Good news for hypocrites

Imagine getting that roll off your gut and seeing a rippled six pack take its place just by sitting calming and imagining it. Yeah baby. And better yet, imagine being able to get up afterwards and gorge until you puked.

Now that's what I'm talkin' about.

Here's the good news: There might be beneficial neurological changes associated with periodically concentrating on feeling intense love and kindness for all beings. [See: "The Lotus and the Synapse," by Sharon Begley. Newsweek. March 25, 2008.]

Periodically. The "good news" is that you don't really have to give a hoot about all beings. The case of the Dalai Lama, that callous prick, teaches us that one can gorge on veal, pate, and squab, just so long as one occasionally sits quietly and feels empathic and compassionate. (My ass.)

The case of Richard Davidson suggests that one can gain the benefits of concentrating on loving kindness, and then get up and frighten the hell out of experimentally brain-damaged monkeys.

Now you can have your cake and eat it too! (Or, in this case, enjoy the benefits of loving-kindness while grinding sentient beings under your heel.)

The 3Rs

I doubt that there is a single Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) that does not pay lip service to the notion of Russell and Burch's 3Rs. The University of Wisconsin, Madison, for eaxample says:

UW-Madison is committed to "the Three R's"

Reduction--using the least number of animals necessary for statistically valid scientific results

Replacement--using non-animal alternatives (i.e., cell culture) or choosing a species lower on the phylogenetic tree (i.e., mice instead of monkeys)

Refinement--choosing methods and experimental procedures that minimize pain and distress in research animals (i.e., using laparoscopic techniques rather than laparotomy; defining endpoints as early in a disease process as possible)

Presumably, though I've been unable to find any clear regulatory statement to the effect, an experiment or study that could use human subjects, paid or volunteer, without significant risk, should do so rather than using animals. This seems like a reasonable interpretation of the 3Rs.

In other words, if a scientist can ask a human subject to follow a point of light with their eys, and then, say, beep a horn to see whether their attention is distracted, they should do so rather that conditioning a monkey to follow the point of light while restrained and working for a drop of liquid to overcome their fluid deprived thirst. One method is humane and the other is much less so. The 3Rs suggest that the use of humans in some studies is more ethical than using animals.

So, I was bothered by UW-Madison researchers who chose to - and were allowed to - use monkeys in a study that seems to have been more or less risk-free. I don't understand why human volunteers or paid participants weren't used.

I've posted the question at the PLoS article comment page, I've written to the editors of PLoS, and to Daniel J. Kelley, but have received no reply. My question is this: what characteristics of this study made it necessary to use animals, monkeys in this case, rather than human subjects?

If there is no good answer, then this seems to violate the spirit of the 3Rs and potentially, the letter of the Animal Welfare Act.

Automatic physiological waveform processing for FMRI noise correction and analysis Kelley DJ, Oakes TR, Greischar LL, Chung MK, Ollinger JM, Alexander AL, Shelton SE, Kalin NH, Davidson RJ. PLoS ONE. 2008.

Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America. [To whom correspondence should be addressed: E-mail:djkelley@wisc.edu]

Functional MRI resting state and connectivity studies of brain focus on neural fluctuations at low frequencies which share power with physiological fluctuations originating from lung and heart. Due to the lack of automated software to process physiological signals collected at high magnetic fields, a gap exists in the processing pathway between the acquisition of physiological data and its use in fMRI software for both physiological noise correction and functional analyses of brain activation and connectivity. To fill this gap, we developed an open source, physiological signal processing program, called PhysioNoise, in the python language. We tested its automated processing algorithms and dynamic signal visualization on resting monkey cardiac and respiratory waveforms. PhysioNoise consistently identifies physiological fluctuations for fMRI noise correction and also generates covariates for subsequent analyses of brain activation and connectivity.

Some more lip service:

"I consider myself a welfarist and think that animals need to be used only when absolutely necessary and under the most humane conditions.” From: Straight talk with… Frankie Trull. VOLUME 14 | NUMBER 2 | FEBRUARY 2008 NATURE MEDICINE

"The IACUC decides whether the researchers may conduct a study involving the use of animals and the parameters of such use. Some of the questions considered by the IACUC are: ... whether animals are absolutely necessary to achieve the result." From: Columbia University.

