PETA exposes a bit of cruelty at UW-Madison

Note: As I warned earlier, the Yin lab website is no longer accessible to the public. Just as the university blocked informed critics from posting on its Facebook page, it has now censored any public inspection of the Yin lab's website. Funny, in a sad anti-democracy anti-education sort of way.]

Normal people will find the video above a little disturbing.... I don't know the date of the photos, but I'm certain that they come from the Yin lab. Some years ago I stumbled across the Yin Lab webpage and snagged these photos (they seem like a happy crew.)

That's Tom Yin in front. The photos were part of a spread on the construction of the lab's new (at the time) sound proof chamber for conducting its experiments on cats. It's mentioned in many of Yin's papers; the tall fellow in the back is his main collaborator -- Daniel J. Tollin, Associate Scientist. Ph.D., 1998, University of Oxford.




Here are a couple of links to Yin's info at the university. (It might disappear anytime now.)

http://neuro.wisc.edu/faculty/yin.asp

http://www.neuro.wisc.edu/yin/

http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/yin/labproj.html

Check out this video as well before its gone too. It's from the Yin lab. It's much less forthcoming than the PETA video. In the Yin video, it appears that the cat's head is fixed in place. http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/yin/pinna.asf

As I mentioned above, Yin's main collaborator is Danial J. Tollin, seen here pretending to be a cat before he digs into her brain and ears:

Here's a picture of Tollin's house he kindly added to his university webpage. Proving once again the vivisectors' humility and the austerity and slave wages they endure in their efforts to save humanity:

Here's the main PETA page on this. (They don't mention Yin or Tollin by name; it's my understanding that they can't mention who the researchers are. I'm not similarly constrained.)

Here's the Wisconsin State Journal article -- no photos, no link to PETA's photos. Now that's good reporting!

Here are some links to some of his published papers. Check out the Materials and Methods sections.

Short-latency, goal-directed movements of the pinnae to sounds that produce auditory spatial illusions. Tollin DJ, McClaine EM, Yin TC. J Neurophysiol. 2010:

METHODS

Three adult female cats were behaviorally trained to localize sound sources using operant conditioning procedures and food reward. Each cat was surgically fitted with a head post and eye and pinna coils made of fine wire (Cooner Wire, Chatsworth, CA). A detailed description of the surgical and behavioral procedures are given in Populin and Yin (1998a). The magnetic search coil technique was used to monitor eye and pinna position (Fuchs and Robinson 1966) by implanting eye coils around the eye ball and pinna coils subcutaneously behind the pinna as described earlier (Populin and Yin 1998b; Tollin et al. 2009). The eye coils were 18 to 19 mm in diameter, and the pinna coils were 10 mm in diameter. The head was restrained by a head post in these experiments. All procedures used were approved by the University of Wisconsin Animal Use and Care Committee [this is misleading since there are more than one -- guess it's best not to be too specific.] and also complied with the National Institutes of Health [miserably weak] guidelines for animal use.

Cats were food deprived 5–6 d/wk once training began. Body weight was monitored daily and maintained within 15% of pre-experimental weight. Water was provided ad libitum, and the animals were fed without restriction on nontesting days. Once accustomed to the head restraint, cats were trained to make saccades to locations of visual and acoustic stimuli in a dark, anechoic chamber.

Sound-localization performance in the cat: the effect of restraining the head. Tollin DJ, Populin LC, Moore JM, Ruhland JL, Yin TC. Journal of Neurophysiology 2005.

Psychophysical investigation of an auditory spatial illusion in cats: the precedence effect. Tollin DJ, Yin TC. J Neurophysiol. 2003: "Five adult female cats chosen for their friendliness and clean middle ears were used in these experiments."

Here's the university's tepid response to all this: Statement regarding sound localization research at UW-Madison.

Citations of a Yin Publication

A few days after PETA released the photos of Double Trouble, the cat at the center of their complaints to the USDA and NIH, an editorial by Dr. Lawrence Hansen was published in the Wisconsin State Journal. See Dr. Lawrence Hansen: Cruel cat experiments unnecessary. 9-15-2012.

An anonymous poster took exception to Hansen's statement that Yin's work isn't being cited "in studies on human hearing" and pointed to a couple examples of scientists studying human hearing that he or she felt proved the point. I wondered about this.

