"Animals think they’re pretty smart"

Los Angeles Times

Animal Liberation spokeswoman takes a bite out of UCLA animal testing.
By Lindy Greene
November 7, 2007

The North American Animal Liberation Press Office is a legal, above-ground organization that receives, clarifies and releases to the media the anonymous communiques received by underground activists who carry out illegal direct actions in defense of animals exploited and abused by individual and industry profiteers. The NAALPO is unaware of the identities of these activists and cannot predict or control when, where, how or whether they will strike. One might say that we speak for those who cannot — and for those who dare not.

Vivisection is simultaneously an animal rights and a human rights issue. Contrary to Edythe London's claim in her recent Op-Ed article "Why I use laboratory animals," testing treatments on animals and applying the results to humans is the greatest confounding variable of all! Data from one species cannot be extrapolated to another with more than 5% to 25% accuracy (note that simply flipping a coin would yield 50%) and that explains why no cures come down the pike for decades. It underlies the multiple thousands of consumer injuries and deaths every year from adverse reactions to drugs tested "safe" in animals and, conversely, causes potentially beneficial drugs tested "unsafe" to be discarded. Vivisection accomplishes nothing more than to gratuitously torture animals and retard true advancement in human medicine. In sum, it is both immoral and scientifically fraudulent.

UCLA squanders hundreds of millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars to turn monkeys into tweakers while drug rehabilitation centers founder for lack of funds. Addiction is an area of inquiry that should lend itself admirably to human clinical studies. To understand substance abuse, investigators must examine and address the psychological, sociological, economic, political and other demographic parameters underlying a uniquely human inclination. Animals in the wild do not volitionally intoxicate themselves with psychotropic chemicals — and those in labs forced into artificially-induced dependence cannot communicate their experiences. Imagine the benefit to society by intervening through education and counseling before the prospective addict makes the fateful decision to try a drug. Some of the millions awarded to UCLA to hook primates might be redirected toward those more laudable endeavors.

While I have no love for the tobacco industry, I have to point out that smoking is completely elective. We have known for years that smoking induces chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and lung cancer, yet we are unwilling to accept personal accountability for conditions that are unequivocally the result of our own unwise behavior. Cardiovascular disease, cancer and stroke are all on the rise. While a certain percentage may be due to heritable factors, much, if not most, is undoubtedly the consequence of eating animals. Our dentition, salivary and stomach acid composition and intestinal anatomy were designed for the ingestion of plants. Our air, water and soil are saturated with contaminants, yet the vivisectionists continue to hoodwink the gullible public into believing that we have to torture animals to find cures for ailments that can be mitigated or averted with more appropriate lifestyle choices and better environmental stewardship.

As a Jew, I cannot comprehend how someone who claims to be the child of Holocaust survivors can participate in a holocaust against other sentient beings. With London's reported background in psychiatry, she should be fully cognizant that animal abuse is the hallmark symptom of psychopathology.

History strives repeatedly to teach us lessons that we stubbornly refuse to learn. In order to achieve its objectives, every social justice movement has ultimately had to resort to violence against the oppressors or their property. When legitimate grievances go consistently unheard, the attendant frustration expresses itself with escalating vehemence. The Sons of Liberty tossed 300 chests of British tea into the Boston harbor. The suffragettes employed arson. It took a civil war to end slavery and a world war to dismantle the Nazi concentration camps.

The Animal Liberation Front adheres to a nonnegotiable policy that no life, human or animal, be harmed during an action. It seeks to liberate animals directly from the clutches of their abusers or engage in economic sabotage against those abusers. The purpose of the former is self-explanatory; the motivation for the latter is the unfortunate recognition that it is the only means to engage with those whose cognitive and empathic shortfalls render them otherwise unreachable.

Activists who risk life, limb and liberty to stand up for sentient beings who cannot speak or act in their own behalf are unsung heroes and must endure the barbs of others who lack courage and moral fortitude. But they know the animals have it much worse, and that realization impels them to continue the battle for creatures whom society would arbitrarily place outside the circle of moral compassion and beyond the reach of effective defense.