"What is often not realised is that scientists have strong ethical, economic and legal obligations to use animals in research only when absolutely necessary." From: The Research Defense Society (RDS).

Human Experimentation

"[P]ractically every present day protocol for the prevention, treatment, and control of disease, pain, and suffering is based on knowledge attained through research with animals." California Biomedical Research Association

Claims like this are ubiquitous in the propaganda defending animal experimentation. They must be written and published by people who have very limited knowledge of medical history.

In fact, human experimentation has been widespread and extensive throughout history. Claims that modern medical knowledge, practice, and treatments are primarily the result of animal experimentation conveniently overlook and disregard the many human research subjects used by scientists and doctors.

In very many cases, as chronicled in the books pictured above, these research subjects, the “human material,” have been slaves, the poor, prisoners, blacks, orphans, retarded people, and the elderly. In some cases, they’ve just been duped. This research has been carried out by lauded scientists and doctors (like Marian J. Simms pictured here) who have ridden to fame and fortune on the backs of the weak and defenseless. This body of work has contributed significantly to medical knowledge.

Claims that medical advancement has been dependent on animals is not only incorrect but also denies and thus discounts and demeans the suffering of the human victims of medical science whose health and lives have contributed to our body of medical knowledge.

There are parallels between the industry’s historical use of humans and current use animals.

In both cases:

the ambitions of the scientists had/have precedence over the well-being of the research subjects;

notoriety and/or financial benefit were/are common motivations for the research;

oversight was/is absent, or grudgingly or loosely enforced, resisted, or a public relations ploy;

defenders warned/warn of an end to medical science if the status quo is disturbed;

only in hindsight do mainstream journals and medical science organizations criticize the treatment of research subjects;

research methods and practices were/are secret;

criticism was/is dismissed out of hand;

critics were/are branded anti-science extremists.

Books pictured above include:

The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram
by Thomas Blass
From Publishers Weekly: "In the early 1960s, Stanley Milgram conducted a series of famous experiments proving that average citizens would readily inflict painful electric shocks on strangers if they were instructed orencouraged to do so by an authority figure." This explains the willingness of research assistants everywhere to hurt or kill when directed to do so.

The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness
by Jack El-Hai

The Treatment: The Story of Those Who Died in the Cincinnati Radiation Tests
by Martha Stephens
From Publishers Weekly: "From 1960 to 1972, a grisly and highly suspect research project was carried out in the bowels of Cincinnati General Hospital. Cancer patients, most of them in advanced stages of the disease, were exposed to massive quantities of radiation over long and continuous periods of time. Nearly all of them (over 100 altogether) died within weeks or months of the start of the irradiation 'therapy.'"

Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War (The Henry E. Sigerist Series in the History of Medicine)
by Susan E. Lederer
New England Journal of Medicine: "Lederer's writing is crisp and clear, her historical documentation is exhaustive, and her social commentary persuasive. This book is an important addition to the growing literature on the history of human experimentation and medical research."

Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison
by Allen Hornblum
From Library Journal:
"Relying on prisoners' firsthand reports, Hornblum (urban studies, Temple Univ.) has written a thorough account of the questionable medical experimentation carried out in Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison from the mid-1940s to 1974. Research on everything from cosmetics to chemical warfare agents was conducted there, often with minimal or no record keeping."

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
by Harriet A. Washington
From Publishers Weekly: Starred Review. "This groundbreaking study documents that the infamous Tuskegee experiments, in which black syphilitic men were studied but not treated, was simply the most publicized in a long, and continuing, history of the American medical establishment using African-Americans as unwitting or unwilling human guinea pigs. Washington, a journalist and bioethicist who has worked at Harvard Medical School and Tuskegee University, has accumulated a wealth of documentation, beginning with Thomas Jefferson exposing hundreds of slaves to an untried smallpox vaccine before using it on whites, to the 1990s, when the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University ran drug experiments on African-American and black Dominican boys to determine a genetic predisposition for 'disruptive behavior.'"

