the two gibbons there to express their natural behaviors.

I couldn't watch the orangutans for more than a few moments. Our presence was far too intrusive. The chimpanzees made my throat tighten. I've known a few chimpanzees.

It is possible to keep some wild animals in captivity humanely, and sometimes, because of circumstances beyond the control of those involved, they may be faced with a lifetime of confinement. But in these relatively rare cases, our responsibility to them requires us to provide a large enough space so that they need not continually confront their captivity. If they cannot escape the sight of walls and fences, the cages we keep them in are too small.

Anyway, we finally left the primate house and continued our tour. As I said, the primate house -- with all its inhumane limitations -- is the Ritz of the Vilas zoo. It's all downhill from there. And so, I went back the following day with a camera; I was forced to by my conscience. I didn't go again into the primate house. Mainly because a photograph would be unable to capture the problems inherent there in a way the average reader might easily understand.

But the problems in much of the rest of the zoo seem pretty straightforward and fairly easy to depict in pictures.

Zoos make two interrelated claims to justify their existence: education and species conservation.

I'll consider both of these reasons in some of the situations below to see if they might conceivably excuse the circumstances the animals are being forced to endure.

The Reptile House

It is becoming harder for commercial animal breeders to defend practices that confine an animal so tightly that they are unable to engage in their normal postures and movements. (This is the problem with the gibbon cage.) There is growing pressure to force poultry producers to keep chickens in a manner that allows them to stretch and flap their wings. This seems like the bare minimum that any captive animal ought to be given. Humans in prison ought at least to be able to stand up and walk a few steps; birds ought to be able to stretch their wings. At a minimum, I think ground-living snakes ought to be able to stretch out to their full length and to crawl more or less straight ahead for some distance -- maybe a distance equal to their body length. Similarly, arboreal snakes ought to be able to express their normal bodily movements.

This is a photo of the anacondas at the Vilas zoo:According to the Vilas Zoo, "The average size of an anaconda is 300 pounds and 20 feet long!" Here's their website picture of an anaconda:

According to National Geographic:

Anacondas live in swamps, marshes, and slow-moving streams, mainly in the tropical rain forests of the Amazon and Orinoco basins. They are cumbersome on land, but stealthy and sleek in the water. Their eyes and nasal openings are on top of their heads, allowing them to lay in wait for prey while remaining nearly completely submerged.

Here's a short video that gives some idea of the anaconda's natural habitat and behavior.

The two snakes at the Vilas Zoo can't stretch out, can't swim, can't even really crawl. There isn't anyplace to go.

So what about the zoo's justification for having these animals? Is the exhibit educational? I don't think it is. Anacondas live in water; in fact, they are primarily an aquatic species. Here, they are in a puddle. They are good swimmers, but they can't swim at the zoo. They grow to great lengths, but at the zoo they are forced to remain more or less balled up. At the zoo they are in a small concrete box with little to suggest their natural habitat other than some plastic lily pads and a tired flat mural on the wall.

And what about the standard conservation argument? First, anacondas aren't threatened or endangered. What could anyone learn by looking at these animals lying in a shallow puddle in a concrete box that would encourage them to care or be more cognizant of the pressures on the planet's tropical rain forests? Very little I think.

These animals are being kept in these inhumane conditions simply because anacondas are one of the largest snakes in the world, and no collection of animals is complete without one.

I could go through the same list of problems for each of the other large snakes being kept at the zoo, but won't. Suffice it to say that they are unable to fully express their natural postures and behaviors and that there is essentially nothing that can be learned from seeing them in these circumstances that would not be more richly and meaningfully informative if learned from a book or video.

The two Aldabran giant tortoises are in an equally sad situation. It is impossible to tell from the sterile box they are being held in, with a floor made of plastic, but these very long-lived animals are highly social grazing animals. They live in the Seychelles Islands and a couple other places in the Indian Ocean. They are not endangered. Here are two set of slides about one of these tortoises and a hippopotamus: (1)(2). The two tortoises at the Vilas Zoo are being kept in inhumane conditions. Holding them in such a mind-numbingly sterile cell is cruel.

So, in this case, the standard arguments used to justify keeping animals in a zoo, education and conservation, fail miserably. There is absolutely nothing of value that can be learned from seeing these Aldabran giant tortoises in this pen; they are a mere novelty. They aren't endangered and moreover, there is absolutely nothing someone in Madison could do right now for the animals in the wild population.

Large Mammals

Can you tell which pair of rhinoceroses are at the Vilas Zoo? Do you think that someone in Madison looking that them would be able to call to mind how they might appear in their natural environment? Do you think that living on a bleak barren desert for years on end is conducive to these animals' well-being?

Here are a few elements from the educational component of this sad exhibit:
Not a single blade of grass is to be seen in the pen.The drawing of the tiger being impaled by the Indian rhinoceros is particularly odd. Tigers do occasionally prey on very young Indian rhinoceroses, but attacks on adults are exceedingly rare. So, the image is misleading. White rhinoceroses are generally docile.

Moving along, we come to the giraffes. Like zoos everywhere, these exotic beautiful animals are used as icons for the Vilas Zoo. You might be able to see the details of the poster on the right showing humans running with giraffes. It is promoting a 10K run and a 5K run/walk.

Sadly, and physically punishing, is the reality endured by the real giraffes.

Last Giraffe At Vilas Zoo Dies
It's Second Giraffe Death At Zoo In Month
November 17, 2006

MADISON, Wis. -- The last giraffe at the Henry Vilas Zoo has died.

It is the second death of a giraffe at the zoo in less than a month.

Dane County and zoo officials on Thursday confirmed that their remaining reticulated giraffe has died. It was euthanized Tuesday, after officials said the animal severely ruptured its hip joint and could no longer stand.

The death of the 7-year-old giraffe -- named Raymond Junior, or "RJ" -- comes less than a month after his 12-year-old father Raymond was euthanized under similar circumstances when he could no longer stand.

RJ's 11-year-old mother Savannah died about three years ago after she apparently fell and broke her neck.

The entire family had a degenerative bone and joint disease, similar to arthritis, and zoo officials said that disease led to a massive rupture in RJ's hip joint and severe trauma to his muscles. [More...]

And read this article too:

Giraffes Return To Madison's Henry Vilas Zoo
Activists Say Giraffes Don't Belong At Zoo
August 14, 2007

MADISON, Wis. -- A giraffe exhibit opened at Madison's Henry Vilas Zoo on Tuesday, but not everyone is happy that the zoo again has giraffes after two died there last year.

After standing vacant for nearly a year, the exhibit now features the first two of three new male reticulated giraffes.

Already 6-year-old Zawadi and 5-year-old Sweta are huge hits at the zoo.

"Yeah, they look really nice," said Andrew Edmonds of Beloit. [More...]

It's a sad joke on these animals that humans will be running 5 kilometers to raise money for the zoo, and at the most, the captive giraffes can walk only a few paces in their outdoor yard, and when winter comes around, will be confined to a relatively tiny space. What can people possibly learn about giraffes by seeing them in these circumstances? They are beautiful and tall. That seems a very poor excuse for keeping these animals is such tight confines. The educational or conservation value of having these animals in the Vilas Zoo is vanishingly small.

And that brings us to the American Prarie.Thankfully, the two bison behind this sign can't see it and be reminded of where they ought to be.

American bison are herd animals that historically walked across the continent as they migrated north and south. We can only imagine, but it seems likely that untold generations of living in unimaginably giant herds and walking such long distances led to a genetic predisposition -- probably a longing -- for walking long distances with lots of other bison. For the two sad creatures held in this barren small desert, the urge to walk and graze and to find other bison may well be an incurable ache --incurable because they are held here for our momentary amusement.

There is absolutely no conservation value in having these two animals here, and the educational value is suspect. In fact, like essentially every exhibit at the zoo, the impression taken away by a patron is invariably misleading and, worse, sends a subtle message that keeping animals in these circumstances is ethical and laudable. And this is the opposite of what is true.

Before moving on to the bears, I want to point out something you can't see in the image of the bison. To the right of their pen is a concrete elongated pit that visitors can peer into to. It holds a small colony of prairie dogs. There's no grass or other vegetation. It's just another desert.

I wonder what happens to the offspring of these prisoners?

Now consider the bears.

In spite of what is probably learned by children visiting the Henry Vilas Zoo, polar bears don't live in the mountains. If you watch these bears for very long, you can't help but notice that they pace back and forth, endlessly. And they will until they die.

One reason for this is because they are trapped, and must know it. Another reason is that polar bears normally travel large distances. Their home ranges are very large. In one case, a polar bear traveled over 3,000 miles while being tracked by satellite.

The polar bears held in zoos, like the bison, are stopped from engaging in their natural behavior.

The Henry Vilas Zoo, instead of working to improve the lot of the animals they now have, has embarked on a plan to build a new arctic habitat where they hope they will be able to breed polar bears. The down side of such a plan, aside from the lost opportunities to help the animals already there, is that more animals will be brought into the world merely to satisfy our own urges.

Here's an image of the grizzle bear. Apparently, we are supposed to learn that they too live above the tree line high in the mountains. It is a sad comment on what people are willing to allow to be done to animals.

Before I end this far too long lament, I have to mention two other sad situations among the seemingly endless cacophony.

There is a lone ostrich in a pen that is too small for her. I know it's too small because this lonely bird spends a goodly bit of its time biting the chain link fence. The fence is painted brown, but in the top corners, where it meets the fence separating pens, it is very shiny, and that polished shine is easy to understand when one watches this bird any length of time.

In captive-animal-parlance, or human abnormal psychology, this is called a stereotypy. Stereotypies are repetitive, purposeless actions seen frequently in captive situations where animals have insufficient room or mental stimulation.

Other cases could be seen at the zoo as well. One small tortoise was prevented from approaching the glass front of his cell. The glass was badly scratched where he had clearly spent long hours (years?) trying to push his way through, to escape his small barren cell. In a number of the enclosures, like the tiger's, a well-worn path marked his endless route along the perimeter of his small enclosure. The red panda, a recently much-ballyhooed addition to the menagerie was already working out his short pacing circuit.

And this:This peafowl is in a pen. But peafowl don't need to be penned to keep them around. Essentially every zoo I've ever visited, and a number of farms and sanctuaries, allow these birds to wander around. There is no reason to keep peafowl in a pen.

I could go on and talk about the goats, the lions, the camels, the alligators, the meerkats, or the other animals whose lives are being unnecessarily degraded to give us a moment's entertainment, but I'm too sick of it all to continue.

The Vials Zoo is celebrating it's 100 year anniversary and is holding fundraisers almost everyday it seems. Billboards with misleading images of animals -- touting them as "ambassadors" of the wild, are all over town. Local businesses have to tripped over each other trying to show they support the zoo and apparently, keeping animals in cruel and inhumane circumstances.

It is all very, very sad.

Rescuing Endangered Animals

2011-10-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

I'm against it.

I used to be all for it, but the results of successful species rescue programs can and I suspect invariably do, result in great suffering.

We almost eliminated the Canada goose. Geese can't fly when they are molting, and as a result, we were able to easily slaughter millions upon millions of them in fairly short order, and we did.

Then, some of us became alarmed that Canada geese could be completely eliminated. Laws were passed, regulations were written, and the slaughter was stopped, just in time apparently. The population started to rebound and is showing no signs of leveling off.

As a result, people in the towns and cities along the migratory routes are increasingly unhappy that their relatively barren lakes are starting to be used again by increasing numbers of geese. There is no reason not to assume that the goose population will continue rising to fill the niche that was left vacant for so many decades following their near extirpation. At one time, the waterways along the traditional migration routes must have been literally covered with geese at certain times of the year.

As a consequence of people having become used to and expecting their lakes to be more or less free of wildlife, the increasing number of geese has led to cities and towns conducting annual round-ups and slaughters with the help of the United States Department of Agriculture. Additionally, hunters are being allowed to shoot more geese.

The effort to save the Canada goose from extinction was a success, but the result is that many thousands are frightened, manhandled, wounded, and killed every year, and there is no reason to believe that the number of geese suffering from our attacks won't continue to increase over time.

The gray wolf is another species rescued from extinction only to become the target of hunters' perverse and drooling excitement about trapping and shooting them. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and similar agencies in other states are hard at work trying to have the wolf removed from the US Environmental Protection Agency's protected species list. Wolf-hunting season is just around the corner.

I suspect that hunting seasons for whooping cranes are a near certainty if America is able to remain politically intact long enough.

"Forum" Keeps Details Hidden

2011-10-22T13:27:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 2010, a Dane County Supervisor introduced a resolution that sought the creation of a Citizens Advisory Panel that would try to answer these questions:

1. Is the treatment of monkeys in laboratories in Dane County humane?

2. What is needed to enable the retirement of monkeys from UW–Madison’s laboratories after they are used in experiments?

3. Is experimenting on monkeys ethical?

The panel would then write a report documenting and explaining the Panel’s conclusions within six months of the Panel’s first meeting.

[See the initial draft here.]

Mention of Covance, the world’s largest importer and consumer of monkeys, with a lab in Madison using 7,000 monkeys a year, was almost immediately struck from the resolution.

Over the following weeks, two committees took up the resolution. It passed through the first and died in the second. At a subsequent meeting of the full Board, supervisors opposed to the resolution mentioned a statement made by the Vice Chancellor for Research at the second committee meeting. He said:

I’m Martin Cadwallader, and I’m the vice chancellor for research and the dean of the graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The university is not in favor of Resolution 35 as currently written. However, the university proposes to increase opportunities for citizens of Dane County and beyond to learn about our animal research program, raise issues, and engage in dialog.

To this end, we propose a series of forums that would involve research scientists, ethicists, veterinarians, and others engaged in, or interested in, animal research both on and off campus. The purpose would be to provide periodic opportunities to exchange ideas, become aware of the changing federal landscape in research, and provide an open forum on a broad range of animal research topics.

The issues might include: Who funds research of this kind? Are experiments involving animals necessary? Are there alternatives to using animals for research? Who is looking out for the animals? What happens when animals are no longer needed for research projects? What’s the value of research with animals?

In addition, we are committed to offering tours of our primate center, and we encourage you to take a careful look at our website on animal research which provides a great deal of information about the research underway at UW-Madison. It also provides information about our animal care and use program.

Our aim is to make our animal research program more transparent to interested citizens, and to provide valuable information on the concerns and interests of our community.

Now, over a year later, after the promise of tours turned out to be meaningless rhetoric, and after the fourth of the forums promised by Cadwallader, it seems fair to consider whether or not they have made their animal research program more transparent to interested citizens.

The answer seems straightforwardly to be, no.

The most recent event was held on October 11, 2011. It was a lecture by Paul Kaufman, Professor & Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Kaufman uses monkeys in his glaucoma and presbyopia publicly-funded research. He may use and kill more monkeys than anyone else on campus. His methods are highly invasive.You can watch his presentation here.

After his lecture, a three-person panel of UW faculty members made fairly brief statements.

One of the panel members, Susan Lederer, Chair of the Department of Medical History and Bioethics, said that one of her areas of interest is the way animals are presented in science. (I know of only one paper by her on the topic, “Political animals: The shaping of biomedical research literature in twentieth-century America.” Isis, 1992. It’s well worth reading.) [She begins speaking at about 57:15.] She called the audience’s attention to the fact that Kaufman’s slides had included only one image of a monkey [it was the one used in the poster advertising the event] and included no details of what is actually done to the animals. She also pointed to Kaufman's use of the image of children in his presentation -- a persuasive device Kaufman left unremarked upon.

After the panelists' remarks, Rob Streiffer -- the moderator and a member of the Forum Committee -- asks Kaufman to respond to Lederer's observations that the monkeys he uses remained hidden. [Begins at about 1:06:13.]

Streiffer:

I'd like Dr. Kaufman, if he could, to elaborate on one of the questions that Sue Lederer had, about what exactly is the experience, to the best that we can understand it, of one of the animals in some of the work you were drawing from here. Some of the slides talked about seven hours of treatment, one talked about five days of treatment. How long do you use them? What happens during the time you use them? And where do they go when your done?

Kaufman responds to Lederer’s observation with the comment that he and Streiffer had decided that details and depictions of what he does to the monkeys weren’t appropriate for this lecture in front of a public audience. Lederer then apologized for her misunderstanding.

At this point, Adjunct Associate Professor Patricia McConnell, another member of the Forum Committee, who was sitting next to me, leaned over and said that Kaufman’s explanation was contrary to what the committee had expected from him. Rob Streiffer, with microphone in hand, remained mute on the point.

Kaufman's answer to Streiffer's specific questions comes at about 1:06:35, he wiggles this way and that, but finally says that there are strict rules and regulations on campus. That's the extent of his description of what is experienced by one of the monkeys he uses.

A few days later, I talked with another member of the Forum Committee, Dawn Kubly, who told me that it was fully expected that Kaufman would explain what he does to the monkeys. She also said that this had been very clear in the committee’s discussions and that Streiffer had said so explicitly.

Apparently, Strieffer had told the committee ahead of time that he spoke with Kaufman about the forum committee's desire to have him directly address the impact his research has on the animals he uses and the kinds of procedures they undergo. The hidden nature of the actual experiments is, of course, why the forums came about in the first place.

Kubly was angry, and afterward wrote to the committee about Kaufman’s failure to explain exactly what he does to monkeys in the course of his experiments. Only one committee replied in any substantive way, and they agreed with her.

Matter-of-factly, in the four “forums” that have so far taken place, no one attending can have learned very much at all about what is being dome to the monkeys being used at the University of Wisconsin. Throughout the forums, the only substantive description was of, arguably, the very least ethically problematic use of monkeys at the primate center. [See Charles Snowdon's presentation here.] The “forums” have widely missed the mark set by Cadwallader – “to make our animal research program more transparent to interested citizens, and to provide valuable information on the concerns and interests of our community.”