Lindy Greene is the North American Animal Liberation press officer.

See too: ALF Vandalizes UCLA Primate Vivisector's Home

The Mother of All Targets

H1N1, known colloquially as the 1918 Spanish flu, is the most deadly disease ever encountered.

John M. Barry, in his book The Great Influenza, says:

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 killed in a century; it killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years.

Over half of those who died in the 1918 pandemic were in their 20s and 30s, in the prime of their lives, not the elderly.

One of the characteristics of H1N1, besides being so nearly uniformly deadly, is that it has a 1 to 4 day incubation period (some sources say up to 10 days.) This means that if someone is infected, they may not know it for a while, and while they still feel healthy, they are spreading the virus to everyone they encounter. This is one of the reasons that it spread so very rapidly and killed so many people in 1918/19. Estimates vary, but everyone agrees that it killed tens of millions of people, maybe even 100 million.

What this means is that if someone in a lab studying H1N1 is infected, they won’t know it for a few days. When they stop in at a 7-11 to buy a loaf of bread on the way home from the lab, the clerk and everyone in the store is at risk of infection.
If someone there is infected, they take it home to their families, and their kids take it to school.

It’s very dangerous and shouldn’t be studied in a lab in a metropolitan area. It was extinct until only recently when Kawaoka and others reengineered it. How stupid and arrogant is that?

And yet, the University of Wisconsin is planning to store the virus and to study its effect in mice, ferrets, and monkeys in a lab in Madison, Wisconsin. The scientist who will be studying the virus is Yoshihiro Kawaoka.

The university claims that the public should not be concerned because the lab will be very secure.

Ten-inch walls made with crack-resistant concrete. Outlets sealed with silicone. Sensors for broken windows. Infrared surveillance beams. Redundant air handling systems. A back-up generator.

UW-Madison's $12.5 million Institute for Influenza Viral Research, nearing completion at University Research Park, will have a collection of safety and security features the university hasn't seen before.

But the university has a long history of lying to the public when it comes to any matter that might embarrass them or cause a hiccup in the flow of money into university coffers.

And in this case, it isn’t just lying about protections for monkeys at the zoo, or lying about the care of the animals in its labs, or lying about the oversight of its animal experimentation. No, this time they are lying about the risk to everyone in the Midwest, maybe throughout the world. A small accident, unrecognized at the time, could lead to a global pandemic that results in the death of millions, maybe billions.

And, if you have any concern whatsoever about another terrorist attack on the US, what better target than a lab housing the most deadly virus ever encountered?

Do you think 10 inches of concrete will stop a plane from breaching the security at the lab? Want to bet your family’s lives on it? No? Too bad. According the university, they’ve placed the bet for you.

Vivisection Connections

The view that torture and non-consenting potentially harmful human experimentation are violations of a person’s inalienable rights is based on the position that an individual’s interest in not being harmed always outweighs any potential benefit to others, no matter how many others might benefit, no matter the degree of benefit, or who the beneficiaries or who the research subjects might be.

This view isn’t universally shared.

The United States, long cherished by human rights proponents around the world as a country that abhorred torture, has officially reversed itself and now endorses cruel methods of interrogation and incarceration without trial or judicial oversight.

Many medical doctors, scientists, hospitals, and universities in the U.S. have engaged in deleterious experiments on humans without their knowledge or informed consent. The known examples include the Tuskegee syphilis studies (1932-1972), the Willowbrook hepatitis experiment on retarded children (1963-1966), the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital case (1963), the University of Cincinnati whole body radiation experiments (1960-1972), and many others from as recently as 1999, when all medical research with human subjects was suspended at the West Los Angeles and Sepulveda Veterans Administration Medical Facilities due to long standing oversight failures and failures to obtain informed consent.