UCLA Primate Freedom Website Mirror

From The San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center:

UCLA Primate Freedom Website Mirror
by None
Monday Mar 17th, 2008 7:18 PM

The website of the UCLA Primate Freedom Project was shut down by an injunction.

But, now a mirror of the site has been set up:
http://uclaprimatefreedom.nuke24.net/index.html.

Vilas Monkeys in the news: 10 years later

WKOW, Madison's Channel 27, did a good job of covering the scandal 10 years ago. They put together a news segment on the occasion of the 10 year anniversary of the monkeys being shipped away.

It's well worth watching.

"UW never entered into an agreement like that..." (Vilas Monkeys)

Get this:

According to Bogle, Primate Center directors and members signed three different letters in 1989, 1990 and 1995, stating the center would not perform harmful experiments on the monkeys unless a monkey had unique genetic traits

UW Primate Center director Joe Kemnitz [pictured] said UW never entered into an agreement like that because it would not make sense.

From: Badger Herald. Friday, March 7, 2008

UW National Primate Research Center Director, Joseph Kemnitz: "UW never entered into an agreement like that..."

I am gladdened by Dr. Kemnitz's willingness to mislead a student reporter. It validates my impression that vivisectors are the most despicable of liars. This matters because I tend to trust what I'm being told and continually wonder whether I'm mistaken about the vivisectors' claims; I trust people not to lie. But I've seen over time the lies spewed by the vivisectors and their fans. It's good but very sad to know that my dismal opinions of them are justified.

The Vilas Park Monkeys: The Ten Year Anniversary

In the summer of 1964, the University of Wisconsin Primate Center, then under the direction of Harry Harlow, built a monkey house at the Vilas Park Zoo, a park owned and operated by Dane County, WI.

In 1972, the Primate Center received one of the last groups of monkeys trapped and exported from India. These animals were kept in the monkey house and eventually became the largest continually observed intact social group of rhesus monkeys in the world.

By 1989, much had been written about this group and two other groups that were also housed at the monkey house. Some zoo goers knew the monkeys by name. The monkey house was the top attraction at the zoo until it was destroyed.

In 1989, public protest had been unable to stop the university from harvesting babies for use in its labs. Animal rights oriented graffiti began appearing on and around the monkey house. As a result, the Primate Center promised the Henry Vilas Zoo, in a written document – signed by the Primate Center director, Robert Goy, five senior staff, and by the monkey house supervisor – that no animals born at the zoo would ever again be used in any harmful experimentation, and that, if the animals were sent elsewhere, they would remain protected by the agreement.

The primate center renewed this agreement in writing on two subsequent occasions over the course of six years.

In 1997, a whistleblower leaked documents that demonstrated unequivocally that within months of the first agreement, the primate center had resumed its culling and that over the intervening eight years, at least 201 monkeys had been secretly taken from the zoo, experimented on and killed in the UW labs, or were sold to other labs around the country.

The university said it was sorry. Within days all funding for the care of the zoo monkeys dried up. The university said that the monkeys would have to be disposed of in some way. The university wanted to send the monkeys to a lab.

A Dane County Supervisor introduced a resolution asking that the Dane County consider ways to pay for the care of the monkeys or to have them relocated to a sanctuary. The university vigorously opposed the resolution and argued strongly against it before three committees and the entire Board of Supervisors. The University said the monkeys were a health risk and too expensive for the county to care for.

But school children raised money to protect the monkeys. Thousands of people signed a petition asking the university to work with the county to find a way to protect the monkeys and donated to the Monkey Protection Fund. Local media covered the story for months, three county sub-committees voted unanimously to help the monkeys, and the county government overwhelmingly passed the resolution intended to help the monkeys. The governor's wife, Sue Anne Thompson, recorded a public service announcement to help the monkeys, and no one who attended public meetings spoke against the monkeys or the resolution other than Primate Center staff and the chairman of the Zoo Commission.