If you go to Google Scholar and enter Yin TC or Yin TCT, you'll be able to find many papers by him, and by clicking "cited by" under an entry you can see papers that cite that one. Try it yourself: http://scholar.google.com/

I skimmed through some of the titles and finally picked one that seemed fairly on point for the sound localization experiments that Double Trouble was used in. That paper is:

Behavioral studies of sound localization in the cat
LC Populin, TCT Yin - The Journal of Neuroscience, 1998.

According to Scholar it has been cited 90 times. It is the only paper I have looked at, so am making no specific claims about Yin's work overall.

I looked at each citation. If the title of the referring paper was clear, I didn't look at the abstract or the paper itself. If I was unable to tell from the title whether the referring paper was a paper on human hearing or a report on experiments on animals, I looked further, sometimes having to look at the Materials and Methods sections of the papers.

I eliminated most review articles under the belief that they were likely to cite any and every paper published over some period of time on a particular topic. I made one exception and included a review of papers based on experiments on monkeys. I also eliminated book chapters.

I ended up with a list of 73 papers published in scientific journals and one doctoral dissertation. Scholar included a paper dated two years prior to "Behavioral studies" but I went ahead and included it in the list.

In summary, 72 papers cited Yin's "Behavioral studies of sound localization in the cat."

36 of the papers are reports on experiments on cats.
7 of the papers are reports on experiments on owls.
5 of the papers are reports on experiments on bats.
5 of the papers are reports on experiments on monkeys.
2 of the papers are reports on experiments on Mongolian gerbils.
1 of the papers is a report on experiments on "small ground-living animals."
1 of the papers is a report on experiments on mice.
1 of the papers is a report on experiments on "unanesthetized animals."
1 of the papers is a report on experiments on ferrets.
1 of the papers is a report on experiments on budgerigars (parakeets).
1 of the papers is a report on experiments on sand cats (Felis margarita).
1 of the papers is a report on experiments on Long-Evans rats.
1 of the papers is a report on experiments on "Three Species of Birds."
1 of the papers is a report on a computational model of the precedence effect.
4 of the papers are citations of Yin's paper by people studying humans. Three of them are from the same authors and have nothing to do with Yin's experiments on cats. Here's the passage that cites Yin:

Our goal was to develop a system that uses only a single muscle, which preferably was not used for any other natural function. As such, we chose the auricularis superior (AS) muscle (above the ear) which has no known use in humans (animals use a functionally equivalent muscle to direct the ear toward a sound source [21]). ( [21] L. C. Populin and T. C. T. Yin, “Behavioral studies of sound localization in the cat,” J. Neurosci., vol. 18, pp. 2147–2160, 1998.)

The one paper that cites Yin that is a report from scientists studying human hearing is Human sound-localization behavior accounts for ocular drift. TJ Van Grootel, AJ Van Opstal - Journal of neurophysiology, 2010.

Reading through the paper it doesn't appear to me that their work with humans relied on Yin's paper, but its subject matter is over my head. In any case, it's clear that this one paper, Behavioral studies of sound localization in the cat, has been largely ignored by scientists and doctors studying human hearing.

Maybe someone else will repeat this exercise for other papers from the Yin lab.

The list of referring papers summarized above:

Papers Citing: Behavioral studies of sound localization in the cat LC Populin, TCT Yin - The Journal of neuroscience, 1998

1. The structure of spatial receptive fields of neurons in primary auditory cortex of the cat JF Brugge, RA Reale, JE Hind - The Journal of neuroscience, 1996

2. Physiological studies of the precedence effect in the inferior colliculus of the cat. II. Neural mechanisms RY Litovsky, TCT Yin - Journal of neurophysiology, 1998

3. Cortical control of sound localization in the cat: unilateral cooling deactivation of 19 cerebral areas S Malhotra, AJ Hall, SG Lomber - Journal of neurophysiology, 2004

4. Location coding by opponent neural populations in the auditory cortex [cats] GC Stecker, IA Harrington, JC Middlebrooks - PLoS biology, 2005

5. Double dissociation of 'what' and 'where' processing in auditory cortex [cats] SG Lomber, S Malhotra - Nature neuroscience, 2008