This comes as no surprise. The university routinely lies to the public about its use of animals(1); it routinely works to keep the public in the dark(2); it actively builds barriers to public understanding and access to information about its use of animals(3); it vigorously defends the most heinous and ethically questionable experimental using animals(4); it circumvents the law(5); it works to exempt itself from the law(6); and it works around-the-clock to attract more federal and private dollars for more experiments on more animals. It comes as no surprise to anyone moderately informed about the university’s dark history in this area that their claims about the “forums” are just more of the same.

One of the sillier bits of conversation that occurred at the Kaufman “forum” was the vivisectors’ claim that they would like to house animals under more humane conditions, but they just don’t have money to do so. They said that people who care about the monkeys ought to be asking the NIH or Congress to give them more money, so that they can enlarge their facilities and give the monkeys more space. The only reason the monkeys are kept in such tight [they didn’t say mind-numbing] quarters, they lamented, was the lack of funding.

Apparently, they blame someone other than themselves for the number of monkeys at the primate center. This is like the woman living in a school bus with umpteen dogs, cats, four goats, a donkey, and seven parrots arguing that it isn’t her fault that she can’t give the animals more room.

(1) Many examples could be given, but the most egregious might be the constellation of lies surrounding the monkeys housed at the Vilas Park Zoo. Multiple written promises made by the university not to harm the monkeys were routinely and secretly broken; a decade later, the primate center director was still lying about their lies to the public.

(2) The current series of “forums” is a good example. In the four opportunities to explain what is done to the animals, the university chose not to reveal any meaningful details. A stronger example is the extreme coordinated effort to derail Res 35.

(3) The most straightforward case among many examples is probably their shredding of nearly fifteen years of videoed experiments on monkeys to keep them out of the public eye.

(4) Only two countries still allow experiments on chimpanzees: the United States and Gabon. The university has convinced US representative Tammy Baldwin not to become a cosponsor of the Great Ape Protection Act because, she says, they worry that if experiments on chimpanzees are banned, where will it all end? They might see a reduction in their obscene access to federal tax dollars.

(5) Again, many examples could be cited. An ongoing example is their pattern of delaying their legally-required responses to open records requests, sometimes by many months. They claim that they don’t have the staff necessary to fulfill the requests within the time frame stipulated by the state attorney general’s office. But they could hire one or two people to do this if they cared about sharing information with the public and complying with the spirit of the law.

(6) In 2010 through 2011, after being caught in years-long series of experiments that were clear matter-of-fact violations of Wisconsin’s anti-cruelty laws – killing animals by means of decompression, and staging fights between animals – the university simply told its lackeys in the Wisconsin legislature to exempt anything it might care to do to animals from the state’s anti-cruelty laws, and they did.

*Forum: “a public meeting or lecture involving audience discussion.” It’s not clear to me that giving people an opportunity to ask a question or two really fits the notion of audience discussion. So far, the “forums” have been lectures that have entertained very limited questions from the audience; “discussion” implies the “consideration of a question in open and usually informal debate.”

See too:

Sunday, February 27, 2011: Dr. Lawrence Hansen's Visit Frightens UW Vivisectors into Hiding

Sunday, October 3, 2010: Res 35: Supervisors' Public Comments

Sunday, September 19, 2010: Christopher Coe on Res 35

Friday, September 17, 2010: Who killed Res 35?

Friday, September 17, 2010: Res 35 probably dead

Wednesday, September 15, 2010: Opposition to Res 35

Monday, August 23, 2010: Liar, liar ...

Thursday, July 22, 2010: Vested Interests, Double-Talk, Ethical Blindness

Monkeys in Dane County: Is the use of monkeys ethical?

Dario Ringach and Animals

2011-10-07T11:36:00.000-07:00

Dario Ringach doesn't like me.

(Here are a couple links to pages by or about him. 1, 2, 3.)

He says I support violence against vivsectors, and I guess I sort of do in a manner of speaking. I genuinely believe that what we are doing to animals dwarfs the evil humans have heaped on other humans. The ratio of harm we've done to animals compared to the harm we've done other humans looks something like this:

Too great to quantify/a lot.

A mathematical rationalizing of this ratio would probably yield a gigantic positive number if nothing other than the affected population of each of each group was substituted for the characterizations -- assuming there was a way to reasonably estimate those values.

If the subjective suffering of the individuals represented by those numbers could be reasonably estimated, the resulting value would dwarf even that gigantic number.

Given this impression, I'm not terribly saddened when a proponent of hurting animals dies. I say, good riddance. That's cold, but it's also the general consensus of Americans when it comes to killing suspected terrorists or certain suspected criminals. In this regard, my opinion of what happens to despicable people appears to be clearly in the mainstream. I feel some guilt that I'm not more progressive on this matter and more in line with the majority of animal rights activists who seem in toto to embrace the notion of ahimsa even when it comes to opinions about what is or isn't the appropriate response to supporters, advocates, or participants in mass torture and murder.

[Murder is a term reserved for killing humans, but this reservation is merely an artifact of this point in time. I use it here both narrowly and more broadly. I hope it will be used generally sometime in the future to include the willful killing of animals other than only humans.]

I've expressed my opinion on this matter more than once on the Internet. Ringach has collected a few of my occasional despondent and dark comments and uses them in what is formally referred to as the Ad Hominem fallacy to deflect or discredit my on-line comments. A recent example of such an attack was seen on Scientific American's webpage discussion about the magazine's editorial position that experiments on chimpanzees should be greatly curtailed. See Ban Chimp Testing: Why it is time to end invasive biomedical research on chimpanzees. The Editors. September 28, 2011.

If you read through the comments, you'll see Ringach accusing me of a series of nasty comments -- and I've certainly made any number of them. But he also accuses me of not having read an essay he wrote that he says explains his position on our use of animals and moreover, why he thinks chimpanzees but not monkeys should be reserved for studies of major diseases.

Those who actually know me and happened to read his accusation must have had a real belly laugh. Accusing me of not reading (let alone thinking about) a vivisector's published explanation and justification for hurting and killing animals is like saying Rick Bogle eats beef. On this point, Ringach is as wrong as wrong could be.

If you've read to this point, congratulations you masochist. The rest of this rambling rant is a rejoinder to Dario Ringach's essay "The Use of Nonhuman Animals in Biomedical Research" published in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. 2011, and particularly his claim that "a graded moral status of living beings" ought to be employed to determine who can be used in harmful scientific experiments.

"I believe moral status to be graded according to the cognitive capabilities of each living being."

This is a dangerous and frightening idea.

Consider this: This is the normal distribution of intelligence quotient scores on the well-known Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS).

Where along this distribution would Ringach draw his line? How smart would one have to be to escape being selected for the vivisector's knife?

Ringach says: "Ethical boundaries may shift as we learn more about animal minds, but given our current knowledge, there is good reason to grant humans the highest moral status followed by great apes, dolphins, monkeys, higher mammals, rodents, insects, and so on."

This might sound reasonable at first blush, but it turns out to be fairly meaningless and hollow. First, what is it about all great apes that sets them cognitively above all other animals other than humans? Given the dire results of the determination, it ought to be something that is easy to discern.

Ringach puts "dolphins" between great apes and "monkeys." So, again, given the dire consequences of one's position on Ringach's graded scale, the cognitive abilities that serve as the dividing point ought to be spelled out pretty clearly and the reason that they are the deciding factors ought to be explained and be understandable.

I have to wonder too about his use of the words "dolphins, monkeys, [and] higher mammals." His list makes me suspect that he isn't much of a zoologist, let alone a knowledgeable judge of comparative intelligence.

There are at least 33 recognized species of marine dolphins, 4 river dolphins and 6 porpoises. It is unlikely that these species have uniform cognitive capabilities. Moreover, it is unlikely that individuals of the same species, say all the members of the species Stenella attenuata, have the same cognitive capabilities. In all likelihood, if we could measure their IQs the results would result in a graph like the one above.

The problem for "monkeys" is even greater. There are about 200 different species, all of which have genetically derived social, behavioral, physiological, and cognitively unique characteristics; how should we rank order them to determine the degree of suffering they can be subjected to as tools for us?

And what should we make of Ringach's term "higher mammals"? The notion of higher and lower life forms is an artifact of the pre-Darwinian idea called the Great Chain of Being or the scala naturae. It is a completely debunked Christian theology-driven notion that few biologists still endorse.

A big problem with Ringach's scale of being is that species he apparently puts near the top, like monkeys (even above "higher mammals"), do not appear to be off limits to any insult as a result of their relatively high position.

For instance, Ringach says, in the interview with him here, that he was inspired by his UCLA colleague David Jentsch to start speaking out in defense of vivisectors. It seems fair to surmise then, that Ringach finds Jentsch's use of monkeys fitting given their cognitive abilities and resulting moral grade.

Here's an example of Jensch's use of monkeys:

In a paper from 2008, he explains:

Young adult male or female St Kitts green (vervet) monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops sabaeus) at the St Kitts Biomedical Research Foundation (St Kitts, West Indies) were used. As the subjects were feral monkeys, their exact age was not known. These studies were approved by the relevant institutional animal care and use committee. Monkeys, housed individually in squeeze-cages, were injected with PCP twice daily for 14 days, as described before (Jentsch et al, 1997).… John D Elsworth, J David Jentsch, Bret A Morrow, D Eugene Redmond Jr and Robert H Roth. Clozapine Normalizes Prefrontal Cortex Dopamine Transmission in Monkeys Subchronically Exposed to Phencyclidine Neuropsychopharmacology. 2008.

Let’s try to put Jentsch’s PCP injections into context and imagine the situation from the monkeys’ perspective.

First, PCP is almost never injected. It is almost always smoked – sprinkled on tobacco or marijuana, and only very occasionally snorted like cocaine. But it is almost never injected.

Second, nearly everyone who uses PCP knows they’re using PCP.

Third, the commonly reported recreational dose of PCP is 0.01-0.02 mg/kg.

Jentsch injected 15 to 30 times (0.3 mg/kg) the normal recreational dose of PCP into animals, ripped from their families, trapped in cages and being manhandled, who then start having unending nightmarish hallucinations for reasons they can’t imagine. And this went on for two solid weeks, prior to him killing them.

Its hard for me to see how being near the top of Ringach's graded scale of moral status means much of anything.

I think it's clear that his graded scale of moral status is either a rhetorical device or a delusion. There isn't a scale when everyone below the top position can be used as those at the top wish.

A couple other quick things.

The first part of Ringach's article is an attempt to refute the idea that the use of other animal species isn't a very productive research modality when it comes to progress in human health-care. He challenges what he says are "common criticisms" of using animals.

The funny thing about his article is that the "common criticisms" he takes issue with are essentially all from a single critic. It's hard to tell, since he cites only Ray Greek's work in this area, but Ringach doesn't seem to be very well read.

Ringach makes an odd claim that I haven't been able to understand. He says that if there were an obvious advantage to human-based research that we would know it by now, and that he is unaware of any data that support this idea. I don't know what to make of this. He ought to be able to stack up the resulting benefits of human-based research and the resulting benefits of animal-based research and come to some sort of reasonable conclusion as to which one is most productive. How can he be completely in the dark about the data that could be looked at? Maybe I'm missing his point.

I don't know much about the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, where his article was published, but they should have done a better job editing his paper. There are a number of factual, grammatical, and typographical errors as well as some contradictory and illogical passages. Perhaps he will revise and tighten it up at some point in the future. I look forward to reading it again if he does so.

[I don't know whether Ringach eats animals. If he does, then all his justifications for using animals in science are just hollow nonsense. If the flavor of their cooked flesh is sufficient reason to use them, then we hardly need highfalutin claims about the value of the science. The tax money given to the vivisectors would be more than adequate justification to an animal eater.]

Housekeeping

2011-09-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many times I've read dismissals by vivisectors following USDA inspections that the citations were for trivial house keeping problems like a little rust on a door hinge or some peeling paint in a hallway. These PR snow jobs usually include patently fictitious claims that their staff care deeply for the animals (they experiment on and kill.)

An interesting document has come to light that sheds some light on USDA-, OLAW-, and AAALAC-identified ACUC/institution deficiencies in the oversight of experiments using animals.

[For those understandably confused by this alphabet soup, USDA is the United States Department of Agriculture; in this context USDA is shorthand for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the branch of the USDA responsible for inspecting research facilities using animal species covered by the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), a federal law. OLAW is the euphemistically-named Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, a unit of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) charged with assuring that institutions receiving grant monies from the NIH are in compliance with the Public Health Service (PHS) Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and a recently watered-down small book-sized document published by the National Academies of Science (NAS) titled the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (the Guide). AAALAC is shorthand for AAALAC International, or the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International, which describes itself as "a private, nonprofit organization that promotes the humane treatment of animals in science through voluntary accreditation and assessment programs," but is actually an industry support group working to shield institutions with a weak and complicit "accrediting" process from understandable public criticism.]

The document seems to be a handout but is labeled as "notes" from a session of the 2011 PRIM&R's IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) conference that was held in Chicago. I've transcribed it below; you can view a pdf of the original here. PRIM&R is just another of the many organizations that have sprung up over the years to protect the cash flow from the public coffers into the pockets of researchers and their respective institutions.

This document suggests that, nationwide, the oversight committees aren't doing a very good job, but without knowing how many citations were issued for each of the named problems, it is impossible to know how they are doing overall with any certainty.

Top 10 Deficiencies from the Perspective of USDA, OLAW, and AAALAC

Based on a review of 1,724 citations, USDA reported the following as most frequent violations:

1. Issues, with IACUC Reports on Semi-annual Program Reviews and inspections (reports and inspections not conducted in a timely manner, reports not signed by the majority of the committee, reports not submitted within 15 days)

2. Protocol Reviews (descriptions of procedures incomplete; work performed that is not covered by a protocol)

3. Outdated Pharmaceuticals (present in lab/facility and available for use)

4. Search for Alternatives (search described does not relate to pain/distress or minimizing those; search does not address specific procedures included in protocol)

5. House Keeping (facilities must be clean and in good repair; accumulations of trash have been major concern)

6. Semi-annual Inspections (not done on time - i.e. every 6 months; when a date slides, the schedule should not be reset - i.e. the committee should get back on schedule with following inspection)

7. Access and Inspection of Facilities (must have someone available to allow inspections of records, facilities, and animals; must allow inspectors to take photographs - this is now a requirement of USDA Inspectors in specific situations)

8. Veterinary Care (daily observations to assess health and well being are a must; communications with vets and vet techs must be-timely)

9. Occupational Health/Safety Issues (all staff must be made aware of OHS facilities, personnel, equipment, and services; documentation must be available)

10. Rationale for Involving Animals and Appropriateness of Species and Numbers (most citations are for failure to provide an adequate rationale for using animals)

Based on 4,694 reportable issues (73% in higher education- institutions), OLAW has identified three main groups of related issues:

1. Protocol Issues (failure to follow approved protocols, unapproved significant changes to protocols by PIs, work conducted prior to protocol approval, inadequate PI oversight of protocol implementation, doing work under expired protocols)

2. Husbandry (Inadequate records/inadequate identification of individual animals - i.e. inability to tie records back to specific animals, escaped animals, lack of enrichment)

3. Other (human errors/accidents; natural disasters; equipment failures; training failures; crime, neglect and abuse [this was noted as occurring rarely, but is categorized for reporting purposes within the “other” category])

The OLAW inspector noted that 55% of all concerns with physical facilities related to HVAC systems, and stressed that it is always better to err on the side of reporting as the consequences for reporting are almost always less if the incident results in a penalty (i.e. not reporting results in larger fines).

Based on certification reviews for 800+ institutions, AAALAC reports that the bulk of accreditation denials stem from:

1. Occupational Health and Safety Issues (OHS programs not fully implemented, coordination, inconsistent implementation, risk assessments based on contact time rather than actual risk [e.g. Ebola doesn't require significant contact time but is of high risk], lack of follow up after initial assessments [e.g., for vaccines], lack of safety training for personnel [particularly a concern for student employees])

2. Protocol Reviews (lack of intensity of protocol reviews, lack of clear procedurs or failure of ACUC to follow procedures when doing reviews, inappropriate use of committee alternates, lack of a defined schedule for administration of analgesia, inappropriate/inadequate committee composition)

3. HVAC Systems (significant cause of animal deaths; inadequate maintenance of temperature according to Guide, inappropriate relative air pressure differential, environmental data to complete/not being recorded, inadequate air changes, inability to maintain humidity)

Notes, from session from session D7, PRIMR 2011, Chicago IL attended by Dreux Watermolen, L&S ACUC

Professors London and Jentsch trying to fool the public (again)

2011-09-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

> UCLA Newsroom > All Stories > News Releases
Professors London and Jentsch describe their addiction research
By UCLA Newsroom July 25, 2011

This is too ridiculous not to comment on:

What are our ethical principles?

When it comes to animal research, our ethical principles have two dimensions. First, we embrace — not simply accept — the Animal Welfare Act and the regulatory mechanisms that ensure that animal welfare is a key concern in designing and undertaking animal studies. We use the fewest animals possible and the least harmful methods. We do everything possible to avoid causing pain or distress in our studies, and we alleviate it using state-of-the-art methods when we can.

Second, it is our ethical obligation to pursue studies that may alleviate the suffering caused by methamphetamine addiction. Human suffering is real; it is all around us. It is ultimately avoidable, if we understand the problem deeply enough. We believe that people suffering from addictions and the people that love them deserve that every reasonable effort be made to address their problem, and we will, consequently, continue our work.