You might think that, of all places, Israel would be the safest place for vulnerable patients, and that Jewish doctors and hospitals there would have a heightened sensitivity to using uninformed humans as experimental subjects, but in at least some instances this hasn’t been the case. In 2006, four doctors were arrested and two hospitals cited for their failure to safeguard patients when it was discovered that the doctors had performed “thousands” of experiments on unsuspecting elderly Jewish patients, some of who died as a result.

It is likely that in many if not most or even all of these examples, the doctors and the hospitals involved justified their experiments with the idea that more people might be helped than were certainly being harmed, or that science would benefit (whatever the heck that means.) And this, of course, is the self-same justification used for all medical research using animals. That is, those who experiment on animals and those who experiment on humans without their fully-informed consent are of a like mind.

The similarities between non-consenting human experimentation and animal experimentation are substantial. There must be something about having power over others that is attractive to a certain segment of the population. Dress it up as medical research or even law enforcement, but physical control of others is seductive to a certain personality type.

Martha Stephens writes:

It can hardly be insisted too strongly that the doctors who carried out the radiation tests, or administered the College where the tests took place, were by no means alienated or marginalized physicians. They were graduates of Harvard or other prestigious schools…. The team investigators published in received journals and often served their profession in national posts. Their views, feelings, predilections, and habits of mind with regard to their patients and their research subjects must be assumed to be the views and habits of many in their profession, in that time and this. The Treatment: The story of those who died in the Cincinnati radiation experiments. Duke University Press. 2002. (pp 101-102)

What astounds me is that in the face of the federal government lying about torturing people, black-ops secret prisons, rendition, secret human experimentation, cover-ups about laboratory accidents, spying on its citizens, and on and on, that, when the same people claim that animals in labs are being well-cared for and treated with respect, or that a cure (for the disease du jour) is just around the corner, and so many people believe them.

How many lies do people have to realize that they’ve been told before they wake up to the fact they are being lied to?

And this brings us to an obvious but mostly overlooked weakness in the vivisector’s position: that is, his inevitable forfeiture of all claim to have his word believed. It is hardly to be expected that a man who does not hesitate to vivisect for the sake of science will hesitate to lie about it afterwards to protect it from what he deems the ignorant sentimentality of the laity….

Here, then, is a pretty deadlock. Public support of vivisection is founded almost wholly on the assurances of the vivisectors that great public benefits may be expected from the practice. Not for a moment do I suggest that such a defense would be valid even if proved. But when the witnesses begin by alleging that in the cause of science all the customary ethical obligations (which include the obligation to tell the truth) are suspended, what weight can any reasonable person give to their testimony? I would rather swear fifty lies than take an animal which had licked my hand in good fellowship and torture it. If I did torture the dog, I should certainly not have the face to turn round and ask how any person there suspect an honorable man like myself of telling lies. Most sensible and humane people would, I hope, reply flatly that honorable men do not behave dishonorably, even to dogs. The murderer who, when asked by the chaplain whether he had any other crimes to confess, replied indignantly, “What do you take me for?” reminds us very strongly of the vivisectors who are so deeply hurt when their evidence is set aside as worthless.
The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors (1909)
George Bernard Shaw

ALF Vandalizes UCLA Primate Vivisector's Home

Los Angeles Times:

An animal rights group has claimed responsibility for flooding the Westside home of a UCLA professor who uses lab monkeys in research on nicotine addiction.

An FBI spokeswoman said Monday that the agency is investigating the claim that the Animal Liberation Front used a garden hose to flood the house of professor Edythe London on Oct. 20 in an attempt to stop her animal experiments.

The FBI, along with UCLA and Los Angeles police, are treating the vandalism as a case of domestic terrorism....