6. Physiological studies of the precedence effect in the inferior colliculus of the cat. I. Correlates of psychophysics RY Litovsky, TCT Yin - Journal of neurophysiology, 1998

7. Bimodal interactions in the superior colliculus of the behaving cat LC Populin, TCT Yin - The Journal of neuroscience, 2002

8. Responses of neurons to click-pairs as simulated echoes: auditory nerve to auditory cortex [unanesthetized animals] DC Fitzpatrick, S Kuwada, DO Kim, K Parham, R Batra - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1999

9. Individual differences in external-ear transfer functions of cats L Xu, JC Middlebrooks - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2000

10. Can two streams of auditory information be processed simultaneously? Evidence from the gleaning bat Antrozous pallidus JR Barber, KA Razak, ZM Fuzessery - Journal of Comparative Physiology …, 2003

11. Neural correlates of the precedence effect in the inferior colliculus: effect of localization cues [cats] RY Litovsky, B Delgutte - Journal of neurophysiology, 2002

12. Sound localization during homotopic and heterotopic bilateral cooling deactivation of primary and nonprimary auditory cortical areas in the cat S Malhotra, SG Lomber - Journal of neurophysiology, 2007

13. Sound-localization performance in the cat: the effect of restraining the head DJ Tollin, LC Populin, JM Moore… - Journal of …, 2005

14. Pinna movements of the cat during sound localization LC Populin, TCT Yin - The Journal of neuroscience, 1998

15. Responses of auditory cortical neurons to pairs of sounds: correlates of fusion and localization [cats] BJ Mickey, JC Middlebrooks - Journal of Neurophysiology, 2001

16. Azimuth coding in primary auditory cortex of the cat. I. Spike synchrony versus spike count representations JJ Eggermont, JE Mossop - Journal of neurophysiology, 1998

17. Psychophysical investigation of an auditory spatial illusion in cats: the precedence effect DJ Tollin, TCT Yin - Journal of neurophysiology, 2003

18. Spectral cues explain illusory elevation effects with stereo sounds in cats DJ Tollin, TCT Yin - Journal of neurophysiology, 2003

19. Functional specialization in non-primary auditory cortex of the cat: areal and laminar contributions to sound localization SG Lomber, S Malhotra, AJ Hall - Hearing research, 2007

20. Monkey sound localization: head-restrained versus head-unrestrained orienting LC Populin - The Journal of neuroscience, 2006

21. The Precedence Effect in Three Species of Birds (Melopsittacus undulatus, Serinus canaria, and Taeniopygia guttata). ML Dent, RJ Dooling - Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2004

22. Neural correlates of the precedence effect in the inferior colliculus of behaving cats DJ Tollin, LC Populin, TCT Yin - Journal of neurophysiology, 2004

23. Sound-localization experiments with barn owls in virtual space: influence of broadband interaural level difference on head-turning behavior I Poganiatz, H Wagner - Journal of Comparative Physiology A: …, 2001

24. Anesthetics change the excitation/inhibition balance that governs sensory processing in the cat superior colliculus LC Populin - The Journal of neuroscience, 2005

25. Sound localization by barn owls in a simulated echoic environment MW Spitzer, TT Takahashi - Journal of neurophysiology, 2006

26. Influence of the facial ruff on the sound-receiving characteristics of the barn owl's ears M Von Campenhausen, H Wagner - Journal of Comparative Physiology A: …, 2006

27. Sound localization deficits during reversible deactivation of primary auditory cortex and/or the dorsal zone [cats] S Malhotra, GC Stecker… - Journal of … neurophysiology, 2008

28. Effect of eye position on saccades and neuronal responses to acoustic stimuli in the superior colliculus of the behaving cat LC Populin, DJ Tollin, TCT Yin - Journal of neurophysiology, 2004

29. Postnatal development of sound pressure transformations by the head and pinnae of the cat: monaural characteristics DJ Tollin, K Koka - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2009

30. Sound localization behavior in ferrets: comparison of acoustic orientation and approach-to-target responses FR Nodal, VM Bajo, CH Parsons, JW Schnupp, AJ King - Neuroscience, 2008

31. Graded sparing of visually-guided orienting following primary visual cortex ablations within the first postnatal month [cats] BR Payne, SG Lomber, CD Gelston - Behavioural brain research, 2000