Here's an excerpt from something I wrote about Jentsch a few years ago:

In a paper from 2008, this monster explains:
Young adult male or female St Kitts green (vervet) monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops sabaeus) at the St Kitts Biomedical Research Foundation (St Kitts, West Indies) were used. As the subjects were feral monkeys, their exact age was not known. These studies were approved by the relevant institutional animal care and use committee. Monkeys, housed individually in squeeze-cages, were injected with PCP twice daily for 14 days, as described before (Jentsch et al, 1997).… John D Elsworth, J David Jentsch, Bret A Morrow, D Eugene Redmond Jr and Robert H Roth. Clozapine Normalizes Prefrontal Cortex Dopamine Transmission in Monkeys Subchronically Exposed to Phencyclidine Neuropsychopharmacology. 2008.
Let’s try to put Jentsch’s PCP injections into context and imagine the situation from the monkeys’ perspective.

First, PCP is almost never injected. It is almost always smoked – sprinkled on tobacco or marijuana, and only very occasionally, snorted like cocaine. But it is almost never injected.

Second, nearly everyone who uses PCP knows they’re using PCP.

Third, the commonly reported recreational dose of PCP is 0.01-0.02 mg/kg.

Jentsch is injecting 15 to 30 times (0.3 mg/kg) the normal recreational dose of PCP into animals, ripped from their families, trapped in cages and being manhandled, who then start having unending nightmarish hallucinations for reasons they can’t imagine. And this goes on for two weeks, prior to them being killed.

And here's a bit of something I wrote about London a few years earlier:

Before considering her work, consider this:
For example, since smokers extract about 1 mg of nicotine per cigarette, a 1 pack per day (20 cigarettes per day) smoker likely receives near 100 percent nicotine replacement using a 21-mg/day patch. However, this patch dose likely underdoses heavier smokers, and higher nicotine doses (44-mg/day) have been shown to provide better relief from withdrawal symptoms and to increase short-term efficacy.” Randolph C. Barrows, Jr., M.D. SMOKING CESSATION (Chapter 3)
And here's a description of some of what she's doing to monkeys:
Two gonadally intact adolescent (4–5 years old) male rhesus monkeys (Macacca mulatta, 8.9 and 7.7 kg) participated in the studies. Monkeys were housed individually in temperature- and humidity-controlled rooms maintained on a 12 h light/dark schedule with lights on at 7:00 A.M. Monkeys were fed Monkey Diet Biscuit daily after each experimental session and were weighed biweekly. They participated in a psychological enrichment program. The animal protocol was approved by the Yale and Veterans Administration Animal Care and Use Committees and is in compliance with United States Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals

Nicotine was administered orally using the dose escalation paradigm described previously (Pietila et al., 1998 ). Nicotine (Sigma, St. Louis, MO) was administered in a saccharin–Kool-Aid (Kraft Foods, Northfield, IL) solution as the sole source of fluid on a daily basis (with the exception of days of nicotine withdrawal before each scan and also for the day of and immediately after the scan). During weeks 0–4, the animals increased their average nicotine consumption from 3.3 to 37.5 mg/kg. During the last 5–8 weeks of the study, the animals' average daily nicotine consumption was 30–38 mg/kg. After 6 and 8 weeks, the nicotine solution was removed and the monkeys had access to water.” Edythe D. London et al. Human tobacco smokers in early abstinence have higher levels of beta2* nicotinic acetylcholine receptors than nonsmokers. J Neurosci. 2006.
So, during the final 3 weeks of the study, the larger of the two monkeys was being administered the equivalent of more than 13 packs a day (8.9 kg X 30--38 mg = 267 mgs) to almost 17 packs of cigarettes a day (8.9 kg X 38 mg = 338.2 mg).

The smaller monkey was being administered the equivalent of between about 11 packs a day and 14 packs a day.

“Such tactics are beyond contemptible, have no place in a civilized society …” says UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. Of course, Block is talking about flooding her mansion, not forcing the monkeys to drink nicotine-laden Kool-Aid.

People of Jentsch and London's evil ilk simply can't be trusted around animals. It's like letting serial sexual offenders run after-school programs for grade school kids.

UW Vivisector Receives Award from AVMA

2011-07-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

UW veterinary school professor wins lifetime achievement award for canine research JEFF GLAZE. Wisconsin State Journal. July 25, 2011.

A professor and orthopedic surgeon from the UW-Madison veterinary school received a prestigious award for lifetime achievement in canine research.

Peter Muir was honored with the American Veterinary Medical Foundation/American Kennel Club Career Achievement Award in Canine Research from the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA).

Now, the rest of the story...

Some of Peter Muir's lifetime of research includes invasive experiments on living dogs' and rats' bones.

Here are some excerpts from one of his papers:

Schmiedt CW, Lu Y, Heaney K, Muir P, Amodie DM, Markel MD. Comparison of two doses of recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein in absorbable collagen sponges for bone healing in dogs. Am J Vet Res. 2007.

The University of Wisconsin Animal Care and Use Committee approved all study procedures prior to subject enrollment. The study was conducted by use of a randomized complete block design involving 3 treatments and 9 dogs/treatment group...

The 27 adult female mixed-breed dogs used in the study were owned by the university. Allocation of dogs to treatment groups was done in 2 steps. First, dogs were weighed, ranked in descending order of body weight, and grouped into blocks of 3. Each dog in each block was randomly allocated to 1 of 3 treatment groups. In all dogs, mid-diaphyseal osteotomy (1-mm transverse defect) was performed on the right tibia ... [an osteotomy is the surgical removal of bone.]...

The surgical procedure was performed on the right hind limb of each dog by the same surgical team. ... A 1-mm transverse mid-diaphyseal osteotomy was performed by use of an oscillating saw under copious irrigation with saline (0.9% NaCl) solution. The osteotomy gap was confirmed by use of a 1-mm-thick shim. A 1-cm section of the fibula was removed with rongeurs (pliers), both proximal and distal to the osteotomy....

After surgery, staff who were unaware of treatment allocations examined each dog twice daily. Hydromorphone (0.2 mg/kg) was administered SC if signs consistent with excessive postoperative pain (eg, excess vocalization, signs of pain elicited during manipulation of the operated limb, or high heart or respiratory rates) were evident, as determined by a veterinarian who was also unaware of treatment. Any abnormality including discharge from the incision site, swelling at or discharge from a pin site, or swelling at the osteotomy site was noted in the medical record. If an orthopedic surgeon who was unaware of treatment considered that subjective evidence of infection (increasing redness, signs of pain, heat, swelling, discharge at the surgery site, or fever) was present, dogs were administered [an antibiotic.]...

Every 2 weeks during an 8-week period after surgery, outcome measures were assessed via radiography and clinical lameness evaluation (which involved assignment of a lameness score by use of a VAS). Dogs were evaluated daily for development of complications or adverse effects. [VAS: visual analog scale, which Muir has said elsewhere isn't a reliable measure of lameness.]...

Lameness score—Before and at 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks after surgery, dogs were evaluated for clinical evidence of lameness by an independent observer who was unaware of treatments. Dogs were assessed while trotting in a straight line and turning to the left and right. The observer assigned scores for the severity of lameness by use of a VAS (0 [sound] to 100 mm [could not be more lame]), as previously described.12 Dogs that were more severely lame received higher VAS scores....

Then the dogs were killed.

This guy is no friend of dogs.

Can you say, J. Marion Simms?

Good-bye Biddy.

2011-06-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

Chancellor Martin leaving UW-Madison for presidency at Amherst College

Chancellor Biddy Martin thanks donors and UW-Madison alumni John and Tashia Morgridge after the two delivered a shared address to graduates during a spring commencement ceremony at the Kohl Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on May 14, 2011. View more photos. Photo: Jeff Miller

June 14, 2011

University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin, who built a reputation as a visionary thinker and defender of the university’s role as global public research institution, announced today (Tuesday, June 14) that she’s leaving the university to become president of Amherst College.

I wonder why she's really leaving.

Maybe the USDA/NIH joint investigation report is coming out and the university needs to be able to say that the poorly run system was a result of Biddy's meddling and mismanagement, and that the bad egg is gone, so there is no one left to blame.

Another free pass perhaps.

UW-Madison's Rarefied Self-Image

2011-06-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

I have said on a number of occasions that the UW-Madison vivisectors act as if they see themselves above the law. Just how stupid does someone have to be, after seeing all the university has done over the years, to still qualify the observation that the university feels it is above the law with "as if"? Pretty dumb, I would say. Mea culpa.

I won't have to say that any more. The university has announced to all who would listen that they are absolutely above the law. They have stated clearly and succinctly in the University System Omnibus Motion:

Liability Protections for Scientific Researchers: Specify that current law provisions prohibiting crimes against animals would not apply to persons engaged in bona fide scientific research at an educational or research institution or persons who are authorized or otherwise regulated under federal law to utilize animals for these purposes.

They slipped this provision into the pending state budget bill because they know with absolute certainty that the provision could not stand alone or weather informed debate. This is a dishonest ploy to exempt themselves from Wisconsin's "Crimes Against Animals" statutes, Chapter 951 of the state code.

If you check it out, you'll see that there are already two exemptions given to those experimenting on animals.

951.02 Mistreating animals. No person may treat any animal, whether belonging to the person or another, in a cruel manner. This section does not prohibit bona fide experiments carried on for scientific research or normal and accepted veterinary practices.

and then again,

951.06 Use of poisonous and controlled substances. No person may expose any domestic animal owned by another to any known poisonous substance, any controlled substance included in schedule I, II, III, IV or V of ch. 961, or any controlled substance analog of a controlled substance included in schedule I or II of ch. 961, whether mixed with meat or other food or not, so that the substance is liable to be eaten by the animal and for the purpose of harming the animal. This section shall not apply to poison used on one's own premises and designed for the purpose of rodent or pest extermination nor to the use of a controlled substance in bona fide experiments carried on for scientific research or in accepted veterinary practices.

There is also an exemption in 951.10 for people who wish to sell baby rabbits, chicks and other fowl to vivisectors.

If the university gets its way, and I suspect they will, they will be formally outside the law. Vivisectors will no longer be barred by statute from:

951.025 Killing an animal by means of decompression.
951.03 Dognapping and catnapping.
951.04 Leading an animal from a motor vehicle.
951.05 Transporting any animal in or upon any vehicle in a cruel manner.
951.07 Using certain devices: (a bristle bur, tack bur or like device; or a poling device used to train a horse to jump which is charged with electricity or to which have been affixed nails, tacks or other sharp points.)
951.08 Instigating fights between animals.
951.09 Shooting at caged or staked animals.
951.095 Harassing police and fire animals.
951.097 Harassing service dogs.
951.11 Selling artificially colored animals.
951.13 Not providing proper food and drink to confined animals.
951.14 Not providing proper shelter.
951.15 Abandoning animals.

The university's demand that they be exempt from Chapter 951 is breathtaking, stunning, telling. I worry about them though, being so high above the ground, they must all be experiencing nosebleeds, headache, and extreme lightheadedness, which in itself may explain their absurd self-image.

rarefied: Belonging to or reserved for a small select group; exalted in nature or character; exclusive.

Want to do something about this grotesque attack? If you live in Wisconsin or visit Wisconsin, or have simply only heard of Wisconsin, call the state legislators and tell them that no one should be exempted from laws against cruelty. Ask them to remove Item 27 from the University of Wisconsin System Omnibus Motion.

You can look up their phone numbers here.

Eric Sandgren: "The mice don't harm each other."

2011-06-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

In the typically formulaic response to unwanted attention being drawn to likely problems with animal care at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, go-to propagandist Eric Sandgren dismissed concerns over the fights forced upon mice in more than a decade-long series of staged fights between male mice. He was apparently interviewed by a couple of reporters:

"Aggression research like this isn't really the point of the law," he said. The mice don't harm each other, but display aggressive behavior and back away, Sandgren added. "They (researchers) don't see animals that are limping." (WISN.com)

---

[Eric Sandgren] says the "fights" generally consist of one mouse charging at another, who retreats, and that no encounters led to serious injuries. "It's a behavioral fight." (Isthmus)

---

[Eric Sandgren] said fights generally involve mice displaying aggressive behavior but then backing away.

"(The researchers) don't see animals that have wounds," he said. "They don't see animals that are limping."(Wisconsin State Journal)

This calculated spin contradicts reports from university insiders familiar with the care of mice and research on aggression in captive mice.

Because so very many mice are used in research, caring for them (prior to experimenting on them) has been the subject of some research. Aggression in male mice is apparently a well-recognized problem in the industry. If, as Sandgren claims, fights don't lead to wounding, then, in fact, there would be no need to study the problem. But, bite wounds can be serious and can lead to death. The additional stress of being unable to escape from an aggressor has raised questions about the reliability of data generated from experiments using them.

In a laboratory environment, aggressive interactions between male mice may exceed normal levels leading to negative effects both on the well-being of the animals and on the validity of experimental results. ....

Laboratory mice that live in a barren confined space such as a laboratory cage may be unable to respond to each other in a proper social way. Subordinate mice are unable to flee from the dominant’s sight, or migrate out of the territory. When the proper behavioural response is frustrated, the animal’s attempt to cope can be deemed to fail, causing a state of suffering in the subordinate mouse. Furthermore, the dominant male may respond with more extreme aggression than naturally, in an attempt to achieve the desired effect (i.e. disappearance of the subordinate). Male management: Coping with aggression problems in male laboratory mice. Van Loo PL, Van Zutphen LF, Baumans V. Lab Anim. 2003

The Jackson Laboratory, one of the more hideously cruel businesses on the planet and a producer of vast numbers of mice for vivisectors, is an acknowledged expert on mouse husbandry. They say:

Aggression and fighting

* Males may be combined at weaning age (3-4 weeks), but should not be combined at older ages. They may fight, cause wounds and/or death of male cage mates.
* Males shipped in separate compartments of the same shipping box or in individual boxes should not be combined upon entry into your facility as they may fight. Wounded mice may not be useable for your research.
* Separate group-housed males which are fighting; at the very least remove the dominant male (the mouse lacking wounds). [my emphasis]

Understandably, the UW-Madison is willing to go to extreme lengths to maintain the obscene torrential flow of cash from taxpayers into their own bank accounts, so fabricating stories for the public about how well the gazillions of animals they use are cared for before they are tortured and killed makes sense. It's despicable and evil, but understandable and even predictable if you believe that money is a corrupting influence. Huge sums of money are even more so. It makes sense that Sandgren would poo-poo any concern about instigating fights between mice.

But Sandgren himself has a giant mouse colony for his personal use. He is a mouse vivisector. So when he claims that "the mice don't harm each other" it is particularly grating to an informed ear. How couldn't he know that fights between male mice do cause them harm? Insiders report that this is apparently a fairly common problem at the university.

UW Seeks Exemption from All Anti-Cruelty Laws

2011-06-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, June 4, a motion was introduced and passed during the Joint Committee on Finance meeting. "The Joint Committee on Finance is a statutory, 16-member standing committee of the Wisconsin Legislature. The Committee's primary responsibility is to serve as the principal legislative committee charged with the review of all state appropriations and revenues." The motion as passed:

Liability Protections for Scientific Researchers: Specify that current law provisions prohibiting crimes against animals would not apply to persons engaged in bona fide scientific research at an educational or research institution or persons who are authorized or otherwise regulated under federal law to utilize animals for these purposes.

Obvious to anyone even minimally informed about the University of Wisconsin's many animal care and use problems is the fact that the recent sheep decompression case sent shock waves of fear throughout the campus vivisection labs. A few vivisectors just barely side-stepped having criminal charges filed against them. The only thing that saved them was the obvious confusion and neglect of a special investigator.

The heart of the motion that was passed is the claim that federal regulations and oversight are already sufficient. Local officials and citizens should simply wash their hands of responsibility and concern and leave all the decisions to those with a financial vested interest in the experiments and to the federal government. Obviously, the average Wisconsinite has no business questioning, let alone challenging, the activities of the demigods in white coats.

Here's a letter I've already fired off to a legislator or two:

Dear Representative xxx,

My name is Rick Bogle. I am co-director of the Madison-based Alliance for Animals, a state-wide animal advocacy non-profit.

I have just learned that the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee passed a motion which, if passed by the Legislature, will exempt all "bona fide" scientific research from Chapter 951 of the Wisconsin Statutes, "Crimes Against Animals."

This comes on the heals of the recent case involving decompressing sheep at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in which staff narrowly dodged criminal charges being filed against them.

If this motion is discussed, if and when it is taken up by the Legislature, it will be argued that current federal regulations are sufficient to regulate and guarantee humane care and treatment of the animals used in laboratories. Unfortunately, the record makes clear that this isn't the case.

The use of animals in labs is regulated at the federal level in two ways. Funding agencies like the National Institutes of Heath (NIH), the sponsor of the overwhelmingly largest number of projects, and other agencies such as the National Science Foundation, require an institution hosting funded research to submit a document referred to as an Animal Welfare Assurance. (Sometimes called the PHS Assurance, and more commonly, just the Assurance.)

An institution's Assurance is the formal promise to the NIH that all research with animals conducted there will comply with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. The Guide, an industry authored text, stipulates minimum standards of care and use, requires a local oversight committee, and relies on federal, state, and local laws and regulations:

p 2: Introduction: "Animal facilities and programs should be operated in accord with this Guide, the Animal Welfare Regulations, or AWRs (CFR 1985); the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, or PHS Policy (PHS 1996); and other applicable federal (Appendixes C and D) state, and local laws, regulations, and policies."

p 8: Chapter 1. First sentence of paragraph 2: “Each institution should establish and provide resources for an animal care and use program that is managed in accord with this Guide and in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations...”

The NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) is responsible for oversight of an institution's compliance with the Guide. OLAW only very rarely conducts inspections, and instead relies almost entirely on self-reporting by an institution.

