Payola. Kickback. Graft.

Call it what you want, but by any name it’s seedy and corrupt.

In 1997/98 when the University of Wisconsin, Madisons’s NIH primate center acting-director Joseph Kemnitz successfully disposed of the Vilas monkeys and destroyed the monkey house, thereby reducing the likelihood of the public remembering the UW primate center’s and NIH’s apparent collusion to get rid of the monkeys the university had promised not to torture, but did, he was rewarded with the Primate Center Directorship. Insiders felt he was incompetent and not up to the job, but his success at sweeping the scandal under the rug and out of sight seems to have been more important to those in power than good science or administrative acumen.

When the university learned that a public education center was going to be installed next door to the primate center, they pressured the property owner, Roger Charly (that's him in front of one of his stores) owner of Budget Bicycle and Machinery Row Bicycles, to break his contract with us. The law firm they turned to for help was Foley & Lardner.

We will probably never know for sure, but it is interesting to wonder just how nervous NIH was over the possibility of its primate experimentation program being nationally showcased. One potential measure of NIH’s gratitude for Foley & Lardner’s services is the recently announced $208 million NIH contract they were just awarded.

Sanaga-Yong

See too: Dorothy's Wake.

"No real accountability."

First, read this (and note the multiple mutilations of the poor mouse's ear.): UW-Madison seeks better supervision of research. Deborah Ziff | 608-252-6234 | dziff@madison.com | October 23, 2009


I attended the "town hall meeting" mentioned at the end of the article and came away with some interesting impressions.

1. The meeting was held in the Humanities building; most of the attendees apparently, from their comments, were from the humanities and non-biological sciences. I was struck by how uninterested in the university’s problems the audience seemed to be. I don't think they know what the problems are; their questions were uniformly: "How will the restructuring affect me, my ability to get funding, my program?" Me, me, me.

They seemed to have no idea or knowledge that the university is being investigated for NIH Major Action violations, violations of its Public Health Service Assurance, or that the university fears loss of its AAALAC accreditation. (Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care.) They didn't seem to understand or care about the reasons that the administration is alarmed. They didn't seem to understand that UW administration's conversation with people in the humanities was more or less done for the sake of appearance. Even a statement by Provost Paul DeLuca that federal funding -- somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion a year -- is at risk because of the university's failed oversight of its scientists' use of animals and infectious disease research didn't seem to really sink in with this crowd.

When English professors and historians sit quietly by as the university violates regulation after regulation involving its animal care and use we don't have to think too deeply or for very long to understand how and why past atrocities were allowed to occur without comment from within.

2. DeLuca said that the point of the restructuring was to make issues regarding compliance with animal care and use and biosafety “not on the table for discussion any more.” He said that by having a new position at the top – someone who would be "responsible" for all the problems currently plaguing the university’s billion-dollar enterprise – would solve all these problems.

3. Chancellor Biddy Martin said that there had been “a number of near misses” and that the university can not make assurances to federal agencies right now that it is in compliance with federal regulations concerning animal care and biosafety.

4. She said that there have been only 2 or 3 biosafety personnel trying to keep tabs on 200-300 projects.

5. Chancellor Martin also said that the restructuring is needed because right now, and for a long time apparently, there has been “no real accountability” for failures in the oversight of animal care and biosafety.

The take home message from the meeting is that past assurances from the university that there is good and stringent oversight of its animal care and use and of the safety of its infectious disease labs, has been pure and unadulterated public relations crap. Chancellor Biddy Martin and Provost Paul DeLuca as much as admitted this and used it as an excuse for the restructuring they intend to put in place.

The main change they want to make is the establishment of a permanent lobbying office in Washington D.C. It appears from their statements at the meeting that the substance of the problem – the twisted culture that allows animals to be starved, experimented on without observation, cut into without expertise, that allows diseases to be genetically modified to be more dangerous – is of little real concern. The main issue to them is the possible loss of funding and the opportunity to lobby for more taxpayer dollars.

It’s a corrupt and sick system from top to bottom.

For the idiot who doesn't know who I am.

An anonymous (how very brave) comment recently claimed that I hide my true identity on this blog. It's true that I don't paste my name in neon on everything I am involved with, but anyone other than a complete idiot with an interest in knowing who I am will find it easy to discern.

You can watch me rant on TV here.

Tradition and Delight

Mostly, we don’t think too deeply about the things we do. We do them for various reasons. Tradition and fashion, though apparently and sometimes genuinely in conflict, are common motivators for our behaviors and actions.

We paint the house in subdued colors if the other houses on the street are painted in subdued colors. We wear clothes similar to the clothes others are wearing, style our hair similarly, and eat similar foods. We sometimes, sometimes habitually, choose to do things that make us feel good, like eating a favorite food.