32. Sensitivity of auditory cortical neurons to the locations of leading and lagging sounds [cats] BJ Mickey, JC Middlebrooks - Journal of neurophysiology, 2005

33. Investigations of the precedence effect in budgerigars: The perceived location of auditory images ML Dent, RJ Dooling - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2003

34. The absence of spatial echo suppression in the echolocating bats Megaderma lyra and Phyllostomus discolor M Schuchmann, M Hübner… - Journal of experimental biology, 2006

35. Can measures of sound localization acuity be related to the precision of absolute location estimates? [cats] JM Moore, DJ Tollin, TCT Yin - Hearing research, 2008

36. Mammalian ear specializations in arid habitats: structural and functional evidence from sand cat (Felis margarita) G Huang, J Rosowski, M Ravicz, W Peake - Journal of Comparative Physiology, 2002

37. Resolution in azimuth sound localization in the Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus) JK Maier, GM Klump - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2006

38. Improvements of sound localization abilities by the facial ruff of the barn owl (Tyto alba) as demonstrated by virtual ruff removal L Hausmann, M Von Campenhausen, F Endler… - PloS one, 2009

39. Substrates of auditory frequency integration in a nucleus of the lateral lemniscus [mustached bat] A Yavuzoglu, BR Schofield, JJ Wenstrup - Neuroscience, 2010

40. The local loop of the saccadic system closes downstream of the superior colliculus [cats] R Kato, A Grantyn, Y Dalezios, AK Moschovakis - Neuroscience, 2006

41. Physiological and psychophysical modeling of the precedence effect [computational model] J Xia, A Brughera, HS Colburn… - JARO- Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 2010

42. Influence of sound source location on the behavior and physiology of the precedence effect in cats ML Dent, DJ Tollin, TCT Yin - Journal of neurophysiology, 2009

43. Postnatal development of sound pressure transformations by the head and pinnae of the cat: Binaural characteristics DJ Tollin, K Koka - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2009

44. Spatial sound detection and the role of the inferior colliculus in the Long-Evans rat MC Zrull, JR Coleman - Acta oto-laryngologica, 1999

45. Psychophysical and physiological studies of the precedence effect in cats ML Dent, DJ Tollin, TCT Yin - Acta acustica united with acustica, 2005

46. Owl's behavior and neural representation predicted by Bayesian inference BJ Fischer, JL Peña - Nature neuroscience, 2011

47. Psychophysical and physiological studies of the precedence effect and echo threshold in the behaving cat D Tollin, M Dent, T Yin - Auditory Signal Processing, 2005

48. Cats exhibit the Franssen Effect illusion ML Dent, DJ Tollin, TCT Yin - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2004

49. Circuitry underlying spectrotemporal integration in the auditory midbrain [mustached bats] A Yavuzoglu, BR Schofield… - The Journal of Neuroscience, 2011

50. Kinematics of eye movements of cats to broadband acoustic targets LC Populin, TCT Yin - Journal of neurophysiology, 1999

51. Perception of auditory signals [review of “recent studies in the macaque monkey”] GH Recanzone - Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2011

52. Localization dominance and the effect of frequency in the Mongolian Gerbil, Meriones unguiculatus M Wolf, M Schuchmann, L Wiegrebe - Journal of Comparative Physiology …, 2010

53. Brain–Muscle–Computer Interface: Mobile-Phone Prototype Development and Testing [human] S Vernon, SS Joshi - Information Technology in Biomedicine, …, 2011

In context:

Many novel systems have been developed to date that interface body parts with assistive technologies for severely paralyzed persons. Each of these systems has unique advantages and disadvantages. Previously developed systems include headcontrolled systems [1], tongue-operated systems [17], eye-gaze systems [18], voice systems [19], and breath operated systems [20]. One potential issue with these systems is that they use muscles and/or functions that are needed for other vital activities. For example, tongue operated systems require full dedication of the mouth, and eye-gaze systems require full dedication of the eyes. Our goal was to develop a system that uses only a single muscle, which preferably was not used for any other natural function. As such, we chose the auricularis superior (AS) muscle (above the ear) which has no known use in humans (animals use a functionally equivalent muscle to direct the ear toward a sound source [21]). [21] L. C. Populin and T. C. T. Yin, “Behavioral studies of sound localization in the cat,” J. Neurosci., vol. 18, pp. 2147–2160, 1998.