A second, more substantive regulatory mechanism is the Animal Welfare Act. The Act also stipulates minimum standards of care and requires a local oversight committee. The Act is enforced through (usually) annual inspections by veterinary medical officers (VMOs) of the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

The most recent evaluation of APHIS oversight of animal use in laboratories was conducted by the USDA Office of the Inspector General. It found widespread problems and a lack of meaningful enforcement of the Act. This report is available on line at
http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/33002-03-SF.pdf

In spite of the low marks given by the OIG, recent APHIS inspections of the University of Wisconsin, Madison have resulted in multiple citations for violations of the minimum standards set out in the Act. See for instance:
http://www.allanimals.org/files/USDA_2009.pdf

You may be unaware that the inspection reported in the document above was the result of multiple complaints to APHIS from inside the university. As a result of the problems discovered, a very rare OLAW/APHIS investigation was instigated. See:
http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=30944

We have learned from review of local oversight committee minutes that the investigation has been extended in scope on a couple occasions, the results have yet to be reported by the inspectors. Any action by the State Legislature prior to the issuance and review of the results seems premature.

The local oversight committees I have mentioned above are Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees. These IACUCS (I-Uh-Kuks) or sometimes just ACUCs (A-Kuks) are required by both the Animal Welfare Act and the Guide. They are universally considered the keystone of all oversight and regulation of animal care and use in lab
settings.

The ACUC system is also problematic. There has been a single evaluation of the system, and it was not very complimentary: Animal research. Reliability of protocol reviews for animal research. Plous S, Herzog H. Science. 2001. See:
http://www.socialpsychology.org/articles/scipress.htm and
http://www.socialpsychology.org/pdf/science2001-07-27.pdf?logged=true

More simply, current federal regulation and oversight of the care and use of animals in labs is weak at best and at worse allows without meaningful penalty many inhumane conditions and practices to continue.

Washing our hands of any concern or responsibility for the care and use of animals in local laboratories based on the claim that the federal government and local employees of the labs can be trusted to adequately monitor and regulate the care and use of animals seems at odds with the plain facts.

If the motion to extend a blanket exemption from Chapter 951 to animal-using labs and scientists passes, local citizens will have no power whatsoever to question or challenge even the most gruesome questionable use of animals even when state laws forbid anyone else from doing those things. Apparently, it will be legal in our state for scientists to starve animals to death, to stage fights between them,
or to use painful devices on horse's bridles. That seems unfair and uncivilized to me.

I urge you do do all you can to oppose and defeat this oddly anti-local control initiative.

If I can be of any assistance whatsoever please do not hesitate to call on me.

Sincerely,

[Me]

Furious George

2011-05-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

This seems like a version of the video I saw years ago on Mad TV, but maybe this was the one I saw.. time changes our memories.

Vivisector recruitment pool?

2011-05-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/601091/n/Monkey-Business

Support for animal research falling....

2011-04-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

The [Foundation for Biomedical Research (an industry front group)], which has tracked public attitudes about animal research since its creation in 1981, found "a surprisingly concerning drop in public support" for animal research from the 1990s, when it was over 70 percent, to 54 percent in 2008, [said Frankie Trull, the foundation's president and founder.]

See: Animal Rights: Scientists' Billboards Ask Whether You'd Save a Child or a Lab Rat: Pro-Research Billboards Ask the Public to Choose. JANE E. ALLEN, ABC News Medical Unit. April 14, 2011.

It's worth noting that "scientists" aren't asking this.... it's a shill front group for the industry.

Let's think for ourselves

2011-04-14T05:18:00.000-07:00

[Posted by Rick Marolt]

Last summer, a resolution to create a Citizens Advisory Panel to study the ethics and treatment of monkeys in laboratories in Madison was introduced to the Dane County Board of Supervisors. Self-interested researcher David O'Connor argued before the Executive Committee of the Board that the study was unnecessary because a working group in England had declared in 2006 that experimenting on monkeys was ethical. After the Board voted not to withdraw the resolution from committee, effectively "killing" the resolution, the new director of the National Primate Research Center at UW-Madison, Jon Levine, said: "Those driving this resolution issue simply don’t like the conclusions drawn in previous discussions — that biomedical research involving the humane use of animal subjects is ethical."

These statements rest on two fallacies. Or more.

To read the full post, please go to One Shared Planet.

This is Jeopardy!

2011-04-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

Players, today’s Final Jeopardy category is ...

Animal Use Ethics
at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Players, write down your wagers.

Let's reveal the answer to today’s Final Jeopardy question:

0%

Cue the tune: Do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Do. Do-do. Do-do. Do. Do. Boom, boom.

Alright players:

Let’s see what you wrote:

What percentage of UW vivisectors give a second thought to the morality of hurting animals?

No, I’m sorry, that’s not right. And you wagered? Everything. Sorry, that leaves you with nothing.

Moving on. You put:

What percentage of the many UW primate vivisectors who spoke out against the creation of a county-sanctioned citizens’ panel to examine the university’s use of monkeys also attended and asked a question at one of the university forums put on to appease certain County Supervisors?

No, I’m sorry, that’s not right either. And you wagered? Everything. Sorry, that leaves you with nothing as well.

Now to our returning champion. Let’s see what you wrote down:

What part of the university’s current use of animals has been addressed in the three public ‘forums’ held to address the university’s current use of animals?

That’s the correct answer! Let’s see what you wagered: everything. Good job. That makes you the winner and still our Jeopardy champion.

Oh, oh. Wait a minute. The judges have ruled that all the answers are correct.

Today's Tuskegee

2011-03-15T12:20:00.000-07:00

Originally published in the Sacramento Bee Mar. 14, 2011.

Animal tests are today's Tuskegee experiments

by Justin Goodman

An experimenter at the University of California-Los Angeles who addicts monkeys to methamphetamines, kills them and dissects their brains recently defended the practice of tormenting animals in laboratories by saying that it was a "fact of science."

Animal experimentation is indeed a "fact" in the sense that it takes place, but its mere existence is not a sound ethical defense, with all its accompanying violence and death. This sort of argument implies that the way we conduct science - and the way we treat animals - is constant, unchangeable and not up for debate. Fortunately, this is not how science (or society) actually works.

Other "facts of science" that history ultimately deemed atrocities include experiments on unconsenting humans - among them, the poor, prisoners, the developmentally disabled, Jews and blacks. J. Marion Sims, the so-called "father of gynecology," developed life-saving treatments for difficult pregnancies that are still in use today by conducting surgeries on the genitalia of unanesthetized female slaves he "rented" from local owners.

A century later, one government researcher defended his involvement in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments by stating that because the people being deprived of medical treatment were poor black sharecroppers, "The men's status did not warrant ethical debate. They were subjects, not patients; clinical materials, not sick people." Back then, using black men and women against their will in experiments was as much a "fact of science" as slavery and racial segregation were a "fact of life." Both then and now this abhorrent cruelty and racism was indefensible.

more...

Invertebrates

2011-03-13T09:18:00.001-07:00

A recent short conversation led to someone sending me two articles that they said supported their notion that there is a consensus among scientists that invertebrate animals are not sentient.

It is certainly easy to find scientists and philosophers who have this opinion. But there is some reason to wonder whether there is a genuine consensus.

Philosopher/neuroscientist Sam Harris notes in The End of Faith (2004):

... Consciousness may be a far more rudimentary phenomena than are living creatures and their brains and there appears to be no way of ruling out such a thesis experimentally.

And so, while we know many things about ourselves in anatomical, physiological, and evolutionary terms, we currently have no idea why it is “like something” to be what we are. The fact that the universe is illuminated where you stand, the fact that your thoughts and moods and sensations have a qualitative character, is an absolute mystery...

Cognitive ethologist Donald Griffin addressed this question in the final chapter of Animal Minds (1992; 2001 Revised Edition): "The Philosophical and Ethical Significance of Animal Consciousness":

If we grant that some animals are conscious and that we should therefore refrain from causing them pain and suffering, are there other animals for which we need have no such scruples because we can be confident that they are unconscious? Sometimes this question is expressed by asking how far down along some assumed gradient of higher to lower animals such ethical concern is appropriate. Biologists bristle at such a question because biological evolution has been a branching tree rather than a linear progression. There is of course an enormous difference in the complexity of animals, and it is reasonable to ask where a line can be drawn between those that do, and those that do not suffer. The difficulty is that we simply do not know, and it is not clear how we can find out in the near future.

If we accept communication as evidence of conscious thinking, we must certainly grant consciousness to honeybees. Yet we can scarcely manage to avoid the injury and suffering of all insects, many of which have small but elaborate brains. Recognizing that central nervous systems produce conscious experience, how can we judge how complex a nervous system must be to permit at least a simple perceptual consciousness?

An important point here is that we know very little, nothing really, regarding the generation of consciousness. Any claim about which animals are and aren’t sentient is speculation.

Aside from whether or not the papers I was sent prove that there is a consensus on this matter, they do provide examples for what is claimed as evidence that some invertebrates are not sentient.

One of the papers I received was chapter two, “Localizing Desire,” from philosopher Gary Varner’s book, In Nature's Interests? Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics (2002). Much of Varner’s work is available on his webpage.

The other was chapter five, “Feelings,” from David DeGrazia’s Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status (1996). Much of DeGrazia’s work is available on his webpage.

Varner writes:

Like the comparative argument about the mental states of nonhuman animals, the comparative argument in defense of the claim that nonhuman animals are capable of feeling pain is an argument by analogy. ... [Functional] analogs of functional nociceptors have yet to be found in fish[*] and herps, but endogenous opioids (opiatelike substances) have been found in all vertebrates and in a variety of invertebrates including insects, planaria, and earthworms. These considerations, taken in isolation, suggest either that no cold-blooded animals feel pain, or that all animals feel pain. When the comparisons are taken as a package, however, the evidence for saying that invertebrates (with the exception of cephalopods) can feel pain is distinctively weaker than that for saying vertebrates (n.b., fish) can feel pain. Because the consciousness of pain is presumed to require a central nervous system it is implausible to say that lower vertebrates like insects whose nervous systems consist of several loosely organized ganglia are conscious of pain.

* Varner’s observation is a good example of the risk to others when we base our decisions about how they should be treated on tenuous scientific claims. See for instance: Do fishes have nociceptors? Evidence for the evolution of a vertebrate sensory system. Lynne U Sneddon, Victoria A Braithwaite, and Michael J Gentle. Proc Biol Sci. 2003. “We assessed whether a fish possessed cutaneous nociceptors capable of detecting noxious stimuli and whether its behaviour was sufficiently adversely affected by the administration of a noxious stimulus. Electrophysiological recordings from trigeminal nerves identified polymodal nociceptors on the head of the trout with physiological properties similar to those described in higher vertebrates.... This study provides significant evidence of nociception in teleost fishes and furthermore demonstrates that behaviour and physiology are affected over a prolonged period of time, suggesting discomfort.”

DeGrazia:

It is worth noting, summarily, that available evidence suggests that consciousness is associated with complex central nervous systems (CNSs). A vertebrate’s CNS consists of a comparatively complex brain and a spinal cord. Lacking spinal cords, octopi, squid, and cuttlefish – the cephalopods – have CNSs of a different sort. For example, much of an octopus’ movement is controlled by nerve cords in the arms, which contain nearly three times as many neurons (nerve cells) as does the brain – a highly diffuse CNS by vertebrate standards! [emphasis in original] In contrast, while some insect behavior is very impressive, insects have very primitive CNSs consisting of a nerve cord, ganglia (bundles of nerve cells found at intervals along the nerve cord), and a “brain” at one end composed of several fused ganglia. The extreme simplicity of their CNSs make it unlikely that insects are conscious.

DeGrazia and Varner believe apparently that both Harris and Griffin are wrong when they say that we don’t understand how sentience or consciousness comes about. They seem to believe that it is more or less a matter-of-fact that relatively large complex CNSs are a requirement.

From here on out I’m not going to worry too much about which one said what since they both agree for somewhat the same reasons that invertebrates are not sentient.

They both cite research that seems to support their position. One of them pointed to an observation that (at least some) grasshoppers may continue eating while being eaten, suggesting perhaps that a grasshopper doesn’t care that he or she is being eaten or that they experience no negative physical sensations. They point to the fact that some insects do not seem to protect a damaged limb. One of them cites a study in which a grasshopper’s leg removed from their body could learn to avoid an electric shock, implying apparently, that learning doesn’t necessarily require a brain. One of them pointed to the phenomena of caterpillars blinded on one side walking around in circles until they die. One of them argues that the awareness of pain is beneficial only if an organism lives long enough for whatever it learned to somehow aid in its survival, and thus, very short-lived species have no need and would gain no benefit from being able to sense pain, thus, insects don’t feel pain.

Mind is the subject of much study and speculation. There is ample disagreement about what it is. The subject of non-human minds is necessarily even more speculative. As we try to imagine the subjective experiences of organisms ever farther from us in evolutionary time, the likelihood of doing so accurately quickly diminishes.

Because our knowledge in this area is so lacking, and because the results of wrongly deciding that some animals are insensate automatons are potentially so very harmful to them, we should constrain our actions and avoid harming any animal that shows even an inkling of willful behavior.

As interesting as the grasshopper being eaten phenomena is, it is impossible to say what it means relative to any subjective experience the grasshopper might be having. Any conclusion must remain in the realm of speculation at this point in time.

Many insects act as if they are driven by compulsions. The case of the digger wasp (Sphex) has been written about many times. Females of this solitary species seem to have a set program that they must repeat from beginning to end associated with stocking their subterranean burrow with a paralyzed insect that the wasp’s developing larva will feed on. Any disruption of this set program resets it, and the wasp will start over. For instance, when the wasp returns to her burrow, she sets the paralyzed insect next to the entrance and goes inside (to inspect, make sure all is well?) and then comes back out. Normally, she would then drag the paralyzed insect into her vault, lay an egg on it, seal the entrance, and then depart, never to return. But if, while she had gone below to inspect(?), a stone or twig near the opening is moved, when she comes back out she notices the change and after looking around, goes back down to reinspect. She will do this, apparently, until the researcher moving the stone tires of the game.

One common conclusion is that digger wasps are mindless. The wasp’s behavior is pre-programmed; she is simply an automaton, and thus, we need have no scruples about mashing her under our boot.

On the other hand, maybe she is compelled to do things just so, knows she is doing them, and just can’t stop. A brief review of case studies of humans with obsessive-compulsive disorder shows that humans will repeat the same behavior repetitively for hours on end, knowing all the time that what they are doing makes no sense, may be harming them, and all the while wishing they could stop. The point here is not that digger wasps might have a mental illness, but merely that repetitive pointless behavior isn’t necessarily evidence that the one being repetitive is doing so mindlessly.

The observation that grasshopper legs may be able to learn is an interesting one. It was cited as evidence that moving away from noxious or injurious stimuli might be reflexive rather than willful. There is another and rather bizarre (from a human perspective) alternative interpretation. Both DeGrazia and Varner admit that the behavior of the cephalopods is relatively strong evidence that they are conscious beings. DeGrazia notes that octopi have a diffuse CNS and that nerve cords in their arms control arm movement. According to one source, the nerves in their arms actually process information and can respond independently from the brain. An octopus arm apparently thinks on its own to some degree. Whether there is an actual “seat of consciousness” in an animal with such a diffuse nervous system is unknown. But maybe, in a severed octopus arm or grasshopper leg, there is rudimentary sentience. In other words, maybe the severed grasshopper leg really does have a simple perceptual consciousness that wants to avoid being hurt.

One of the things that struck me in the DeGrazia and Varner chapters was their contradictory position on evolution. On the one hand they acknowledged that there isn’t a great chain of being, but they go on to defend a scala naturae when it comes to consciousness. They claim to see a fairly linear progression of improvements leading up to us, the crown of creation. (Let the trumpets sound!)

This is, as Griffin pointed out, at complete odds with the modern understanding of evolution. One of the authors, as I noted above, claimed that there isn’t a good reason for short-lived animals to be able to learn, and so they don’t need to feel much of anything at all. He was probably thinking of the insects. But there are many long-lived invertebrates. It is impossible to determine the age of individuals from species without mineralized anatomical structures. There may be sea anemones and other such organisms hundreds of years old; some may be much older.

Relatedly, there are a multitude of characteristics possessed by many species that have no discernible survival benefit. Genetic mutations induce new characteristics. Deleterious characteristics (those that reduce reproductive fitness) are deselected, while advantageous characteristics (those that increase reproductive fitness) are selected; but many mutations result in characteristics that are neutral. One example is the hair on the back of a human’s fingers. Trying to explain the emergence of any characteristic based on a need or the lack or a characteristic based on a lack of a specific need is the result of a misunderstanding of evolution.

There is a widely held a priori assumption that the experiences of animals don’t matter; this is frequently defended with the extreme claim that they don’t even have experiences. Mostly, the idea of an animal’s subjective experience doesn’t enter into most people’s thoughts. In this sense, humans are mindless automatons.

Events that illustrate this well were the initial investigations of the deep-sea hydrothermal vents. In 1977, the deep submersible Alvin visited the Galapagos Rift. An entirely new ecosystem was discovered. Scientists discovered colonies of four to five foot-long organisms they had never seen before or even imagined. Their response was to reach out with Alvin’s mechanical arm and grab some of them to bring to the surface. In other words, without knowing anything at all about these beings other than the fact they were large and unknown to science, the scientists’ first choice was to kill some.

This isn’t much different from early Europeans rounding Cape Horn for the first time and shooting the first natives they saw. Those naked dark beings clearly weren’t human, so what did it matter?

I take Griffin’s and Harris’s observations to at least suggest that there isn’t a matter-of-fact consensus that invertebrates are insensate. Moreover, an ethical minefield surrounds those who try to intuit the presence or absence of behaviors in animals based on their behaviors under experimental conditions or based on their physiologic similarity or dissimilarity to human physiology. When the observers themselves behave as if they don’t really care one way or the other, or worse, that they would prefer a particular conclusion, we should weigh their conclusions with a hefty dose of skepticism. It seems reasonable to imagine that someone who routinely eats and otherwise consumes animals might have a bias toward interpreting data to mean that their own behavior isn’t actually doing any harm.