Invariably, when I mention that vivisectors are in it for the money, one of them writes to me and says, "How dare you!" Right. Here's part of the current real estate listing for Dr. London's Beverly Hills home:

1249 Shadybrook Drive
Prime Lower BHPO, CA 90210
TOTALLY REMODELED FAMILY HOME. ABSOLUTE TURNKEY
Offered at $2,595,000
Owner: Edythe D. London

"Best Deal in all of BHPO. Reduced $600k. This won't last. Perfect location on the quiet side of desirable Shadybrook Drive. Located 1.5 miles North of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Absolute Turnkey home remodeled in the best style and taste. 3700 sqft with 4 Bedrooms + Maids and 4.5 Bathrooms. Beautiful hardwood floors [a little water damaged] thru-out entertaining areas. High ceilings, skylights and wide open spaces bring in an abundance of natural light. Sprawling family floor plan with great large walls for artwork. State of the art kitchen with granite countertops. Beautiful swimming pool and surrounding outdoor deck area. This home is perfect for the most discriminating buyer who demands only the best. Also available for lease at $10,500 per month."

And here's one of the photo's: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 ladened Kool-Aid.

I can't remember the last time UCLA hosted any substantive public discussion regarding the use of animals in its labs; maybe it never has. In either case, you can't really criticize the garden hose event if the university won't discuss the matter in public.

See too: Tobacco company's research grant to UCLA raises suspicions

And here's a link to a pitiful letter from Edythe D. London, "Why I use laboratory animals."

And why aren’t you mad?

A few of my last posts have been really mean. But I’m so very angry.

The use of monkeys in research acts as a lens for better understanding the nature of our relationship with other species and even with each other.

Animals consumed or otherwise harmed in research amount to but a very tiny sliver of the animals consumed by us for all other reasons.

The laws governing laboratory animal care and use are significantly more restrictive than those governing agricultural or other use. Monkeys make up only about .3% (less than one third of one percent) of all the mammals and birds used in research, according to some sources. There are unique legal requirements for their care and use, most notably the requirement of a plan to provide some psychological enrichment.

There are very large laboratory complexes dedicated to the use of monkeys that concentrate researchers and animal care specialists in one place. The use of other common species in the U.S. is widespread and more or less evenly dispersed throughout university and private labs.

With the publicly funded large primate labs we have a sort of captive ant colony living between glass plates we can observe and evaluate – in spite of their efforts to keep their work hidden and secret. And, because of the special laws governing the laboratory use of animals, and the special laws dealing with monkeys, and the concentration of expertise and resources at these large primate labs, they present us with a best-case real-time example of regulated animal use in the U.S.

This casts problems like the Vilas Monkeys, Jennifer Hess, Ei Terasawa, and the 628 Pieces of Primate Research Garbage in a special light.

Repeated lying, hush money, unmonitored run-away research, and blatant cover up must be very common throughout the nation’s animal labs. Or else, the University of Wisconsin is a wild exception.

And the animals are suffering horribly. This is the baseline reality against which all the problems must be considered.

And the claimed benefit to us of their suffering is – at best – debatable.

And, we know more now about the minds of other animals than ever before. Few serious students still argue that animals don’t have minds. Monkeys are said to have minds very like our own. It is the presence of mind in animals – particularly monkeys – that is used as a justification for very cruel experiments each and every year.

And, like bombs and secret prisons, this is an evil enterprise conducted in my name, with taxes taken from me.

And then, as if things couldn’t be any worse, a local Madison magazine has its collective editorial head so far up its ass (I’m back to being mean) that it names one of the primate vivisectors “Person of the Year.” Egad. Strap the suicide bombs on me now!

And, an anti-domestic violence group sings the praises of the largest contract animal testing lab in the world – cited on multiple occasions by the USDA for inadequate veterinary care and various animal care and use violations.

Everyone should be angry. Everyone.

I know that everyone isn’t angry, and I get even more pissed off when I consider the reasons they aren’t, which is commonly money or ignorance; sometimes its cruelty, sometimes callousness, but usually just plain old disinterest. Ho hum, they’re only animals, who cares if they're suffering?

When the Jews were being gassed and melted into soap, did anyone in Germany give a damn? I suspect that those who did were in the tiny tiny tiny minority and that the doctors experimenting on them, the police arresting those who complained, the government and universities who colluded, were smug in their power to control public sentiment.