Seldom do we do these things with much introspection or questioning.

People eat animals for two reasons. Eating them is a tradition, and we have developed a taste for their flesh and secretions. These are relatively trivial reasons when weighed against the suffering inherent in animal agriculture.

Usually, when people pause to consider this equation they come up with a few other possible reasons for eating animals, but none of them have much weight unless, perhaps, one is an Inuit or a Kalahari bushman with no access to grocery stores. For most people, tradition and gustatory delight are adequate reasons to keep eating them.

If the suffering inherent in eating beef, pork, poultry, and fish is justified with such trivialities then no real consideration of other uses of animals seems possible. This explains why the vivisector with the monkey strapped into the chair is so confused by the public’s complaints and concerns. If tradition and flavor are believed to be reason enough to keep animals in miserable conditions and to treat them poorly and kill them, then surely they can be sacrificed on the alter of scientific knowledge without qualm.

If you sit in the stands and eat a hotdog, how could you care about a terrified calf being roped around the neck and slammed to the ground?

Discussions about animal use in science and entertainment are hard to have with people who believe their tasty fat is reason enough to make their lives hell.

Alzheimer's Disease

chicagotribune.com

Leading Alzheimer's researcher: Animal experiments will not help humans
MCT News Service
October 23, 2009

The Society for Neuroscience just held its annual conference in Chicago.

I attended _ not as a member, though neuroscience is my field, but to protest the organization's stated goal of broadening support for animal research. The society, like animal experimenters everywhere, perceives "growing threats" to animal research and seeks to recruit additional allies with a "vested interest" in promoting animal experimentation.

Every vested interest is entitled to its own propaganda, but such an effort warrants a response from neuroscience researchers who instead advocate kindness to animals.

Neuroscientists with established research credentials and a PETA membership are rare. They are often viewed by faculty colleagues as untrustworthy or even treasonous agents provocateurs as they are inclined to raise both scientific and ethical objections to the most egregious abuses of animals within our own universities. Yet medical school faculty members who are also animal activists are uniquely well-qualified to expose basic scientists' disingenuous, misleading or overreaching claims their animal research is scientifically and ethically justified because the results may someday, somehow, possibly benefit humans.

Contrived connections between cruelty-intensive basic neuroscience research and future human welfare is a tacit admission by neuroscientists the general public, which ultimately funds most research, would recoil in horror from their more grotesque monkey, dog or cat experiments and overwhelmingly condemn them if they knew they were not going to help humans.

One particularly egregious example is a decades-long series of highly invasive monkey experiments performed at universities across the country to study neural control of visual tracking. Luckless monkeys have coils implanted in both eyes, multiple craniotomies for electrode placements in their brains and head immobilization surgeries in which screws, bolts and plates are directly attached to their skulls. This is followed by water deprivation to produce a "work ethic" so they will visually track moving objects.

First impressions are usually correct in questions of cruelty to animals, and most of us cannot even bear to look at pictures of these monkeys with their electrode-implanted brains and bolted heads being put through their paces in a desperate attempt to get a life-sustaining sip of water.

Such cruelty is justified in the corresponding grant application by invoking the possibility the resulting data may allow us to find the cause and cure for diseases such as Alzheimer's. But we who have spent decades in Alzheimer's disease research recognize such a blank-check justification is an ethical bait-and-switch since this neural pathway is not even involved in Alzheimer's disease and these experiments have never been referenced in real Alzheimer's disease research.

Because such monkey torture will not lead to improved human health, you don't need to be an animal rights advocate to wonder if an ethical cost-benefit analysis might conclude the ends just don't justify the means, especially since rapid advances in sophisticated high-resolution neuroimaging on humans will very soon obviate the need for such invasive techniques.

Because grant money comes with animal research, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees mandated by the Animal Welfare Act to prevent excessive cruelty have been rendered largely ineffectual, as their membership is stacked predominantly with animal researchers.

Most animal experiments on monkeys, dogs, cats and other animals are not related to human benefit, and describing such research as "humane" requires an Orwellian-newspeak definition of the word. "Humane" means to treat with kindness, consideration or mercy, and as long as words have meanings that cannot be twisted Humpty Dumpty-like into whatever we want them to mean, animal experimentation is not and can never be humane.

___

Lawrence A. Hansen, M.D., is a board-certified pathologist and neuropathologist and a professor of neuroscience and pathology at the University of California-San Diego, where he also leads the neuropathology core of the Alzheimer Disease Research Center. In March 2009, he was recognized by the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease as one of the top 100 Alzheimer's disease investigators in the world. Dr. Hansen may be reached c/o People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.