Finally, I think an unbiased observer watching animals must acknowledge that they often appear to be acting willfully. To me, any being that appears to act willfully must be assumed to be sentient. The more one looks, the more one finds examples of what appear to be willful actions among most members of Anamalia.

One interesting case. A behavior apparently not uncommon in ants is “social carrying.” Some ants, like honeybees, recruit others to visit a new food source. Sometimes this recruitment is chemical; ants famously leave pheromone trails. The recruitment appears more personal in other cases. Sometimes an ant will lead another ant back to the food source, essentially showing them the way. In some cases, an ant will physically carry another ant to the new food source.

It seems reasonable to wonder whether the ant carrying the other ant to the new food source has the expectation that the recruited ant will join her in carrying food back to the nest. In spite of her ant-sized brain, there seems to be some sense of willful purpose in the recruiter’s behavior.

I don’t step on ants.

Recent UW-Madison Animal Use and Related Mishaps, Problems, and News You Won’t Hear Anywhere Else

2011-03-02T15:50:00.000-08:00

Madison, Wisc. Sometime between October 15, 2010, and mid-November the USDA Enforcement Division – that has been on campus investigating the multiple problems with animal use oversight at the university, for what seems like a very long time now – informed the university that they are widening their investigation.

On November 12, Robert Streiffer, Chair of the College of Letters and Sciences Animal Care and Use Committee reported to the All Campus Animal Care and Use Panel that another deer mouse pup was found in a cage in a cage-washer room.

Campus Veterinarian Janet Welter reported that yet again, there have been “some trends of inconsistent compliance” regarding NIH select agent regulations and BSL-3 protocols. Biosafety level 3 is required when the agent being studied poses a public health risk if it escapes from the lab. The university has a history of failing to adequately regulate such research on and off campus.

Another of Michelle Basso’s monkeys dislodged a recording cylinder screwed to his/her skull which was replaced. Veterinarian Kevin Brunner from the primate center provided advice on the surgery.

Veterinarians applying to work with the animals being experimented on at the university continue to turn down job offers from the university. I'm sure this means that they will end up with a top quality vet.

On November 15, many months after again being cited by the USDA for failing to ensure that vivisectors are considering alternatives to painful and distressful procedures, the Graduate School ACUC continued to struggle with how this could be accomplished.

The same committee continued to wonder why a monkey had died from a spinal tap.

The same committee learned that mutant mice particularly prone to distress died (of fright?) when a fire alarm sounded. (Don’t tell Ned Kalin or local little-love-for-all-beings guru Richie Davidson about these fearful mice.)

Between September 7 and September 9, a monkey was left unfed when a “Do not feed” sign was left on his/her cage.

On October 4, after having a hole cut in his/her skull and a “cranial pedestal” screwed into place, a monkey had seizures for four days and finally died, in spite of the efforts of primate center vet Saverio Buddy Capuano III, who tried to save him/her so he/she could be used in a series of experiments and then killed.

On October 11, “Biochemistry animals” were found dead in their cages with no food. Animal care staff were “retrained.”

An entire colony of mice (probably owned by a pharmaceutical) was “rederived” (a euphemism for killed and replaced) when mouse parvo virus was detected in two of the mice.

Vet Lisa Krugner-Higby reported that “poor mothering” had led to unexpected high mortality in some secret building.

She also reported that a cage of “weanlings” was found dead. Their watering tube was calcified and blocked. They died of thirst.

Dr. Messing reported on another cage of adult females of some disclosed species that had been left without food for several days. He opined that “retraining” would be necessary. (Lesson one for the “highly trained” staff: Feed the animals every day.)

On December 3, Dr. Collins shared the news that a turtle (probably a tortoise, but you can’t expect them to know the difference) had been sent to the Research Animal Resource Center for an autopsy without having had his/her head cut off first. Instead, his/her brain had been severed from his/her spine (decerebrated). Apparently, an argument had ensued as to whether the “turtle” was dead on arrival.

Dr. Sunde of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) reported that yet another steam valve malfunction led to “some mouse deaths.”

And finally, Dr. Benevenga, also of CALS, reported that yet another (unnamed) researcher was not caring for her animals.

And the beat goes on ....

“peripheral nerve crush”

2011-03-01T15:18:00.000-08:00

According to PubMed Health, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS, upper and lower motor neuron disease, or motor neuron disease has no known cause. PubMed Health explains that it “is a disease of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement.” And that in ALS, “nerve cells (neurons) waste away or die, and can no longer send messages to muscles.” The web page goes on to describe the advancing problems that lead almost invariably to death. Stephen Hawking’s relatively long survival is a notable exception.

The key point is that motor neurons in the spine and brain die, and except for a small percentage of those who may have a genetic predisposition for the condition i.e. a family history of the disease, the cause is entirely unknown.

It seems reasonable to imagine that scientists working on this disease would be trying to determine the cause with an eye to preventing it.

I lost a close friend a few years ago to this condition and watched her decline slowly and surely. Prior to her death, I interviewed her for a local cable access television program and asked her how she felt about using animals in ALS related research. She was adamantly opposed to it and said it would be immoral to want others hurt and killed in research purported to be looking for a way to help her.

She would have been outraged by a recently re-approved protocol at the University of Wisconsin, Madison titled: Neural Stem Cells for Amytrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). It is protocol #G00515-0-09-09 for anyone who cares. It was re-approved on or about November 8, 2010.

The principal investigator’s (PI) name has been censored. The graduate school Animal Care and Use Committee (ACUC) first approved this use of mice and rats on November 23, 2009. The ACUC approved multiple surgeries on these animals including laminectomy (the surgical removal of bone to expose the spinal cord), spinal cord injury, “peripheral nerve crush,” ovariectomy, a cannula implant (anatomical location unstated), unspecified behavioral tests, blood collection, the creation of unspecified lesions, and eventual (thankfully) killing.

Earth to UW vivisectors: damaging the spine and crushing peripheral nerves will not explain why motor neurons die in the only species known to be afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It will pay your boat payment, but it won’t help people stricken or yet to be stricken with this malady.

Projects like this one should be considered in light of the university’s multiple and repeated USDA citations for failing to require researchers there to adequately demonstrate that they have looked for alternatives to painful or distressful procedures.

Dr. Lawrence Hansen's Visit Frightens UW Vivisectors into Hiding

2011-02-27T09:57:00.000-08:00

A key component in the University of Wisconsin, Madison's successful derailment of the creation of a Dane County-sanctioned citizens' advisory panel on the use of monkeys at the university was a promise made to County Board Chair, Scott McDonell that the university would hold a series of public forums to address the matter. This promise gave McDonell a small amount of political cover for the criticism that he had earlier promised the authors and proponents not to interfere with the proposal -- Resolution 35.

After months of inaction, the university finally announce a series of three speakers, only one of which Charles Snowdon, has any connection to the university's use of monkeys. Arguably, Snowdon's work there is the least cruel, least disturbing to those haunted by the knowledge of what is going on there day and night.

Matter-of-factly, the forums are a public relations ruse. The university staff involved in the use of monkeys and the university administrators involved in reaping the financial windfall that accrues from the taxpayer-funded grants paying for the experiments are not in the least bit interested in public discussion about his issue. This was made crystal clear at the first of the three planned monthly forms.

When the matter of Resolution 35 came before the two county committees that deliberated on it (well, one did and approved it; McDonell's didn't and essentially killed it), the room was filled to overflowing with maybe a third of the people coming from the primate center.

But at the first of the forums, there was essentially no one from the primate center in attendance (I say "essentially" because the primate center vet, Saverio (Buddy) Capuano III, was there, but didn't say a word.)

Eric Sangren, the Research Animal Resource Center Director and chair of the forum committee was there and introduced Dr. Hansen, but he didn't ask a question or challenge a claim either. There was no discussion between anyone from the primate center, or the university at large, about the use of monkeys, the claimed reason for the forums. The forums are a public relations ruse.

On the up-side however, the university painted itself into corner by coming up with the forums and then inviting two pro-animal people to be a part of the planning committee. After the university's continued failure to locate anyone willing to talk about the issue, they suggested inviting Dr. Lawrence Hansen, and so the committee was stuck when he accepted.

Three possible reasons that essentially no UW vivisectors or policy-makers attended are that 1) they aren't actually interested in the topic or public discussion about anything that poses a potential threat to their income stream; 2) they were intimidated by Dr. Hansen's credentials; 3) some mix of 1 and 2.

In any case, Dr. Hansen's presentation turned out to be the best such talk I've attended. Watch it yourself:

Dr Lawrence Hansen from luciano M on Vimeo.

Here's the Q&A:

Dr Lawrence Hansen Q&A from luciano M on Vimeo.

Primate/Animal/Human Cognition

2011-02-14T19:50:00.000-08:00

http://vimeo.com/album/1526128

These lectures, put on line by Dario Ringach, are well worth watching.

See too, my earlier post and the discussion that followed: The Structure of Cognition, December 19, 2010.

Hypervitaminosis A in experimental nonhuman primates

2011-01-04T13:38:00.000-08:00

Hypervitaminosis A in experimental nonhuman primates: evidence, causes, and the road to recovery. Dever JT, Tanumihardjo SA. Am J Primatol. 2009 Oct.

Collectively, we believe that the detection of very high VA [vitamin A] concentrations and stellate cell hypertrophy in rhesus and vervet monkeys strongly suggest that hypervitaminosis A is widespread among captive nonhuman primates and that this nutritional anomaly threatens to invalidate any data obtained from their experimental use.

....

Using primate models to answer sophisticated biological questions requires an equally sophisticated understanding of their basal nutritional needs. We have identified a systemic hypervitaminosis A in at least two different species of experimental primates (i.e., rhesus and vervet). This condition may be causing unknown degrees of data corruption and erroneous conclusions from any study involving their use, but especially studies aimed at immune function and vaccine development [i.e. SIV] against infectious diseases where VA is a known modulator.

"Animals in Medical Research: The Ethics of Stewardship of Creation"

2011-01-02T10:38:00.000-08:00

A discussion at Blessed Sacrament Church, Madison, Wisconsin on November 15, 2010, Feastday of the natural scientist/ theologian St Albert the Great. Father Pat Norris, Matt Rassette, a UW-Madison veterinarian, and Rick Marolt, an expert on the ethics of primate research, examine society's use of God's animals in experimentation.

Click To Play

Why Animal Experimenters Should Be Vegetarians

2010-12-28T08:27:00.000-08:00

By Joel Marks, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of New Haven and a Bioethics Center Scholar at Yale University.

When antivivisectionists protest the use of animals in biomedical research, they are commonly met with retorts like this:

“Our faculty members employ animals only when there are no alternative models for advancing their research; our laboratories comply with or exceed all federal regulations and independent accreditation standards. As we continue to advance modern medicine, and provide hope for millions of patients and their families, [our] scientists will sustain their commitment to the humane use of animals in research.” (Yale University press release, July 13, 2010.)

This press release is in line with the so-called 3Rs – replacement (of animals with nonanimal alternatives), reduction (in the number of animals used when their use is deemed essential), and refinement (in the treatment of animals so as to minimize their pain and distress) – the standard of animal research since the 1950s. Nevertheless, it is possible to question whether the use of animals in laboratories may not have been or at least no longer is crucial to medical advances. And even if it is, it does not automatically follow that it should be done or is even morally permissible.

Why not? Simply consider the human analogue. It would no doubt be even more useful to use human beings for the same sorts of medical research that animals are used for; after all, what could be a better “model” for human disease than a human being? But the contemporary consensus is that that would be unconscionable. But then utility, even to the point of “necessity” (for example, to find the cure for cancer as quickly as possible), does not by itself justify laboratory research on a sentient being.

But let us suppose that animal research were both useful for medical progress and morally permissible due to some relevant distinction between human and other animals. Apparently this is what the medical community itself believes, judging by its support for animal research. What I want to argue now is that it would follow that medical researchers should be vegetarians.

Much more ...

The ABCs of Opinion

2010-12-26T10:55:00.001-08:00

Robert Streiffer rightly argues that attributing beliefs to people based on their actions may lead one to false conclusions about their beliefs.

[I]f you are attributing beliefs to people on the basis of their actions, rather than on what they say their beliefs are, it must be kept in mind that the actions in question are not the product of people’s beliefs about the moral status of NHPs taken in isolation. Rather, the actions are the product of (a) their beliefs about the moral status of NHPs, taken in conjunction with (b) their beliefs about the harms of research and (c) their beliefs about the value of the research.

His comment was in response to my claim that those conducting harmful experiments on monkeys or those approving the research – as Streiffer does in his role as an ACUC member – must believe that monkeys have almost no moral status and that even a researcher’s whim is sufficient justification for using monkeys or other animals in ways certain to harm them.

Streiffer strongly denied that he holds such a position. My perception and explanation for why he and others support experiments on monkeys must therefore, he seems to imply, be erroneous.

Helpfully, Streiffer identified three key factors that may influence the opinions of those who engage in or otherwise support primate experimentation (and by extension, the use of all animals):

(a) their beliefs about the moral status of NHPs [nonhuman primates] taken in conjunction with
(b) their beliefs about the harms of research and
(c) their beliefs about the value of the research.

Strieffer seems to be arguing albeit implicitly that words should have precedent over actions when trying to divine a person’s actual beliefs. He has in the past pointed to the language in the regulations governing the use of some animals in some research that appear on the surface to imply some ethical weighing. In actual fact, ethical weighing occurs rarely in research using animals but is overt and required in research using humans. See my essay "The Ethics Underpinning Oversight" November 28, 2010.

People’s actual, operational beliefs about the moral status of monkeys (or any other belief, it seems to me) can be determined or gleaned much more accurately by their actions in settings that give them an option of behaving one way or another. No matter what someone claims, their actions are telling. No matter how honest one claims to be, if he or she repeatedly engages in fraud, theft, plagiarism, lying, etc., claims of honesty will ring hollow.

It is common to hear from the industry that those using animals “respect” them and consider it a “privilege” to use them and wish there was some other way. But how would researchers at a university or elsewhere behave if they genuinely respected the animals they used? At a minimum, it seems reasonable to expect that surgical suites would be kept clean, yet UW-Madison has been cited recently by the USDA for not keeping such facilities clean.

People’s operational, as opposed to their stated beliefs about the moral status of animals can be surmised by observing their actions. In circumstances where one’s beliefs could be expected to guide one’s behavior, that behavior will be a more accurate measure of a person’s beliefs than their public claims.

Streiffer seems to imply that in most instances researchers may believe that the harms to the monkeys and other animals are not very great. But if this is true then they must be ignorant of the use of monkeys on the whole because even monkeys not used in an experiment suffer from chronic diarrhea and signs of confinement-induced stereotypic behavior (pacing, spinning, odd postures, over-grooming, etc) and self-mutilation. Just keeping monkeys in the typical laboratory setting is clearly and demonstrably harmful to them. See for instance Stereotypic and self-injurious behavior in rhesus macaques: a survey and retrospective analysis of environment and early experience. Lutz C, Well A, Novak M. American Journal of Primatology. 2003.

But maybe they actually do recognize that the harm is great, which I believe even a casual observer would recognize. If the harm is great, it appears that only Streiffer’s third point could salvage his claim that vivisectors don’t consider the monkeys used to have a very low moral status:(c) their beliefs about the value of the research.

Presumably, if they believe the research has low value, then we are back to the conclusion that they must not have much moral concern for the monkeys’ lives and experiences. So Streiffer must be arguing that the researchers and those who approve their work believe that the research has high value. (It certainly has high monetary value to the researchers and even greater monetary value to the university, but I take it that he is thinking in terms of benefit to human society and those suffering or who will in the future suffer from some malady that might be ameliorated through the knowledge gained during the experiments.)

The industry and its shills are wont to claim that essentially every advance in healthcare is the result of experiments on animals and moreover, research using animals is a veritable fount of new treatments and cures.

A more sober look at the history of medicine and public health coupled with the current concern over the woeful lack of results (benefiting actual patients) from basic research suggests something much different.

A friend recently asked me for a good citation for my observation that sanitation and providing clean water are far and away the most significant advances in public health, ever. I hadn’t made quite this bold of a statement, but I am now confident in doing so.

At the time, I referred him to Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, 1997. Norton. 426-427 passim, which I quote here:

Interpretations of the retreat first of epidemic diseases, and also of the increase in life expectancy, have been hotly debated. Some maintain the mass of the population was slowly but surely becoming less pauperized, and was enjoying better nourishment and hence improved health. Others argue that improving health was not due to rising prosperity but to better environmental salubrity due to public health measures, reducing the disease risks to which the hungry huddled masses were exposed.

Historians have distinguished between the retreats of epidemics in the eighteenth century and of endemic diseases in the nineteenth. Since plague was probably halted by the cordon sanitaire along the Habsburg border with the Ottoman empire, public health measures (‘medical police’) probably contributed to the reduction of epidemics. Smallpox vaccination from the early nineteenth century served to make epidemics less severe and frequent. The decline of plague and smallpox would thus have nothing to do with nutrition standards but some link with public health action. Endemic diseases such as tuberculosis and infant diarrhoea, by contrast, do seem to have been made more sever by under-nutrition. The reduction in such diseases might be linked to wage improvements. In either case little that personal physicians did was reflected in improved health.

Did public health measures actually do any good? The distinguished epidemiologist Thomas McKeown (1912 – 1988) maintained that reductions in deaths associated with infectious diseases (air-, water-, and food-borne diseases) cannot have been brought about by medical advances, since such diseases were declining long before effective means were available to combat them. Applying much the same argument to sanitary measures, McKeown concluded that resistance to infectious disease must have increased through improvement in nutrition. Overall he mapped out three phases: a rising standard of living from about 1770; sanitation measures from 1870; and better therapy during the twentieth century.

McKeown, however, underestimated the effectiveness of the public health movement. Changing public opinion, the labors of medical officers of health, the creation of filtered water supplies and sewage systems, slum clearance, the work of activists promoting the gospel of cleanliness, and myriad other often minor changes – for example the provision of dustbins with lids, to repel flies – combined to create an improving urban environment.