If you aren’t mad too, then you’re clearly part of the problem.

Oculomotor unit behavior in the monkey.

Robinson, D.A. Oculomotor unit behavior in the monkey. J Neurophysiol. 33:393-403, 1970.

Steinem, DAIS, and Covance

Local readers will be aware that Gloria Steinem was recently the keynote speaker at an October 16, 2007 fundraising event for the Madison-based Domestic Abuse Intervention Services, or DAIS. And, that she asked DAIS to drop Covance as a sponsor of the event when she learned that the company has a very long, very well-documented history of violent animal cruelty.

Wisconsin State Journal columnist Melanie Conklin wrote about the dust-up:

"As soon as we found out it was a concern for her we stopped the sponsorship of the event, " says DAIS executive director Shannon Barry. "We really want to be respectful of Gloria 's wishes and we had no idea there was any problem."

Who would have thought that Steinem would be offended by a corporation hurting animals?

Covance spokesperson Mona Terrell calls Steinem 's decision "a regrettable publicity stunt. "

As if Steinem needs more notoriety.

"Ms. Steinem 's decision to align herself with groups that oppose medical research is an unfortunate and selfish distraction from the true purpose of this event, which is to support victims of domestic abuse,” Terrell says.

Medical research like forcing pesticides down dogs’ throats.

"It is ironic that Ms. Steinem ... is criticizing the life-saving research that Covance and companies like ours have done to benefit women, children and even pets who suffer from debilitating illnesses."

[Note to paid propagandists: Always appeal to the image of sick women, children, and pets.]

Steinem's name has attracted many new sponsors for the annual luncheon, which will cover the financial loss of Covance, says Barry. Also helpful is that Steinem is donating her time.

Despite this wrinkle, Barry can 't wait to meet Steinem.

"To be in the presence of someone that iconic is like Christmas a thousand times over. ... It was her book, which I read when I was 14, that put me on the path to the work I do."

Barry adds that Steinem's presence may also help make the community aware of the magnitude of the problem of domestic violence.

"One-third of all arrests in Dane County are domestic violence-related, " says Barry. "I 'm hoping Steinem 's presence here will get that message out."

DAIS executive director Shannon Barry followed up with a letter to the editor of the Capital Times on October 23, 2007:

DAIS was notified by Gloria Steinem's office a couple of weeks ago that Steinem was not comfortable appearing at an event sponsored by Covance. This statement came after Steinem's office was contacted by the Alliance for Animals. It was suggested to us by Steinem's office that she might not attend the event given this sponsorship.

When DAIS learned of this, we immediately asked to meet with Covance. The company was extremely sympathetic and voluntarily offered to remove its name as a sponsor of the luncheon....

DAIS continues to be grateful to Covance officials for their support. Covance has been a leader in Dane County through the company's response to domestic violence victims employed in that organization. Not only have company officials created proactive employee assistance programs to deal with domestic violence, but they also have provided generous financial contributions to support the survivors.

We are grateful to Steinem for volunteering her time to speak on behalf of the issue of domestic violence and our organization. We are also grateful to have a community partner such as Covance that has not only financially supported us, but that has also lived the change we wish to see across Dane County.

Ok, Shannon Barry feels that being in Steinem’s presence is “like Christmas a thousand times over,” and that Steinem’s presence here and her talk could help make the community aware of the magnitude of the problem of domestic violence. Understandable, but she also feels that violence directed toward animals is ok so long as the aggressor is making monetary contributions to her organization. Hello?

Ms. Barry can’t have it both ways. This is the age-old story of the newly elected politician going to Washington with the best of intentions, but soon being corralled by the “generosity” of the polluting or predatory industries or agencies they had hoped to regulate. It’s all about something called ethics. Steinem has it, Barry doesn’t.