In the end, the university successfully frightened Kathleen Falk, the Dane County Executive, into choosing not to use county funds to aid the monkeys. The Alliance for Animals found a sanctuary in San Antonio willing to take the monkeys; the sanctuary donated $15,000 to cover the transportation costs and initial care. The university refused to let the monkeys go there, calling it a “roadside zoo.” They shipped off two of the groups, the wild-captured group that had lived in the monkey house since 1972 and a second group, about 150 rhesus monkeys all told, on March 4, 1997, while people protested at the gate.

They were sent to the Tulane primate center where they endured ninety days of solitary confinement which Tulane termed quarantine. Their family groups were destroyed. Some were placed into breeding situations, some died (at least one during solitary confinement), others were experimented on and then killed.

The third group, about 50 stump-tailed macaques, was hard for the university to get rid of; no lab wanted them. They finally sent them to the same sanctuary that they had previously told Dane County Supervisors was a roadside zoo and far worse than a laboratory.

During the course of the agreement that they would not hurt the monkeys, the university secretly used and sold 201 of them, and then shipped 150 to Tulane. This amounts to 351 individual lies to the citizens of Dane County.

Once all the monkeys were gone, the university had the monkey house bulldozed and hauled away. It’s almost as if they didn’t want people to remember anything about the Vilas Park Monkeys.

This is only one of a number of occasions that the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center and the scientists working there have been caught lying to the public, violating scientific protocols or covering up the details of their experiments on monkeys.

Learn more at www.madisonmonkeys.com

UCLA circles the wagons

Apparently and expectedly, the 20 recent visitors to this blog from UCLA must not think too much of my recommendations for ways to de-escalate the conflict between the university's vivisectionists and anti-cruelty activists. Go figure. (Maybe they were people without much say in university policy, but something tells me that at least a few of them weren't students.)

This shouldn't surprise anyone of course, given the fact that UCLA, like esentially every other university in the country, has absolutely refused to discuss its use of animals in public in detail. It's almost as if they are embarrassed by what they do, worry about the public's reaction, and don't want there to be any substantive public dialog about the matter. Or, maybe, that is precisely what keeps them hunkered down.

Instead of actually engaging the public and talking openly about what they do, they have filed a law suit against an idea. The absurdity and naivete demonstrated by this hints at causes underlying the abject failure of animal models of human disease and drug response.

UCLA to seek court protection for animal researchers

The university said it will ask a Superior Court judge in Santa Monica to limit the activities of animal rights groups and activists, including websites.

By Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 21, 2008

Seeking to protect scientists who conduct experiments using animals, UCLA will go to court today to request a temporary restraining order against animal rights groups and activists accused of harassing university researchers.

The university said it would ask a Superior Court judge in Santa Monica to limit the activities of five individuals and three organizations that maintain websites, including one that identifies researchers and lists their home addresses.

"We are hoping to send an important message that violence and harassment of our faculty is absolutely outrageous and totally inappropriate," said UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block. "We really want to act before someone gets hurt."

UCLA researchers have been the target of several attacks in recent months. Two weeks ago, someone left an incendiary device at the home of professor Edythe London, who uses vervet monkeys in nicotine-addiction research funded by tobacco giant Philip Morris. The device charred her front door before going out.

Earlier, animal activists claimed credit for breaking a window in London's house and using a garden hose to flood the ground floor, causing more than $20,000 in damage.

Attacks on other researchers have included two incendiary devices that didn't go off, one beneath a researcher's car and another that was apparently placed by mistake at the home of a neighbor.

In statements on their websites, activists said the attacks are warranted because scientists who conduct such experiments are torturing the animals.

They oppose all use of animals in research.

The university said it would seek a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction against the websites of the Animal Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Brigade, which have allegedly claimed responsibility for unlawful activities against UCLA staff and their homes.

Also to be named in the court action is the UCLA Primate Freedom Project, which is not affiliated with the university and whose website displays the photographs, home addresses and phone numbers of researchers under the heading "Targets."