Porter’s observations are compelling to me, but I wasn’t fully satisfied that he presented the facts in a way that would lead an uncritical reader to the same conclusion as mine. As a consequence, I began reading a little more about the history of public health.

George Rosen’s 1958 A History of Public Health is a classic in the field. It was reprinted in an expanded edition by The Johns Hopkins University Press in 1993. With the expanded and helpful bibliographies (there are two) it is just over 500 pages in length. For those with an interest in this area of study, I recommend it; I have many pages marked and passages starred.

The introduction is written by Elizabeth Fee, Ph.D., Chief of the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, NIH. In her introduction, she too mentions Thomas McKeown:

Rosen also asks whether the new scientific methods bore any relation to the actual decline in infectious diseases. This question was also to be addressed, and answered largely in the negative, in Thomas McKeown’s enormously influential book, The Modern Rise of Population, (1976.)

This citation first led me to Thomas McKeown and R. G. Record’s “Reasons for the Decline of Mortality in England and Wales During the Nineteenth Century.” Population Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2. (1962), pp. 94-122 which is an earlier less detailed account of McKeown’s thesis and includes some graphical data not in the later work. His thesis is more fully developed and a few potential errors corrected in The Modern Rise of Population.

McKeown’s work is not without its critics. Interestingly, and germane to the discussion here though, is the nature of the controversy. See for instance: The McKeown Thesis: A Historical Controversy and Its Enduring Influence. James Colgrove. American Journal of Public Health. 2002:

The consensus among most historians about the McKeown thesis a quarter century after it first stirred controversy is that one narrow aspect of it was correct—that curative medical measures played little role in mortality decline prior to the mid-20th century...

The ongoing interest in McKeown's ideas, not only among historians but also among policymakers addressing contemporary issues, is striking. What accounts for his work's remarkable durability? Why has the influence of the McKeown thesis persisted even after its conclusions were discredited? In part, his writing continues to generate responses because many scholars believe that although McKeown's analysis was flawed, his underlying ideas regarding the effects of poverty and economic well-being on health were essentially correct. More broadly, McKeown's influence has continued to be felt because his research posed a fundamental question that has lost none of its relevance in the decades since he began writing in the post–World War II era: Are public health ends better served by narrow interventions focused at the level of the individual or the community, or by broad measures to redistribute the social, political, and economic resources that exert such a profound influence on health status at the population level?

... Far from fading in prominence, the questions he raised have assumed new salience at the beginning of the 21st century, especially in debates about how best to confront health threats such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in the developing world. For example, commenting on the recent initiative to provide AIDS drugs in poor nations, a health activist based in Nepal summed up the 2 sides of this debate when he noted, “There has been an overemphasis . . . [on] drugs. The lack of drinking water is a much bigger priority in most countries than anti-retroviral treatments.”

McKeown argued that the dramatic decline in the death rate was due to the decline in mortality from infectious disease. On this point, there is wide agreement. The controversy arose because McKeown argued steadfastly that the largest share of this decline was unrelated to the work of the sanitary movement, but rather due to the decline in tuberculosis which he argued was the number one cause of death from infectious disease and that the decline was due largely to the improvement in diet.

The controversy is of absolutely no consequence to the well respected broadly acknowledged fact that there was a dramatic drop in the death rate from infectious disease prior to any accurate understanding of the cause of these diseases or effective treatments. Thus, experiments on animals played absolutely no role in the most dramatic drop in death rate in human history.

Readers of this blog will know that I am a fan of charts and graphs, and The Modern Rise of Population is full of them. Below is one that demonstrates the decline in deaths from whooping cough (Pertussis)

Keep in mind that the pro-vivisection organizations argue that essentially all medical progress is due to animal experimentation, and whooping cough is no exception. (Just google whooping cough animal research.) The whooping cough example has implications for the larger question at hand, namely the actual opinions of vivisectors vs their claimed opinions. I will come back to this below.In the meantime, consider the dramatic decline in mortality that occurred in the nineteenth century prior to any meaningful medical therapy or prophylaxis, or even knowledge of microorganisms, as a sort of bookend to the history of modern public health advancement, at the other end, is the modern critique of the basic research enterprise.

This second bookend is comprised of recent scientific papers and articles in the popular press such as:

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. David H. Friedman. Atlantic Monthly. 2010.

Where Are the Cures? Sharon Begley. Newsweek. 2008.

Comparison of treatment effects between animal experiments and clinical trials: systematic review. Perel P, Roberts I, Sena E, Wheble P, Briscoe C, Sandercock P, Macleod M, Mignini LE, Jayaram P, Khan KS. BMJ. 2007.

Translation of Research Evidence From Animals to Humans. Daniel G. Hackam, Donald A. Redelmeier, 2006, JAMA.

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. John P. A. Ioannidis. PLoS Med. 2005.

Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans? Pound P, Ebrahim S, Sandercock P, Bracken MB, Roberts I. BMJ.

Does animal experimentation inform human healthcare? Observations from a systematic review of international animal experiments on fluid resuscitation. Roberts I, Kwan I, Evans P & Haig S. BMJ 2002.

At one end of this tableau is the largest decline in mortality in human history - in the absence of animal research, and at the other end, the promised benefits of the modern basic (animal) research paradigm are apparently lacking.

Between these bookends lies the entirety of modern medical research. I am not implying here that no benefit has resulted from the use of animals. For instance, Robert Koch’s 1879 paper on the etiology or cause of infectious disease was based on his work with animals. While his work resulted in no immediate advance in treatment, it did explain the phenomenal results and gave more authority and impetus to the hygienic/sanitation movement’s efforts.

The point in calling attention to the dramatic progress that occurred prior to Koch is that it demonstrates the real and significant progress that is possible without the use of animals. This severely undermines claims that animal experimentation is necessary. The growing body of systematic reviews and reports questioning the overall results of basic research implies that the value of the research that is taking place is suspect.

This takes us back to Streiffer’s third point: That researchers and their supporters’ beliefs about the moral status of NHPs must be considered in conjunction with (c) their beliefs about the value of the research.

It seems to me that an informed unbiased observer would have to seriously question the value of research with monkeys (or any animals) in light of the history of public health and the crisis the basic research enterprise is facing. Claiming that the value of the research is high seems unreasonable and unsupportable.

Look again at the graph depicting the decline in deaths from whooping cough.

I believe that if there were no vaccine for whooping cough, that research using animals would be underway today in the effort to produce one. This is a hypothetical situation, but given the small number of people afflicted with some of the maladies being studied today, I think it is a reasonable assumption.

If it is, then we can look at the graph as a sort of measure of the actual sympathy and moral concern those who propose, approve, and engage in animal experimentation actually hold for the animals they use.

By the time the vaccine was generally available, the mortality rate had already collapsed. Yet someone asking for permission to use monkeys to develop a vaccine today, assuming there wasn't one, would – without any doubt – be given the go-ahead, even though the disease is no longer a major threat. That is, even a relatively insignificant gain would be deemed adequate justification to infect and kill monkeys.

If you think this is an unreasonable assumption, consider the very limited importance and value of UW-Madison primate vivisector Richard Wiendruch’s caloric restriction studies.

In summary, Robert Streiffer accurately I think observed that when attributing beliefs [about the moral status of monkeys] to people on the basis of their actions, rather than on what they say their beliefs are, it must be kept in mind that the actions in question are not the product of people’s beliefs about the moral status of NHPs taken in isolation. Rather, the actions are the product of (a) their beliefs about the moral status of NHPs, taken in conjunction with (b) their beliefs about the harms of research and (c) their beliefs about the value of the research.

Given the very real demonstrable harms and the information available regarding the questionable value of the research, it is fair and likely accurate to surmise that those using monkeys and approving their use have very little actual sympathy or moral concern for them, in spite of public pronouncements to the contrary.

"Animal usage is not a moral or ethical issue."

2010-12-24T12:51:00.000-08:00

In the discussion under my post "The Structure of Cognition," Robert Streiffer asked for some examples of people who have explicitly endorsed the view that I claim is the operative norm within the animal research industry: animals (more specifically monkeys) do not warrant much moral concern from us.

One well-known example is the recently deceased primate head transplantation researcher (and one-time bioscience advisor to the Pope) Robert J. White, who wrote: “Animal usage is not a moral or ethical issue, and elevating the problem of animal rights to such a plane is a disservice to medical research and the farm and dairy industry.” (Hastings Center Report, 1990, Vol. 20, November-December, p 43.)

And then there is Stuart W.G. Derbyshire:

Those of us who research on animals or support that research have made a moral choice to put humans first. We should behave and argue with a conviction that is worthy of the choice. Animal experimentation is a positive activity that advances our appreciation of nature and disease, and defending animal research should be part of a moral campaign that celebrates human knowledge and understanding. Simultaneously advocating animal research while trying to apologize and introduce alternatives is a poor defense of animal experimentation. Successful promotion of animal research can only begin when we withdraw support for the three Rs. "Time to Abandon the Three Rs." The Scientist-Magazine of the Life Sciences. 2006.

And also from Derbyshire, this gem -- that seems to me to characterize an unspoken widely-held position of those within the industry (based on their actions):

In contrast to ourselves, animal behaviour is mechanical, driven by the dictates of nature and immune to the processes of reflective cognition that we take for granted. And it is a black, silent existence that is not conscious of its own processes. All their mental experience, if they have any at all, is diminished relative to ours and this includes all sensations including vision, hearing – and feeling pain. “Animal Experimentation.” Edinburgh Book Festival. 2002.

The passages below are all from Why Animal Experimentation Matters: The Use of Animals in Biomedical Research. Ellen Frankel Paul and Jeffrey Paul, Editors. 2001. While these passages are not as stark as White’s assertion, they do I think suggest strongly that the industry is well populated by those who do not believe that animals warrant much sympathy or moral concern.

Adrian R. Morrison writes: “Human beings stand apart in a moral sense from all other species ...”. (p 51.) To him, there does not appear to be a continuum; it's apples and ... hum, clouds?

Stuart Zola, currently the director of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, argues that any use of animals is warranted as long as the experimental design is “good science.” He worries that any other criteria will necessarily be too limiting:

Another way to preserve research possibilities is to reconsider what is meant by “benefits.” For example, one could hold the moral position that while possible benefits to humans and animals are important, the advancement of scientific knowledge is itself a benefit as well. On the surface, this position appears to run the risk of justifying almost any research project. In reality, however, this is countered by the underlying assumption that a permissible project must be based on good science, that is, science that has been peer-reviewed and found to be of acceptable quality. With that caveat in mind, treating scientific knowledge itself as a benefit would seem to be reasonable for a variety of perspectives. .... Therefore, it might not be reasonable to preclude the possibility of carrying out a study simply because it has no obvious immediate relevance, either potential or real. (pp 85-86.)

Jerald Tannenbaum, Professor of Veterinary Science at UC-Davis, characterizes the “traditional approach” to morality and ethics in the lab:

British cancer researcher Harold Hewitt provides a succinct expression of the traditionalist approach. “My concern,” he states,
is really not with the number of animals [used in an experiment], in the sense that I should be more upset by having caused one animal to suffer by my neglect or ineptitude than I should be by administering euthanasia to fifty at the terminatiuon of an experiment in which none had been caused suffering. The question the prospective animal experimenter has to ask himself is whether he considers that the painless taking of an animal is itself an immoral act. For me it is not. (p 96.)

Baruch A. Brady, Professor of Biomedical Ethics at Baylor College of Medicine, writes:

What sort of greater significance are human interests given over animal interests in the U.S regulations?

In fact, this question is never directly addressed. This stands in sharp contrast to the U.S. regulations on human subjects in research. These regulations require the minimization of risks, but they also require that the minimized risks be “ reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits, if any, to subjects, and the importance of the knowledge that may reasonably be expected to result.” Nothing like these strictures occurs in the U.S. principles and regulations governing animal research.

Something else can be inferred from the wording of the U.S. principles on animal research. Discomfort, distress, or pain of the animals should be minimized “when consistent with sound scientific practices.” The number of animals used should be minimized to “the number required to obtain valid results.” Unrelieved pain necessary to conduct the research is acceptable so long as the animal is euthanized after or during the procedure. What this amounts to in the end is that whatever is required for the research is morally acceptable. ... There is never the suggestion that the suffering of an animal might be so great – even when it is minimized as much as possible while still maintaining scientific validity – that the suffering might outweigh the benefits of the research. Even when these benefits are modest, the U.S. principles never morally require the abandonment of a research project. (pp 134 – 135)

... All European regulations assume that animal interests in avoiding the harmful consequences of being in a research project have enough moral significance – in comparison to human interests in conducting the research – that in some cases the proposed research is ethically unacceptable. All involve a balancing of animal interests against human interests in a way that allows the protection of animal interests to be given priority in some cases. In this way, they all reject the American pro-research position, in which human interests seem to have priority in all cases. (p 136)

Charles S. Nicoll and Sharon M. Russell, vivisectors associated with UC Berkeley, write:

From an evolutionary perspective, attempts to find moral justification for the use of animals on the basis of our “moral superiority” or otherwise are unnecessary, and the arguments against such justifications are nonsensical. (p. 167)

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Professor of Medicine at Baylor School of Medicine, who says that his opinion about animals comes from God’s covenant with Noah, writes:

[H]uman moral experience is not simply richer than that of animals: all of moral experience is placed within human culture. Thus, the significance of animals (and of their pains, pleasures, and experiences) can only be understood in the context of human concerns. (p 177)

As long as a project that involves animal suffering is not directed simply at harming animals, it will not involve malevolence. A hunter who acknowledges that the significance of animals is primarily achieved in their contribution to the delight and experience of humans acts benevolently when savoring not just the chase, but the kill. One can also recognize an important difference in kind between a bull dying at the hands of a matador and the ways one might leave various animals to die or be killed .... (p 187)

From these passages, coupled with the actual practices, it doesn't seem inaccurate to characterize the beliefs of those within the industry as not caring very much about the animals' experiences, or to claim that those in the industry and its supporters feel that animals do not warrant much moral concern from us.

The Structure of Cognition

2010-12-19T12:31:00.000-08:00

I recently participated in a public forum along with University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Research Animal Resource Director, Eric Sandgren, and John Webster, a UW-Madison professor of bioengineering who experiments on pigs. You can watch a video of the event here.

During the Q&A, Sandgren said that there are differences between humans and monkeys that justify or excuse our use of them. (See the video above at 1:01:54)

I asked him what those differences are and he replied that there is an “incredible literature” on this, and he referred me to that. I followed up with an email asking him if he would give me a title or two from that incredible literature. I cced UW-Madison bioethicist Robert Streiffer who had been in the audience. He chairs one of the university’s five or six Animal Care and Use Committees. (I say five or six because the previously top animal care and use committee, the All Campus ACUC, was recently decertified, disbanded, renamed, de-authorized or something, in some way, by some agency. I have to say some agency, because it’s hard to know as an outside observer just how to weigh the past few years’ multiple USDA Animal Welfare Act violations against the apparently serious complaints to the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare. One or the other or both led to a very rare joint inspection by the USDA and NIH. USDA has very recently had a large team of investigators at the university. Or, maybe the repeated serious biosafety violations and issues entered into the equation, or the Michele Basso fiasco, or even something the public doesn't know about. It’s hard to keep up.)

Sandgren never responded to my email, but Streiffer did, to both of us, and pointed to Michael Tomasello and Josep Call’s Primate Cognition. (Oxford University Press, 1997.) To his credit, Dr. Streiffer has been willing to engage in some debate and discussion on this matter, and I thank him for it.

Presumably, neither Sandgren nor Streiffer would argue that the extreme moral distinctions they make differentiating ethical treatment of humans and monkeys (and other animals) are based on gross appearance. Presumably, they would agree that the (extreme always-fatal) distinctions they make are based on mental characteristics.

Tomasello and Call made two lists of cognitive characteristics that distinguish cognition in all primates and cognition in humans. By placing them side by side and comparing these two lists one might be able to see or begin to tease out the salient characteristics of monkey and human cognition that to Sandgren and Streiffer explain the morally relevant differences they claim to see.

The claims and conclusions drawn by Tomasello and Call are sometimes controversial; other researchers have reached other conclusions. My personal experience with chimpanzees (and other animals) leads me to question some of their specific assertions. Tomasello and Call’s claims seem too conservative to me and somehow biased, but for the sake of trying to understand Sandgren and Streiffer’s position, and by extension, the position of others in the industry, we can accept them as written. I have left out the authors’ speculations on how these characteristics might have emerged. Blogger doesn't allow two columns. Here's a link to a readable .pdf of the image below.
Though the elements in each list might be fiddled with, the overall gist and fundamentals must be a fair statement of the reasons for the position held by those who claim that using monkeys in ways harmful to them is moral because of our mental differences.

Apparently, the animals described by the set of characteristics and abilities in the left-hand column are fair game for those described by the set of characteristics described on the right. To those with this belief, it must be that the non-human set of characteristics and abilities is insufficient to warrant much sympathy or moral concern.

In other words, a being with “the basic understanding of space and objects; the ability to discriminate, categorize, and quantify objects; the ability to recognize individual conspecifics and remember past interactions with them; the ability to communicate with and learn from conspecifics; the ability to create flexible strategies to deal with problems in both the physical and social domains based on both learning and insight,” doesn’t warrant much sympathy or moral concern.

I’m stymied. I can’t get past this point. What sort of moral system would exclude a being with the ability to create flexible strategies to deal with problems in both the physical and social domains based on both learning and insight?

The human cognition list waxes on at length about the power of human language, and how learning combines with the use of human language to help make us so cognitively advanced (smart, I would say, but Tomasello and Call specifically argue that intelligence is an inappropriate term to apply to nonhuman cognition. Humans can be smart. Animals are cognitively complex.)