54. Sensitivity of the mouse to changes in azimuthal sound location: angular separation, spectral composition, and sound level. PD Allen, JR Ison - Behavioral neuroscience, 2010

55. Brain-muscle-computer interface using a single surface electromyographic signal: Initial results [human. Same citation as above re the auricularis superior (AS) muscle] SS Joshi, AS Wexler… - … (NER), 2011 5th …, 2011 - ieeexplore.ieee.org

56. Target modality determines eye-head coordination in nonhuman primates: implications for gaze control LC Populin, AZ Rajala - Journal of Neurophysiology, 2011

57. Human sound-localization behavior accounts for ocular drift [human] TJ Van Grootel, AJ Van Opstal - Journal of neurophysiology, 2010

58. Object localization in cluttered acoustical environments [barn owl] TT Takahashi, CH Keller, BS Nelson, MW Spitzer… - Biological cybernetics, 2008

59. Spatial echo suppression and echo-acoustic object normalization in echolocating bats M Schuchmann - 2007 - edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de

60. Acoustic pursuit of invisible moving targets by cats RE Beitel - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1999

61. Responses of neurons in the cat primary auditory cortex to sequential sounds J Zhang, KT Nakamoto, LM Kitzes - Neuroscience, 2009

62. Direct projections of omnipause neurons to reticulospinal neurons: A double-labeling light microscopic study in the cat A Grantyn, B Kuze, AM Brandi… - The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 2010

63. Location Coding by Opponent Neural Populations in the Auditory Cortex [cats] 医学期刊， 医学会议， 医学教育， 专业资料， 医学论坛… [Chinese characters] - journal.9med.net

64. Multidimensional control using a mobile-phone based brain-muscle-computer interface [human, as above] S Vernon, SS Joshi - … in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC, …, 2011 - ieeexplore.ieee.org

65. Functional Specialization in Primary and Non-primary Auditory Cortex [cat] SG Lomber, AJ McMillan - The Auditory Cortex, 2011

66. Short-latency, goal-directed movements of the pinnae to sounds that produce auditory spatial illusions [cats] DJ Tollin, EM McClaine, TCT Yin - Journal of neurophysiology, 2010

67. Time course of allocation of spatial attention by acoustic cues in non-human primates LC Populin, AZ Rajala - European Journal of Neuroscience, 2010

68. The impact of early reflections on binaural cues [small ground-living animals] B Gourévitch, R Brette - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2012

69. The roles of auditory brainstem structures in analyses of complex sounds [dissertation. mustached bats] A Yavuzoglu - 2010 - etd.ohiolink.edu:

Seventeen adult mustached bats (Pteronotus parnellii), captured in Trinidad and Tobago, were used to examine sources of inputs to combinatorial neurons of the intermediate nucleus of the lateral lemniscus (INLL). Sixteen mustached bats (Pteronotus parnellii) captured from Trinidad and Tobago, were used to examine sources of inputs to facilitative combinatorial neurons of the inferior colliculus (IC). Our procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy. These procedures follow guidelines set by the National Institutes of Health for the care and use of laboratory animals.

70. The need for a cool head: reversible inactivation reveals functional segregation in auditory cortex [cats] CJ Sumner, AR Palmer, DR Moore - Nature neuroscience, 2008

71. Behavioral responses to frequency-specific head-related transfer functions as filtered by the facial ruff in the Barn owl (Tyto alba) EL Hausmann – 2010

72. Dissociative effects of methylphenidate in nonhuman primates: Trade-offs between cognitive and behavioral performance AZ Rajala, JB Henriques, LC Populin - Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 2012 - MIT Press

More on the Double-Trouble Tom Yin Case

Regular readers of this blog will recall that nearly five years ago, PETA made a public records request from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for copies of records involving invasive brain experiments on animals. One of the documents they received in response was a description of Tom Yin's sound localization experiments with cats. They read in the documents that Yin had been photographing some of the cats' surgeries to implant cranial caps, eye coils, and cochlear implants. PETA followed up with a request for copies of those photographic records.