Christine Garcia, an attorney who has represented animal activists in the past, said UCLA's plan to obtain a court order appeared to be part of a continuing attempt by the university to curb legal protests, such as residential picketing, by opponents of animal research.

richard.paddock@latimes.com

The Nature of Rights

I recently had a conversation about the nature of rights. Are rights conferred or are they inherent? The person I was conversing with held that rights are mere constructs, given to us by human-made laws and that the idea that rights are inherent is absurd.

The most common way out of this conflict is the claim that rights are God-given.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But I’m an atheist, and I believe that rights are inherent. The reference to a Creator isn’t available to me.

But we each have many characteristics, and I don’t believe that these are God-given either. Many of our characteristics are the result of billions of years of accumulated mutations to our DNA. Darwinian evolution affected the statistical prevalence of certain traits encoded in our and our relatives’ DNA with the result that there between 2 and 100 million species in the world today.

Some of these species perceive the world around them. Many species perceive the world differently. They may see certain colors, hear certain frequencies, or smell various chemicals that members of other species cannot. Bats hear ultrasonic frequencies and perceive the physical world through echolocation. Platypuses and many other species perceive the electromagnetic fields generated by other animals. Birds migrate using the earth’s magnetic field, apparently.

Sometimes, even members of the same species perceive the same phenomena differently. One simple example is the fact that human eye witnesses sometimes describe witnessed events very differently.

These observations are germane to the question of the source of rights because they show that not perceiving something doesn’t mean that it isn’t there and that we can perceive real things but might not yet know how we are able to do so.

Let’s do a thought experiment. If rights are assigned, if they are constructs created by law and not a characteristic that exists whether acknowledged or not, then, if the law did not cede a particular right, there could be no violation by treating someone in accord with the law.

But this would mean then, that we would feel no outrage at the Nazi’s treatment of those deemed by law to be subhuman and without rights. It would mean that we would be unbothered by any harm to another unless the law granted them some right that could be violated.

But this isn’t the case. Slavery was legal, but some of us have always been outraged by it. We apparently perceive something about it that is unsettling.

I’m not sure that “rights” is the best term to capture this notion that harming others can amount to the breach of some barrier or the crossing of some line that leads to outrage, but it’s all we seem to have at our disposal.

It is the outrage that we feel when we see or read about others being hurt in certain circumstances that motivates the rights movement. We seem to react intuitively and recognize that something has been violated. But it is only something inherent that could be violated since, in many situations, the law or legally conferred rights aren’t since there are no conferred rights to violate.

It is this visceral reaction to those things we respond to as injustices that makes be believe that rights are inherent and unalienable. If one is born and subject to the experience we call suffering, then it is likely that one is also born with the right not to be subjected to such an experience. I believe this because I am so outraged by certain images of suffering regardless of whether any legal right is being violated.

I am outraged because someone’s rights are being violated. These rights must be inherent.

Frankie L. Trull

Frankie [Francine] L. Trull is founder and president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research (FBR), the nation’s oldest and largest organization dedicated to advancing human and animal health by promoting public understanding and respect for the humane and responsible use of animals in medical and scientific research. She is also president of FBR’s sister organization, the National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR) , which advocates for sound public policy that recognizes the essential role of lab animals in biomedical research and discovery.

In 1995, Ms. Trull established Policy Directions Inc. and serves as president of the company whose goal is to serve private corporations and nonprofit organizations in addressing legislative and regulatory initiatives and influencing policy development.

A frequent guest speaker and media resource, Ms. Trull has written several articles about the importance of biomedical research and the threat posed to the American research community by animal activism. She has been honored by the Society for Neuroscience, and in 1990 received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Endocrine Society.

Ms. Trull received her undergraduate degree from Boston University and her Master’s degree from Tufts University.

Trull’s name regularly appears on op-eds in newspapers around the country. Another one was published in the Feb. 9, 2008 Capital Times newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. It was titled: “Rats, mice are keys players in cutting edge-research.” Maybe it was written in response to the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s recent announcement that it wants to build a new gargantuan rat and mouse warehouse.