It’s obvious that we are wildly smarter than any other species. But some people are much smarter than others. So what?

(Human) language is a common distinguishing characteristic appealed to in arguments defending the use of animals. But its presence does not seem to be a prerequisite for thinking. Helen Keller must have thought something before she learned to use sign language.

Monkeys don’t have our language ability, yet UW primate vivisector Ned Kalin has said that “[a]nimals do a lot of things instinctively…. But people – and probably monkeys – have the ability to think 20 steps into the future: ‘In the end I’m going to feel great, because I worked hard to get there,’ or ‘I’m going to get a lot of credit for this.’It’s the prefrontal cortex that brings those emotions into play and guides us in our behavior. If we didn’t have a sense of what would be wonderful or awful in the future, we would behave very haphazardly. "Wired For Sadness." Discover. April, 2000.

Imagine trying to plan even three or four steps ahead without some sort of internal dialog. There is either a dialog of sorts going on in a monkey’s head or else he or she is thinking in a mode unlike any I use regularly.

These two lists are interesting and could be the subject of much disagreement and conversation, but I can’t get past the implication that those who defend the use of monkeys in ways certain to harm them, often involving years and even decades of a severely reduced quality of life, and always death, must believe that those “with basic understanding of space and objects; the ability to discriminate, categorize, and quantify objects; the ability to recognize individual conspecifics and remember past interactions with them; the ability to communicate with and learn from conspecifics; the ability to create flexible strategies to deal with problems in both the physical and social domains based on both learning and insight,” simply do not warrant much concern.

It’s worth noting that the being described above by Tomasello and Call isn’t necessarily a monkey. These are what they term “general mammalian cognitive mechanisms.” Primates have additional “cognitive mechanisms.” So what? What is missing in the description above that gives license to our whims or holds up such beings for sacrifice?

The Ethics Underpinning Oversight

2010-11-28T13:12:00.000-08:00

It is common to hear from those within the vivisection industry that research with humans is considerably less constrained by regulations than research involving other kinds of animals.

FACT: GOVERNMENT AGENCIES WORLDWIDE MONITOR THE TREATMENT OF RESEARCH ANIMALS.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has set rigorous standards for the use of animals in research that are more stringent than those used for human studies." Our Commitment to Ethical Animal Care and Use. (p 7)
Johnson and Johnson

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Even though the policies for protecting human participants have been strengthened, the requirements for human subjects investigators and IRB members remain less stringent than those of many other regulatory compliance boards, such as those overseeing radiation safety, biosafety, and animal research.

Regulatory Changes Affecting IRBs and Researchers
BY CHRISTINE HANSEN
APS Observer. The American Psychological Society. Sept. 2001.

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Is animal research regulated in any way?

Yes. All animal research is subject to strict federal regulations. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has set forth federal regulations governing the care and use of animals in biomedical research that are considered more extensive than those covering human research subjects. The Animal Welfare Act sets these high standards of care for research animals.

ResearchSaves.org

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If these claims were accurate they might suggest that American society cares less about humans than about other animals; or, if they were accurate, maybe these claims might mean that people experimenting on animals need the law explained to them in much greater detail than do those studying humans.

These claims do not reflect reality. These claims suggest that those within the industry worry about the potential results of the public’s concern and as a result either manufacture misleading claims or else, and probably more likely, have been duped by their industry’s propaganda. Such duping and willful ignorance – “faith” in the eyes of the believer -- or is a common phenomena throughout society and is discussed at length in Phillip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect.

Previous posts and discussions here and elsewhere have addressed the question of whether or not ethics enters into the decision-making process regarding experiments using animals at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This discussion has been narrowly focused for the most part on the university’s use of monkeys.

One of the many possible stumbling blocks in this discussion is the meaning of ethics. For some, apparently, ethics means compliance with rules and regulations. For others, like me, ethics in this context is synonymous with morality. When arguing that compliance with rules and regulations assures ethical behavior, it is claimed that ethics is built into the rules. This is sort of true, but it misses the point of the bigger question of whether or not we should use monkeys or other animals in the first place.

If we compare the regulation of the use of humans in biomedical and behavioral research with the regulation of the use of other animals we should be able to draw reasonable fact-based conclusions concerning the way these two enterprises are thought about and controlled.

We can look at the language used in the regulations and in the documents underlying the regulations. We can look at the paperwork required for each, and we can look at what is allowed.

The use of humans and other animals in research in the United States and its territories is regulated by the federal government. The use of humans and the use of other animals are each regulated by different laws and regulations, the differing regulations have different purposes, and the regulations each have different histories.

Human research subjects

Regulations controlling the use of humans grew out of the long history of scientists using humans in ways that they expected could or would harm or kill them. The most well-known and often cited example is the medical research conducted on humans in Nazi Germany. The result was "The Nuremberg Code", a set of ten guidelines written in 1949 by the judges presiding over the “Doctors Trial.”

The Nuremberg Code is a landmark document. It has been called the most important document in the history of the ethics of medical research. It is germane to note that the Nuremberg Code requires experiments on animals prior to experiments on humans but requires no initial consideration concerning the use of animals.

In 1964, the World Medical Association issued its Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, which begins with the clear statement of purpose and intent:

The World Medical Association has developed the as a statement of ethical principles to provide guidance to physicians and other participants in medical research involving human subjects. Medical research involving human subjects includes research on identifiable human material or identifiable data.

The clear unambiguous intent of the Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helsinki is the protection of people used in scientific research. The Declaration of Helsinki includes the directive that if appropriate, experiments on animals should proceed human experimentations and that “the welfare of animals used for research must be respected.”

In the United States, the National Research Act of 1974 was passed as a result of the political embarrassment over the disclosure that men had been left untreated and had died as a result in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study which was halted in 1973.

SUMMARY: On July 12, 1974, the National Research Act (Pub. L. 93-348) was signed into law, there-by creating the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. One of the charges to the Commission was to identify the basic ethical principles that should underlie the conduct of biomedical and behavioral research involving human subjects and to develop guidelines which should be followed to assure that such research is conducted in accordance with those principles.

The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research the produced the Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research. “The Belmont Report attempts to summarize the basic ethical principles identified by the Commission in the course of its deliberations.”

In 1981, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration issued regulations based on the Belmont Report. DHHS issued the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 45 (public welfare), Part 46 (protection of human subjects).

In 1991, 45 CFR 46 Protection Of Human Subjects, Subpart A, known as “The Common Rule” was officially adopted by most federal agencies using human research subjects.

“The Common Rule” requires among many other things that an Institutional Review Board (IRB) review, approve, and oversee all research involving humans at each institution:

§46.107 IRB membership.

(a) Each IRB shall have at least five members, with varying backgrounds to promote complete and adequate review of research activities commonly conducted by the institution. The IRB shall be sufficiently qualified through the experience and expertise of its members, and the diversity of the members, including consideration of race, gender, and cultural backgrounds and sensitivity to such issues as community attitudes, to promote respect for its advice and counsel in safeguarding the rights and welfare of human subjects. In addition to possessing the professional competence necessary to review specific research activities, the IRB shall be able to ascertain the acceptability of proposed research in terms of institutional commitments and regulations, applicable law, and standards of professional conduct and practice. The IRB shall therefore include persons knowledgeable in these areas. If an IRB regularly reviews research that involves a vulnerable category of subjects, such as children, prisoners, pregnant women, or handicapped or mentally disabled persons, consideration shall be given to the inclusion of one or more individuals who are knowledgeable about and experienced in working with these subjects.

Repeated throughout the regulatory literature mentioned above is the underlying frequently repeated intent to treat human subjects with respect and to keep their individual safety and dignity paramount in any research design. “The IRB shall be sufficiently qualified through the experience and expertise of its members, ..., to promote respect for its advice and counsel in safeguarding the rights and welfare of human subjects.”

For more on the regulation of human-based research see:

NIH Regulations and Ethical Guidelines

University of Nevada Las Vegas History of Research Ethics

Non-human research subjects

In the United States, laws governing the use of animals emerged directly from the theft of dogs and their sale to research laboratories. The first regulations were intended to protect the rights of pet owners rather than the animals themselves.

A “Legislative History of the Animal Welfare Act” is available on the National Agricultural Library website. It provides a useful bibliography and history.

Compare this summary of the meaning and intent of the laws and regulations governing the use of animals with the passages above regarding the use of humans:

All of these codes are the philosophical foundation for the development of laws that protect animals as property. They limit liability for the owner or for the animal. They set forth rules regarding the theft of animals, the use of animals in the punishment and execution of criminals or traitors, religious sacrifice, and provide for the legal standing of animals. The predominate rationale in these codes is based on the protection of property, the protection of the owner’s investment, and sanctions imposed by society for violating its notions of justice. These factors are not surprising if one considers the importance of animals to the early agricultural societies.

It is difficult to find among the large body of documents included in the “Legislative History of the Animal Welfare Act” any assertions similar to those found throughout the regulatory history of human experimentation.

There is no Belmont Report addressing the use of animals.

United States Code, Title 7, Chapter 54 § 2143 “Standards and certification process for humane handling, care, treatment, and transportation of animals,” creates the regulatory framework that controls the use of animals in laboratories. It also establishes the requirement of an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at each institution, a committee parallel in form to that of the IRB mentioned above:

(b) Research facility Committee; establishment, membership, functions, etc.
(1) The Secretary shall require that each research facility establish at least one Committee. Each Committee shall be appointed by the chief executive officer of each such research facility and shall be composed of not fewer than three members. Such members shall possess sufficient ability to assess animal care, treatment, and practices in experimental research as determined by the needs of the research facility and shall represent society’s concerns regarding the welfare of animal subjects used at such facility.

Notice that “The IRB shall be sufficiently qualified through the experience and expertise of its members, ..., to promote respect for its advice and counsel in safeguarding the rights and welfare of human subjects” while the IACUC “shall represent society’s concerns regarding the welfare of animal subjects.” One committee is charged with protecting the research subjects while the other is charged with representing society’s “concerns.” In practice, the results are grossly disparate.

This is because the Act has an escape clause unlke anything found in the regulations governing human-based research:

(6) (A) Nothing in this chapter—
(i) except as provided in paragraphs [1] (7) of this subsection, shall be construed as authorizing the Secretary to promulgate rules, regulations, or orders with regard to the design, outlines, or guidelines of actual research or experimentation by a research facility as determined by such research facility;
(ii) except as provided [2] subparagraphs (A) and (C)(ii) through (v) of paragraph (3) and paragraph (7) of this subsection, shall be construed as authorizing the Secretary to promulgate rules, regulations, or orders with regard to the performance of actual research or experimentation by a research facility as determined by such research facility; and
(iii) shall authorize the Secretary, during inspection, to interrupt the conduct of actual research or experimentation.

In other words, and in actual practice, anything is allowed to be done to animal subjects so long as it is approved by the IACUC and documented.

National Institutes of Health regulations governing the use of animals in research rely heavily on the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. The Introduction to the Guide makes its purpose clear:

The Guide is applicable only after the decision is made to use animals in research, teaching, or testing. Decisions associated with the need to use animals are not within the purview of the Guide,...

The NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare is charged with ensuring that funded institutions and researchers are in compliance with the Guide. Additionally, NIH has promulgated a number of documents addressing the use of animals in the research it funds. One of these is the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.

The "U.S. Government Principles for the Utilization and Care of Vertebrate Animals Used in Testing, Research, and Training" looks superficially like the Nuremberg Code. And, the "Principles" have been offered as evidence by researchers at the UW-Madison that ethical principles are built into the oversight committees’ deliberations. But a glance at each makes clear that one is intended to protect one group of subjects while the other is intended to govern how another group may be imprisoned, harmed, and killed.

If the "Principles" were cited as a guide to the use of humans no one would argue that meaningful ethical deliberation had occurred.

But everything above is academic. The scalpel meets the flesh at the paperwork required by federal law and regulation prior to using either humans or other animals and it is this regulatory burden and the resulting limitations and requisites therein that animal researchers seem to refer to when that they claim to be more regulated than scientists using human subjects.

The form researchers submit to their IRB is the “Application for Initial Review of Research Projects Involving Human Subjects.” The form researchers submit to their IACUC is the “University of Wisconsin - Madison Animal Care and Use Protocol Review Form.”

The Human Subjects form is twenty-one pages long. (The Human Subjects form was recently removed and replaced with a web-based form that is not accessible to the public.)
The Animal Care and Use form is nine pages long.

The Human Subjects form requires a “Submission Cover Sheet for Initial Review and Ongoing Studies,” which is five pages long.
It also requires a one page “Potential Financial Conflict of Interest Assessment Form.”
See too: University of Wisconsin-Madison Health Sciences Institutional Review Boards

Looking at the two forms, it seems clear that one expects the subjects to be seriously harmed and the other expects the subjects to be well protected from harm. The Human Subjects form asks about the length of stay required by subjects; the Animal Care and Use form leaves unsaid that the subjects are incarcerated for their entire lives.

Regulation of human use rests on the idea that the research is voluntary, that the subject can terminate their participation at any time, and that a subject’s best interests must prevail.

In actual practice, regulation of nonhuman use rests on the idea that animals are consumable commodities, that their use is justified by even the most remote and most unlikely possibility that some knowledge will be gained through using them.

All in all, it is difficult to find any evidence that regulations governing research using animals have more than a superficial similarity to the regulations governing research using humans.

It is difficult to find evidence that researchers using animals engage in formal discussions of the ethical issues associated with animal use or that there has ever been discussion and deliberation similar to that underpinning the regulation of human use.

Marolt to Streiffer on Housing

2010-11-21T13:56:00.000-08:00

Below is another post from Rick Marolt. I supplied the title. The 'Housing' bit is simply to tag it with a term that will distinguish it from other possible future related posts.

R

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I have asked Rick Bogle to elevate this comment to a main post because 1) some issues raised in the discussion merit more visibility and 2) I want to encourage other people to participate in the discussion. Many people read this blog. What do you think of these issues? See the original post and comments here.

Rob Streiffer:

Second, I asked whether IACUCs have the authority to address ethics questions. I argued that they do and fail to understand your basis for saying that IACUCs "are constituted by law not to make ethical decisions." To which federal regulation are you referring? At any rate, it is misleading to say I made this claim "without providing evidence," as I cited examples of rules from the U.S. Government Principles which require IACUCs to frequently make ethical determinations about animal housing and about whether the value of the research justifies the harm to the animals. Perhaps you disagree with my argument here, but I did make one.

I cannot tell what statement of mine you think is misleading. I wrote: "The committee claimed, without providing evidence, that they make ethical decisions all the time." I think that statement is true. I see no such evidence in your statement or Sandgren's statement and I do not recall hearing such evidence at the committee meeting. Citing rules that require the ACUCs to do something, which you have done, is not evidence that they actually do it. Saying that the ACUCs do something, which Sandgren has done, is not evidence that they actually do it.

After the ACUC meeting last January, I asked Sandgren for evidence: minutes of meetings where specific experiments were approved, documentation of decisions not to approve an experiment because the benefits were not projected to exceed the costs, and evidence that benefits of completed experiments exceeded their costs. Sandgren was not able to provide such evidence.

Rick Bogle has responded to the point about ACUCs and ethics. Note also that the Animal Welfare Act, which contains the requirement of research organizations to have ACUCs, says: "Such members shall possess sufficient ability to assess animal care, treatment, and practices in experimental research ..." and the responsibilities listed have to do with assessing animal care, treatment, and practices. Members are not required to have expertise in ethics. The words "ethics" and "ethical" do not appear in the AWA. The AWA says nothing about larger ethical decisions such as whether or not experimenting on a given species is ethical, and those are the decisions that I am talking about.

ACUCs exist to ensure compliance with federal regulations concerning the treatment of non-human animals. They operate within a system that assumes that keeping monkeys in cages for their whole lives, giving them diseases, birth defects, and brain damage, and killing them are acceptable actions. (You might say that the ACUCs decide case-by-case when these things are ethical and when they are not. But the ACUCs have approved very many experiments of these kinds, and I am aware of no evidence that the ACUCs ever find such experiments unacceptable or unethical.) There is a deep, underlying assumption that treating monkeys in a certain way -- much differently from how we treat people -- is acceptable. The ACUCs do not question that assumption.

Let's imagine that UW-Madison keeps people in small cages their whole lives and conducts injurious and fatal experiments on them. I question the ethics of experimenting on people. You say "We make ethical decisions all the time about how to house the people and we approve experiments only when we think that the value of the research justifies the harm to the people." Most reasonable people would say that you missed the point. And you're missing the point about monkeys.

I did not mean to say that the ACUCs cannot or should not (or even do not) make ethical decisions, only that ACUCs are constituted primarily to make other decisions. My wording probably could have been better. And, yes, decisions about housing can have an ethical component. But what about a bigger question such as whether or not experimenting on a given species is ethical? That's the question that matters most. And you have argued that the ACUC should not even try to answer it. So all this talk about the ACUCs making ethical decisions is pretty minor quibbling and not very relevant to the bigger issues.

Except ... your statement includes this excellent paragraph:

IACUCs are required by law to prohibit any research that is not in compliance with what are referred to as the U.S. Government Principles. Principle VII requires that “the living conditions of animals should be appropriate for their species and contribute to their health and comfort.” It would thus be within the IACUC’s jurisdiction to prohibit research with a species if they concluded that appropriate housing conditions on campus could not be secured. (Imagine a researcher trying to bring chimpanzees onto a campus that can only secure funding for cages of the size typically used for macaques.) A decision about the appropriateness of housing conditions, which falls squarely within the jurisdiction of an IACUC, can amount to a prohibition on a certain kind of research. An even clearer, second, example comes from Principle II, which requires that “procedures involving animals should be designed and performed with due consideration of their relevance to human or animal health, the advancement of knowledge, or the good of society.” So if an IACUC finds that procedures involving animals do not produce sufficiently important knowledge, then it is within the IACUC’s legitimate authority to prohibit that research.