Barry bemoans the fact that the Covance sponsorship angle got local media coverage, not necessarily sympathetic to the animals, but she has no one to blame but herself and DAIS. She should have stayed on point. She could have spoken about the acknowledged domestic violence among Covance employees and called attention to the fact that kicking a dog or slapping a monkey at work just might bleed over into one’s domestic life. She could have spoken about the fact that violence begets violence, but she didn't. Instead she chose to grovel and praise the deep pockets of a leading animal abuser.

“You can’t blame Covance,” she seems to say.

I’m reminded of the beaten women I’ve encountered who resist blaming their abusive spouses.

Compassion and Kindness Redefined

Brain Storm, the cover story by Frank Bures in Madison Magazine, is enough to make any kind and compassionate person puke their guts out. In this 3500+ paean to Richard Davidson, certain words are missing altogether. Words like: fear, anxiety, experimental brain ablation, ibotenic acid, restraint chair, or monkey.

Instead, we find comments like, "He's visionary. He's brilliant. He's compassionate and kind. And he's a very, very good scientist. And what he's done attests to all that."

"And what he's done attests to all that."

Here's some info not included in the article that attests to his compassion and kindness:

"METHODS: Twelve adolescent rhesus monkeys were studied (six lesion and six control monkeys). Lesions were targeted at regions of the OFC that are most interconnected with the amygdala. Behavior and physiological parameters were assessed before and after the lesions. RESULTS: The OFC lesions significantly decreased threat-induced freezing and marginally decreased fearful responses to a snake. The lesions also resulted in a leftward shift in frontal brain electrical activity consistent with a reduction in anxiety. The lesions did not significantly decrease hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activity or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF)." Kalin NH, Shelton SE, Davidson RJ.
Role of the Primate Orbitofrontal Cortex in Mediating Anxious Temperament. Biol Psychiatry. 2007.

"In primates, during times of need, calling for help is a universal experience. Calling for help recruits social support and promotes survival. However, calling for help also can attract predators, and it is adaptive to inhibit calls for help when a potential threat is perceived. Based on this, we hypothesized that individual differences in calling for help would be related to the activity of brain systems that mediate goal-directed behavior and the detection of threat.By using high-resolution positron emission tomography in rhesus monkeys undergoing social separation, we demonstrate that increased [18F]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose uptake in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and decreased uptake in the amygdala independently predict individual differences in calling for help. When taken together, these two regions account for 76% of the variance in calling for help. This result suggests that the drive for affiliation and the perception of threat determine the intensity of an individual's behavior during separation...." Fox AS, Oakes TR, Shelton SE, Converse AK, Davidson RJ, Kalin NH. Calling for help is independently modulated by brain systems underlying goal-directed behavior and threat perception. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005.

"Eighteen males underwent lesioning procedures at an average age of 34.9 months. Sixteen unoperated male controls were used for comparison and at the beginning of the study were on average 34.6 months of age." Kalin NH, Shelton SE, Davidson RJ. The role of the central nucleus of the amygdala in mediating fear and anxiety in the primate. J Neurosci. 2004.

"To examine the role of the amygdala in mediating this endophenotype [an anxious temperament] and other fearful responses, we prepared monkeys with selective fiber sparing ibotenic acid lesions of the amygdala. Unconditioned trait-like anxiety-fear responses remained intact in monkeys with >95% bilateral amygdala destruction. In addition, the lesions did not affect EEG frontal asymmetry. However, acute unconditioned fear responses, such as those elicited by exposure to a snake and to an unfamiliar threatening conspecific were blunted in monkeys with >70% lesions." Kalin NH, Shelton SE, Davidson RJ, Kelley AE. The primate amygdala mediates acute fear but not the behavioral and physiological components of anxious temperament. J Neurosci. 2001 Mar 15;21(6):2067-74.

"CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that, in primates, the fearful endophenotype is characterized by increased fearful behavior, a specific pattern of frontal electrical activity, increased pituitary-adrenal activity, and increased activity of brain CRH systems." Kalin NH, Shelton SE, Davidson RJ. Cerebrospinal fluid corticotropin-releasing hormone levels are elevated in monkeys with patterns of brain activity associated with fearful temperament. Biol Psychiatry. 2000.