Trull appeals to our natural concern for the welfare of children and makes wild and unfounded claims about the utility of using rats and mice, but doesn’t get to her main point until the end of her letter:

But one of the major obstacles to future medical advances is animal rights extremists, who are becoming the flat-worlders of the modern science movement. Because they oppose all animal research for all reasons, they are a serious roadblock to medical progress. If we are truly passionate about our children having a better future, are we willing to compromise the promise of improved treatments and cures achieved through humane and responsible animal research? Are we willing to sacrifice the prospect of eradicating disease in the name of animal rights extremism?

As the future horizon of science and medicine comes into focus, should we allow the myopic vision of a few flat-world extremists to force the planet to forgo medical discovery?

Actually, the major obstacle to future medical advances is the dismal progress being made by basic medical science – largely based on animal models:

The Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science convened a Clinical Research Roundtable in 2000 to analyze the success of basic research. They reported in 2003 that there is a “disconnection between the promise of basic science and the delivery of better health.” And that unless new strategies are enacted, the “data and information produced by the basic science enterprise will not result in a tangible public benefit.” The Journal of the American Medical Association characterized the report as not worded strongly enough.

Simply, the massive increase in funding that has resulted in the likely large increase in the numbers of animals used has had little appreciable effect on human healthcare. The suffering of the millions of animals being used annually is not advancing medical care. See: An argument for ending the use of animals in biomedical research.

Actually, Frankie Trull isn’t concerned with medical research or children; she’s focused narrowly on criticism of anyone or any group that speaks out for animals or unregulated corporate greed. And she does this because she’s paid to do so. Policy Directions, Inc. reported nearly $7,000,000 in income between 1998-2004.

According to the Center for Public Integrity’s online database LobbyWatch, Policy Directions Inc. lobbies for a number of companies and groups with clear financial interests in the marketing and consumption of animals for various reasons. These include:

1) Nestlé USA Inc. (The most boycotted brand in the UK because of its “unethical use and promotion of formula for babies in third world countries.” Nestlé won a global Internet poll for the world’s “least responsible company.” [So much for Trull's false appeal to a normal person's concern for children.]
2) Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) [See SourceWatch]
3) Baylor University
4) Merck & Co.
5) American Feed Industry Association
6) Altria Group Inc
7) National Association for Biomedical Research [Apparently hiring herself.]
8) State University of New York
9) Amgen Inc.
10) Genzyme Corp.
11) Baxter Healthcare Corp.
12) U.S. ONCOLOGY
13) Society for Neuroscience
14) Sanofi-Aventis
15) National Renderers Association
16) Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals
17) Procter & Gamble Co.
18) American College of Neuropsychopharmachology
19) Grocery Manufacturers of America
20) Pharmavite LLC
21) Turner Strategies
22) Alpharma
23) Cellerant Therapeutics
24) Depression & Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA)
25) Genelabs Technologies, Inc
26) Eli Lilly and Co.
27) Visx Inc
28) Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
29) Orphan Medical, Inc.
30) Biotech Coalition
31) Covance Inc.
32) Bayer Corp.
33) Animal Health Institute
34) Cosmetic, Toiletry & Fragrance Association
35) Ostex International
36) Biological Product Coalition
37) Adams Laboratories, Inc.
38) Alan Ritchey Inc
39) Aksys Ltd.
40) Anthra Pharmaceuticals
41) Autocyte 0
42) Bausch & Lomb
43) Britz - Heidbrink
44) Cephalon Inc.
45) Health Policy Strategies
46) Cp Pharmaceuticals, Ltd.
47) Medical Foods
48) Oregon Poultry Farmers
49) Sensormatic Electronics
50) Schwarz Pharma
51) Quest Diagnostics Inc.
52) Society of the Plastics Industry
53) Visible Genetics Inc.
54) Transkaryotic Therapties, Inc
55) Sequus Pharmaceuticals
56) Privacomp. Inc.com
57) Pfizer Inc.
58) Intuitive Surgical
59) Instrumentation Metrics
62) Burger King Corp.
63) Biotechnology Industry Organization
64) Barr Laboratories Inc.
65) Athena Neurosciences
60) Image Guided Technologies, Inc.
61) Elan Corporation

Some people will say and do anything if the price is right.