So let's ignore the bigger issues for a moment and just focus on housing, since you have brought it up. Both you and Sandgren have cited the U.S. Government Principles. Now, there is much evidence that monkeys suffer in their little cages, that they get chronic diarrhea, and that they mutilate themselves out of boredom and isolation. Some people say that the monkeys become neurotic or even go insane. A former UW-Madison veterinarian has written:

Each monkey was kept alone, in a cage that was so small that he/she could not take a few steps in one direction, let alone jump or run in monkey fashion. There was no companion to huddle, groom or play with.

It should be remembered that macaques are primates - just like us - who have an intensive need for social contact and social interaction. Solitary living conditions are similarly unbearable for them as it would be for us.

Most cages were completely barren, offering not even a perch that would have allowed the animals to make use of the arboreal dimension. In the wild, macaques spend most of the day in elevated sites - away from ground predators - and seek the refuge of trees at night.

When kept in cages without a high perch, the animals have no way of retreating to a "safe" place during alarming events, such as when a staff member approaches them. Being cornered in this manner must, indeed, be a very distressing experience for a helpless monkey who associates people with painful and distressing handling procedures.

In order to accommodate as many monkeys in one room as possible, cages were arranged in double-tiers with one row stacked on top of the other. This condemned half of the animals to confinement in a permanently shady, cave-like environment. Needless to say, this was not a living quarter that was suitable for diurnal animals.

The conditions I witnessed were so depressing that most monkeys had developed stereotypic behaviors such as pacing, rocking, bouncing, somersaulting, swaying from side to side, biting parts of their own bodies, pulling their ears, tossing their heads back and forth, or smearing feces on the cage walls. (Viktor Reinhardt, "The Impossible Housing and Handling Conditions of Monkeys in Research Laboratories")

It's impossible to argue that the monkeys' housing is "appropriate for their species and contribute[s] to their health and comfort". (Please don't tell me that the little enrichment that the monkeys receive makes their housing appropriate for their species and contributes much to their health and comfort.) If the ACUCs make ethical decisions all the time about things like housing, when are they going to correct this situation? And if they cannot correct it, isn't it time for a "decision about the appropriateness of housing conditions" that "can amount to a prohibition on a certain kind of research"?

If your argument means anything, this topic will be on an upcoming ACUC meeting agenda and the committee will consult with experts before making a decision.

Let's talk about Principle II, which you brought up. If a utilitarian standard is used, only actual benefits matter, not just knowledge (unless you're going to argue that the satisfaction that a few people get from gaining and having knowledge justifies the suffering and deaths of monkeys). So I would revise your sentence: "If an IACUC finds that procedures involving animals do not produce sufficient benefits, then it is within the IACUC’s legitimate authority to prohibit that research."

Paul Kaufman and Eric Sandgren have said that there is a "low hit ratio" in translating basic science into health benefits, and one survey of 25,000 articles concluded that that hit ratio is just about 0% (W. F. Crowley, Jr., Am J Med 114, 503 - Apr 15, 2003), so there must be a lot of research that should be prohibited.

If your argument means anything, then the ACUCs will identify research that does not produce substantial benefits and prohibit it.

While I'm critiquing the ACUCs, I must note also that they are required to "represent society's concerns regarding the welfare of animal subjects". Evidence that many people and organizations in Madison have deep concerns about experimenting on monkeys became clear during discussion of Resolution 35 on the Dane County Board of Supervisors last summer. But UW-Madison declined, with the help of your statement, to study the ethical issue and it fought hard against Resolution 35. How and when do the ACUCs at UW-Madison represent society's concerns regarding the welfare of animal subjects? (If you, like I, distinguish the main ethical question from welfare issues, note that the scope of Resolution 35 included treatment of monkeys.) Please don't tell me that just having one or two ACUC members come from outside the UW takes care of this responsibility of the ACUCs.

  Third, I asked whether UW was obliged to comply with your request. I argued that it was not. Not because I ignored "all the scientific and morally significant findings about monkeys that raise the ethical question," as you mistakenly say I did. To the contrary, I explicitly acknowledged them.

You did indeed mention some scientific and morally significant findings about monkeys. The committee then ignored the implications of those findings when it chose not to study the ethical issues.  

The validity of most or all of your other points is clear and I have no disagreement with them. But they are not very relevant to the main issue.

Let's set the record straight

2010-11-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

A guest post from Rick Marolt:

Eric Sandgren, who frequently serves as UW-Madison's spokesman for animal research, said in a public forum recently that local critics of experiments on animals are wrong when they claim that UW-Madison did not take up the ethical issue of experimenting on monkeys. In that public forum, Sandgren said more than once that people cannot believe what they hear because critics of experiments on animals make inaccurate statements.

So let's set the record straight.

In August 2009, I proposed to UW's top research oversight committee that the UW conduct a study to determine if experimenting on monkeys is ethical, and I requested a response to my proposal by a certain date.

That date came and went without any news, so I asked the chairman of the committee for an update. He told me that the committee had decided against my proposal. I asked him when the committee had made that decision. He said that the committee had discussed my proposal during the meeting that I attended, when I was out of the room. That was a lie. (And the committee probably violated the state's open meetings law by deliberating outside the meeting -- if they bothered to deliberate at all.) In any case, the committee declined to deal with the fundamental ethical question.

I shared this news with UW-Madison chancellor Biddy Martin because Martin had insisted that this committee was the appropriate body for answering the ethical question. Martin then instructed the committee to discuss my proposal formally and to give me a formal written response.

So that committee met again on January 8, 2010. The bio-ethicist on the committee presented a statement that concluded with a motion: "I move that the committee endorse the position that existing standards of veterinary care and applicable animal welfare laws, regulations, and policies provide a suitable and appropriate basis for determining when the use of nonhuman primates in research, teaching, or outreach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is ethical."

Note that this motion does not respond meaningfully to my proposal and does not try in any way to answer my question. It says only that a basis for answering the question (or at least a similar question) exists. But the motion seems to assume that experimenting on monkeys, as it is done at UW-Madison, is at least sometimes ethical. I had asked the UW to question that assumption, not just to re-state it.

Sandgren presented his own written statement that the oversight processes ensure that experiments on monkeys meet a utilitarian ethical standard. But this statement only begs the main question and prompts a few more. Why should a utilitarian standard be applied to experiments on monkeys but not to experiments on people? (Sandgren has said elsewhere that "Utilitarianism trumps rights", which actually makes some sense to a principled utilitarian, which he is not, but still fails to explain why utilitarianism trumps the rights of monkeys but not the rights of people. And a deontologist would say that "rights trump utility".) What are the costs? What are the actual benefits to people? Where are the numbers, the evidence that a utilitarian standard is met? Why is it ethical for a powerful majority to exploit a powerless minority in pursuit of its self-interest? How do we know not only that the benefits of experimenting on monkeys exceed the costs but that experimenting on monkeys is the research approach with the greatest ratio of benefits to costs? How could it be if, as Sandgren himself has said in public, that there is a low "hit ratio" in translating experimental results into human benefits?

There was no study, no deliberation, no public input, and no testimony from experts, just statements that said, in effect: the status quo is fine. I wrote in a guest column in the Wisconsin State Journal after that:

The top animal research oversight committee at UW-Madison concluded recently that experimenting on monkeys is ethical. Here's what happened: a group of insiders who are constituted by law not to make ethical decisions but to ensure that the care of animals in labs meets a minimum standard, decided that the work that pays their salaries, funds their labs, and gives them a basis for tenure and promotion is ethical.

It was as if the Mississippi Slave Owners Association was asked in 1850 to determine whether or not slavery was ethical.

The committee ignored all the scientific and morally significant findings about monkeys that raise the ethical question: their advanced mental abilities, their strong emotions, their complex social relationships, and their profound similarity to you and me.

The committee confused the question about the ethics of experimenting on monkeys with the question of the treatment of the animals. They made the absurd claim that meeting a legal minimum standard of care ensures that the experiments are ethical. But if experimenting on monkeys is not ethical, then no standard of care can make it so.

The committee claimed, without providing evidence, that they make ethical decisions all the time. But years ago, when I heard someone ask one member [Sandgren] how ethical decisions were made, his only answer was "I will have to get back to you on that." And someone who has attended about fifty committee meetings tells me that she has heard committees discuss ethics only three or four times — and only because they seemed to be making a show of it.

Instead of wrestling with the ethical issue, the committee simply endorsed an answer that they like. I know from my interaction with some committee members that some of them do not even understand the issue. And the few who do understand it are afraid to speak openly.

So, did the UW take up the ethical question in any meaningful way? No. Sandgren should stop accusing concerned citizens of misleading the public.

By the way, I am still waiting for the formal written response to my proposal.

Harlow, Responsibilty, and HIV

2010-11-11T12:48:00.000-08:00

Meaningful discussion requires an attempt at honesty. We all make mistakes of course, and can unknowingly make false claims and hold unfounded opinions, but making things up, trying to mislead, and refusing to acknowledge plain facts is something altogether different.

Animals in Research and Testing seems like an effort to hoodwink the uninformed and unwary (or maybe just UW employees).

There are many silly claims on the site. Consider the statement below regarding the work of Harry Harlow on a page titled: “UW Animal Research Achievements. The Tangible Benefits of Animal Research.” This is matter-of-factly wrong.

In the forum I linked to at the bottom of the previous essay, you can hear Eric Sandgren saying that people should look up the facts themselves. Indeed, but people trying to do so have a reasonable expectation that information presented on a UW-Madison website is accurate, and they have an even stronger expectation that the information on the website is believed to be true by the authors. The public rightly expects that the state university will not knowingly mislead them. The problem is significantly compounded when publishing the false information is intended to benefit the institution itself. This is, I believe, an abuse of authority.

The importance of mom

Monkey research by Wisconsin’s Harry Harlow proved the importance of mother-child attachment to human development during the 1950s, when many psychologists discounted the relationship. In studies with a few animals, Harlow showed that food, water and medical care were not enough: young primates cannot grow into normal, healthy adults without contact with their mother. Harlow’s discoveries are widely applied in such settings as neonatal intensive care units.

This claim might not be recognizable as a lie if the actual historic facts had not been pointed out to the “author” of the “blog" associated with the university website, Eric Sandgren. But they have been, very clearly, and yet he – and by extension his employer – continues to make matter-of-fact false claims about Harlow’s work.

It is one thing to defend honestly one’s opinion that animals’ experiences and lives don’t matter very much, that scientists or ranchers or dog fighters should be able to kill them or hurt them in any way they choose, but it is an altogether different matter to present straightforward falsehoods as facts, and this seems to be a common tactic used on this University of Wisconsin-Madison website. Everyone acting as a university agent – everyone who produces copy for the site – has a higher than ordinary duty of honesty to the state’s citizens and Internet users everywhere.

Rather than repeat what I have written before regarding the actual facts surrounding Harlow’s work, I refer the reader to my essays: “Harry Harlow's Dark Shadow,” September 18, 2008, and “Monsters: Harry Harlow and Stephen Suomi,” web posted: August 29, 2010.

Repeating the Harlow myth isn’t the half of it. It’s not the tenth of it. Half-truths abound.

This university accepts responsibility for the stewardship of all animals under its care.

How would one go about judging the veracity or even determining the meaning of a statement like that? One way might be to look at how the university responds to citations for its violations of the Animal Welfare Act. If one took responsibility and acted responsibly, one wouldn't let things deteriorate to the point that a team of inspectors would be called in, or at least act responsibly and fix the problems pointed out to you.

USDA inspectors returned recently to the university and discovered that major violations like the university approving experiments even though researchers have not demonstrated that they have looked for alternatives to painful procedures, have gone uncorrected.

Because animal models are used only to answer questions that cannot be answered in any other way, experiments are not approved unless the lead investigator can show that no effective alternatives exist.

This is a half-truth because the animal models are themselves demonstrably ineffective.

Here’s a really misleading statement:

Nobel Prizes for Medicine or Physiology routinely recognize research that relied on animal models. The 2008 prize was awarded for discovering the human immunodeficiency virus, based on work with monkeys, chimpanzees and mice.

Like the false claim about the importance of Harry Harlow’s work, I believe the university’s claim that the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was based on work with monkeys, chimpanzees and mice is factually incorrect.

The isolation of HIV was first reported and published in 1983, as explained below by Françoise Barré-Sinoussi in her Nobel acceptance speech.

UW-Madison professor and author Deborah Blum tells the story of the discovery of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in “Not a Nice Death,” Chapter 9 of her 1994, The Monkey Wars, (which are still raging.)

She tells us that in 1976, a fatal epidemic swept through the stumptail macaque colony at the California Regional Primate Research Center at the University of California-Davis (now the California National Primate Research Center.) It turned out to be SIV, but at the time the cause of the disease was unknown. She quotes California primate center veterinarian Roy Henrickson: “They were suddenly dying, and whatever it was, it was a terrible death, a cascade of infections, cramming one on top of another, wearing the little monkeys out.”

In 1980, another wave of the same disease swept through the rhesus colony. A disease with the same symptoms broke out at the New England Regional Primate Research Center at Harvard University at about the same time. (The facility is in Southboro, a few miles from Boston.)

Blum:

And this time, there was something similar spreading into the human population. A troubling illness was emerging, a disease that caused a lethal collapse of the immune system, crippling the body’s ability to fight off infection. The human disease was AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

The New England scientists realized, and then the California researchers, that the monkey disease was almost a mirror of the human one....

The discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus, was not based on work with monkeys, chimpanzees or mice.

The opposite is true. The discovery of the simian immunodeficiency virus was based on work with humans. HIV was first described in 1983.

SIV was first described in 1985. See: Isolation of T-cell tropic HTLV-III-like retrovirus from macaques. Daniel MD, et al. Science.

Consider the beginning of Françoise Barré-Sinoussi’s Nobel acceptance speech.

Does this sound like monkeys, chimpanzees, and mice were used?

The Early Days

The story begins more than 25 years ago, when the initial clinical observations of a new alarming epidemic were made. In June 1981, clinicians in the United States first reported a number of cases of Pneumocystis carinii in homosexual men. Subsequently, the first cases of what would later be known as AIDS were observed in France. At the time, I was working at the Institut Pasteur with Luc Montagnier and Jean-Claude Chermann. In December 1982, we were contacted by clinicians in France who provided us with a biopsy of a lymph node from an AIDS patient, with the aim of isolating the etiological agent causing the disease.

The hypothesis at the time was that a retrovirus might be the etiological agent responsible for AIDS. The only human retrovirus known at that time was the human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV), known to cause transformation of T cells, and arguably it would have been possible to culture the cells from the lymph node biopsy and simply observe for T-cell transformation. Luckily, we did not assume that HTLV was necessarily the cause of the disease, and we decided to sample the culture supernatant every three to four days to detect for reverse transcriptase activity. Indeed, we started to observe a reverse transcriptase activity, which decreased shortly after, in correlation with cell death. Initially we were concerned about possible toxicity related to tissue culture components, but following the addition of fresh lymphocytes and fresh components to the culture, the same cell-death phenomenon was observed, in correlation with the detection of reverse transcriptase activity. We thus realised that the virus itself was responsible for this phenomenon.

The isolation of this new human retrovirus (at the time known as LAV, lymphoadenopathy-associated virus) was first reported and published in May 1983. In this first report we described that LAV could be propagated on peripheral blood mononuclear cells and on cord blood lymphocytes. We also described the viral protein p25, and importantly we determined that there was no, or weak, cross-reactivity with HTLV-1 proteins, indicating that we were dealing with a new human virus. In the same report we demonstrated the presence of antibodies against LAV in a second patient affected by AIDS. The report of the virus was, however, just the beginning.

The isolation of the virus was not sufficient, however, to convince the scientific community of the implication of the virus in AIDS. It was, therefore, essential to further characterize the virus and establish a clear link between the virus and the disease to persuade the scientific community and the relevant authorities that the newly isolated virus was the etiological agent responsible for the emerging epidemic. In 1983, we decided to immediately halt all other research projects which were ongoing in the laboratory (including determining whether MMTV sequences could be associated with breast cancer—a hypothesis still valid today) and to mobilize a network of efficient collaborations with clinicians, immunologists, and molecular biologists. In order to determine whether this newly isolated virus was truly responsible for the disease affecting AIDS patients, we quickly developed a serological test to perform sero-epidemiological studies. Crucially this same test was subsequently used as a diagnostic tool for blood testing. The development of the diagnostic test was made possible by a strong and efficient partnership with the private sector, namely Sanofi Pasteur.

And the date of this paper also from Barré-Sinoussi:

Isolation of a T-lymphotropic retrovirus from a patient at risk for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Barré-Sinoussi F, et al. Science. 1983.

Abstract

A retrovirus belonging to the family of recently discovered human T-cell leukemia viruses (HTLV), but clearly distinct from each previous isolate, has been isolated from a Caucasian patient with signs and symptoms that often precede the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). This virus is a typical type-C RNA tumor virus, buds from the cell membrane, prefers magnesium for reverse transcriptase activity, and has an internal antigen (p25) similar to HTLV p24. Antibodies from serum of this patient react with proteins from viruses of the HTLV-I subgroup, but type-specific antisera to HTLV-I do not precipitate proteins of the new isolate. The virus from this patient has been transmitted into cord blood lymphocytes, and the virus produced by these cells is similar to the original isolate. From these studies it is concluded that this virus as well as the previous HTLV isolates belong to a general family of T-lymphotropic retroviruses that are horizontally transmitted in humans and may be involved in several pathological syndromes, including AIDS.

Maybe the university’s writer is correct, maybe the discovery of HIV was dependent on experiments on chimpanzees, monkeys, and mice, but dates and statements from people who were there at the time strongly suggest otherwise.

I challenge them to provide clear relevant references for their claims. I don’t believe they can; I don’t believe they exist.