From the article:

"We have far more control over our wellbeing, over how we respond to the world, than a simplistic, deterministic view would permit," says Davidson. "This work leaves us with a much more hopeful and optimistic message. It also places more responsibility on us. In some sense, this work is really a call for us to take ownership over our own minds.

"We have an extraordinary ability to transform our minds, if we so choose."

Cruelty, like all our behvioral choices, are actions that begin in our minds. According to Davidson, changing who we are, how we behave, is just a matter of practice, "What my work suggests," says Davidson, "is that our capacity to experience free will is a skill that can, to some extent, be enhanced through training."

So, what are the likely long-term results of Davidson's continuing practice of burning away the emotion centers of monkeys' brains with acid and then trying to frighten them with a snake? Greater compassion and kindness or increased callousness and an increased ability to justify cruelty? According to Davidson himself, the answer is clear.

See too: Dalai Lama Disciple Makes Big Discovery!

Late Night Reading

If you like reading the dark and macabre stories of Stephen King or H.P. Lovecraft, then curling up with an Annual Progress Report to NIH/NCRR from one of the National Primate Research Centers might be right up your alley. These reports include suggestive accounts of hundreds of bone-chilling experiments, untold suffering, wild exaggeration, and much mystery. They are available upon request to the NIH or the institution itself. Price is variable.

The 2006/2007 Wisconsin National Primate Research Center’s annual report is a real page-turner.

The editor and lead author of the report is the center’s propagandist, Jordana (Jori) Lennon. She has produced an online newsletter over the years titled Research Highlights and uses this title for a section in the Wisconsin annual report to highlight the center’s top accomplishments over the reporting period. [Note: after some additional digging, I've learned that "Research Highlights" is a required part of the Annual Progress Report, so this wasn't Jori's original work. On the otherhand, it does make the title of her previous newsletter, Research Highlights, something a little less than inspired.]

The section begins with its heavy guns:

REARCH HIGHLIGHTS

ANIMAL SCIENTISTS AND PHYSICIANS TEAM UP TO TREAT POLYCYSTIC OVARY SYNDROME

A long established team of researchers trying to cure polycystic ovary syndrome in women has recently hit upon some major discoveries.

In one finding, published in the journal Reproductive Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers David Abbott and Daniel Dumesic report that the drug pioglitazone improves insulin action and normalizes menstrual cycles in a majority of female rhesus monkeys with PCOS. This work done at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center is key, the scientists say, because it proves the importance of using this species as a successful model for treating PCOS in women.

Hello?

The work is “key,” not because it helps women, but because it “proves the importance” of using monkeys as models of PCOS?

I think most readers of the report would naturally come away with the impression that following this “discovery” in monkeys, pioglitazone might be tried on women suffering from PCOS. And, if they do, then maybe the propaganda worked.

In fact, the therapeutic effects of pioglitazone in women with PCOS has been under constant study since at least 2003. [Romualdi D, Guido M, Ciampelli M, Giuliani M, Leoni F, Perri C, Lanzone A. Selective effects of pioglitazone on insulin and androgen abnormalities in normo- and hyperinsulinaemic obese patients with polycystic ovary syndrome. Hum Reprod. 2003 Jun;18(6):1210-8.]

So, maybe the “major discovery” by Abbott and Dumesic didn’t have anything to do with women suffering with PCOS after all. Maybe it simply was the discovery that pioglitazone has a beneficial effect on female monkeys suffering from the effects of experimentally induced PCOS-like symptoms. Maybe, in the macabre world of the monkey labs, this actually is perceived to be a “major discovery.”

In their defense, given the fact that their ability to induce a variety of hormonal irregularities and genital deformities in monkeys that mimic some of the symptoms of PCOS hasn’t led to improvements in the treatment of the condition in women, they have to find something to cheer about.