Conversation between Singer and Dawkins

The Science of Empathy

Worth listening to, but I wish de Waal would be a whole lot more empathic and sympathetic when it comes to his colleagues at Yerkes's hideous experiments on monkeys. His silence about the problems at the Wisconsin primate center, where he used to work, and at Yerkes, doesn't suggest that he himself is very empathic or concerned about others' suffering.

http://www.emorywheel.com/detail.php?n=28850

Early behavior may predict career choice

I suspect that early in some children's lives, they demonstrate a propensity toward callousness or cruelty. If a caring caregiver is nearby and can instill the idea that such behavior is inappropriate, these children probably develop more or less normally and go on to lead lives that are not filled with hurting others routinely.

But if someone isn't nearby to correct them when these first manifestations of cruelty emerge, then the enjoyment they receive may be sufficient reinforcement to crystallize the behavior, to make cruelty a part of their "normal" repertoire of behavior.

By the time these children get to college, they may have already determined that a career in a branch of biology that gives them access to animals is a good fit for them.

Take the case of Erin D. Gleason, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Somewhere in her past, if we could replay her life, after she had already learned to be cruel, someone encouraged her to keep it up. Maybe it was a family member, a twisted neighbor or teacher, even she may not know when or why she started to enjoy hurting animals. It probably came naturally to her and was not stifled when she was first acting out her inclinations.

Most behaviors can be reinforced with an appropriate system of reward and punishment. Erin was recently rewarded for her cruelty by being able to make a presentation to others like herself in a setting that she probably felt was prestigious. She was further reinforced by having her research showcased in the paper:

Fatherly behavior may be learned early

Chicago Sun-Times
Monifa Thomas
October 19, 2009

How a father raises his offspring may be influenced by the care he received from his own father as an infant, new animal research suggests.

The study, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience being held at McCormick Place, is one of the first to show that paternal behavior, like maternal behavior, may be passed on from generation to generation through non-genetic means.

To test this idea, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison observed the parenting skills of two sets of male California mice: those raised by castrated fathers and those whose fathers weren't castrated. Castrating California mice makes them less attentive, hands-on fathers.

Researchers found that the sons of castrated mice spent less time with their offspring and left the nest more frequently. These mice also engaged in less huddling and grooming with their offspring.

"Our results suggest that early behavioral environment, and in particular the paternal care received during development, may shape the amount and quality of paternal behaviors expressed by mammalian fathers, perhaps including humans," lead researcher Erin Gleason said.

To me, her results suggest that castrating California mice disrupts their behavior. Period. Conjecture about what this may or may not say about human behavior is pure prattle, something young developing vivisectors are taught to say in order to give their work a facade of justifiability and to shield their ilk and industry from public condemnation.

Consider some of her past experiences:

2003-2004, Senior Honors at Bates College: In Cheryl McCormick’s lab, we had previously determined that chronic restraint and social stress during adolescence cause long-term, sex-specific changes in a rat’s behavioral response to nicotine. I repeated these studies and performed Fos-immunocytochemistry on females to identify brain regions involved in this phenomenon.

(A look at the publication list from the McCormick lab helps explain how one might become ever more inured to suffering.)

New Comers

It's a sad irony that the few vivisectors with the cojones to speak out in defense of hurting animals are so poorly informed about the history of the animal rights movement, and particularly the movement's past twenty or so years. They seem to have no knowledge of the years of failed effort by activists to engage with them in public discussion about the way animals are treated.

These newcomers seem to think that people like Dr. Jerry Vlasak have come to a snap conclusion that violence will likely be necessary to curtail the massive unrelenting enslavement and torture of animals. Vlasak is a trauma surgeon who actually saves people's lives as opposed to, for instance, vivisectors who make wild claims about pie-in-the-sky possibilities that driving monkeys insane might one day lead to some understanding of the chemical mechanisms of some currently used drug.

These newcomers have no knowledge, apparently, of the literally hundreds, maybe thousands of polite invitations to talk about and debate the issue publicly that have been left unanswered, dismissed curtly, or that have been ridiculed by their peers and predecessors. They seem not to know that people like Vlasak, very long-time activists, have come to their conclusions by way of years of refusal by vivisectors (and other monsters) to talk openly in public with their critics, of the industry's legendary secrecy, of case after case of hideous abuse and essentially no punishment.

The current state of affairs is the natural consequence of a long history of arrogance; a history of hiding in the ivory towers and hoping that the mob outside the door would just go away. They haven't, and they won't.

The newcomers don't seem to understand who made the bed they are lying in today.

A pretty good article that demonstrates this increasingly hopeless morass can be read here:

Researchers to animal-rights activists: We're not afraid. CNN October 9, 2009.