One of the mysteries in the report is the section titled “Source of Investigator’s Support.”

This is a list of scientists and the funding they have received throughout the year. I think a reader would assume that the document refers to scientists at the primate center and funding used to conduct their work at the center. But, mysteriously, the list is not so straightforward. There may be a reasonable explanation for this, but it shows just how difficult it is to learn what facilities like the primate center do with the money they receive, or even a very basic thing like their total funding.

Take the case of David B. Allison on pg 112. Allison is a biostatistician. He was a listed coauthor on three papers in 2006 and 2007 with Wisconsin SIV researcher David Watkins. (There were about 50 authors listed on the three papers, combined.) Watkins' lab probably can’t make head nor tail of the numerical data they produce, so they ask a statistician for help. Here’s the mystery: the Wisconsin Primate Center annual report lists Allison and eight of his NIH grants, totaling about $2.5 million. This is included in the Total Funding amount of about $44 million (not including the base grant)on pg 116.

But Allison is a researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His $2.5 million is from grants to him at his home institution. Surely, UAB lists these eight grants and the $2.5 million in one of their reports as well. Does every university that consults Allison add $2.5 million to their Total Funding summary? There are a number of similar examples throughout the Wisconsin report. The Total Funding reported in the primate center's annual report doesn’t seem to mean anything very much at all.

This is from the CRISP, it doesn't mention Wisconsin or monkeys:

Grant Number: 3P30DK056336-05S2
Project Title: UAB CLINICAL NUTRITION RESEARCH UNIT
ALLISON, DAVID B. dallison@uab.edu PROFESSOR

Abstract: DESCRIPTION (adapted from the application) The proposed UAB Clinical Nutrition Research Unit (CNRU) will foster a multidisciplinary approach to basic, clinical and translational research with an emphasis on understanding the metabolic factors, environmental influences, and associated genetic traits underlying nutrition and obesity-related health problems. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) provides an ideal academic environment for interdisciplinary research centers. With a 50-year history of pioneering research, the Department of Nutrition Sciences currently includes 18 primary research faculty and $8.3 million in total direct cost funding (80% federal). In addition, the Department coordinates all of the extensive nutrition training and service programs at UAB. To complement its well-established nutrition research program, in 1990, the Department initiated a campus-wide effort to strengthen obesity research. Institutional support of $1.96 million enabled development of the Energy Metabolism Research Laboratory and recruitment of an outstanding team of scientists. The result was rapid growth in new/peer-reviewed funding and interdisciplinary collaborations, such that in 1996 UAB established an intramurally-funded University-Wide Obesity Nutrition Research Center which, with NIH funding, will evolve into the proposed CNRU. The CNRU research base comprises 60 investigators from 18 academic units, with total direct funding of $44 million for nutrition/obesity research (88% federal; 11 R01s). Of the 77 funded nutrition/obesity studies and approved P/F projects, 65 (84%) will use CNRU Cores. The Energy Metabolism/Body Composition Core will support metabolic studies in humans and small animals; Genetics Core will focus on research related to gene expression, polymorphism detection, and genetic animal models; Nutrient Analysis Core will provide an array of nutrient analyses and new methods development; and the Biostatistics Core will support study design and data analysis. The CNRU will also support three P/F studies, a New Investigator, and an Enrichment Program. With exceptional institutional support and an ideal academic infrastructure, UAB has established a strong base of obesity/nutrition research and is now poised to greatly expand this effort through creation of a CNRU.

Thesaurus Terms: biomedical facility, nutrition clinical research, human subject, nutrition related tag

Institution: UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM
530 3rd Avenue South
BIRMINGHAM, AL 35294
Fiscal Year: 2006
Department: NUTRITION SCIENCES
Project Start: 01-JUN-2000
Project End: 31-MAY-2007
ICD: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DIABETES AND DIGESTIVE AND KIDNEY DISEASES
IRG: ZDK1
[$785,700.]

Are Animal Models Predictive?