The university refused to comply. PETA filed a lawsuit, and after a three-year-long court battle, paid for by Wisconsin taxpayers, the university finally settled, but only when their key argument turned out to be a complete fabrication. The university had claimed that the surgical methods and devices being used were proprietary and that they had promised the company that developed them that they would keep them secret. If they had been telling the truth, the pictures would never have been made public.

But PETA investigators were able to track down and speak to the purported owner. They learned that the company's research was being paid for by an NIH grant that required them to make public as soon as possible, everything they produced as a result of the grant. This discovery by PETA demolished the university's key argument. They were, once again, caught in yet another matter-of-fact bald-faced lie.

As part of the settlement agreement, the university extracted a promise by PETA that they would not divulge Tom Yin's name. They argued falsely that if animal rights activists learned who was responsible for doing these things to the cats, that Yin's safety would be put at risk. Anxious to get the photos, PETA (unwisely perhaps) agreed to the terms and entered into a binding agreement not to divulge Yin's name.

But the university didn't mean what it said. They were lying. They are liars. Liars lie. They believe that the public is simply too stupid to notice.

So now, because so many people have written to them after seeing the pictures and told them that they won't donate to them until the cat experiments are stopped, they have made Yin's name public and put his face on YouTube. They have produced two little propaganda films filled with nonsense and some matter-of-fact lies -- what a surprise.

Their fundamental defense of Yin's cruelty is this: The use of bilateral cochlear implants is the result of Tom Yin's experiments on cats.

They assume (perhaps accurately; propagandists understand the implications of the bell curve) that viewers won't take the time or have the knowledge needed to check out the facts.

If they are telling the truth the evidence ought to be pretty easy to find. If they are making it up, then there won't be any evidence of Yin's work contributing to the early use of bilateral cochlear implants.

According to Colorado State University's Writing Center, "A review paper for the biological sciences serves to discuss and synthesize key findings on a particular subject."

A review paper published in 2008 by researchers at the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, titled "Restoring hearing symmetry with two cochlear implants or one cochlear implant and a contralateral hearing aid," makes no mention of Yin and includes nothing published by him even though it includes 105 published papers in the bibliography. The authors apparently didn't find his work -- if they'd even heard of it -- worth mention. [Restoring hearing symmetry with two cochlear implants or one cochlear implant and a contralateral hearing aid. Firszt JB, Reeder RM, Skinner MW. J Rehabil Res Dev. 2008. Review.]

Bilateral cochlear implants have been in use for over a decade. See for instance the studies referred to in Systematic review of the literature on the clinical effectiveness of the cochlear implant procedure in paediatric patients. Forli F, Arslan E, Bellelli S, Burdo S, Mancini P, Martini A, Miccoli M, Quaranta N, Berrettini S. Acta Otorhinolaryngol Ital. 2011. Review.

In the second of the two videos below, you'll hear Yin say that the cat in the video "seems quite content" and "his tail is wagging." It's odd that someone who has experimented on cats for decades thinks a cat "wagging" his or her tail is content. Even more odd, is that the film makers and reviewers must think so too.

An aside: A few years ago, veterinarian Eric Sandgren, the very well-paid director of the UW's Research Animal Resource Center, came to one of our anti-vivisection meetings and told us that he had recently adopted two cats and that he was surprised that they had different personalities. The go-to university spokesperson for all things vivisection didn't know that individual animals are, well, individuals. It's no wonder that the the history of animal care at the university is filled with suffering and federal violations.

You can watch the propaganda videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYEEbvOzS1I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD0_VT2gkko

"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...." -- George Bernard Shaw. The Doctor's Dilemma. 1909.

Stealthy Advertising

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself could become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address. January 17, 1961.

Unfortunately, Eisenhower's prescient warning failed to protect us. Today, federal policy and funding of research is controlled largely by those affected by the policies and who receive the funding. This easily explains why taxpayers are forced to pay for so much crap and cruelty. The university-based basic bioscience slice of the industry has become more concerned with public relations than with public health, because it depends almost entirely on the public's dollars. With little to show for the continuing massive public investment, and worried by those who keep pointing out the cruelty and suffering in the animal labs, public relations efforts commonly make much ado about nothing and sidestep mention of anything that might serve to lessen their carefully groomed public image.

Consumers, at least some, recognize that for-profit businesses will overstate the value of their products or services. Every fast-food chain simply can't be making the best burger in the world. The public has a right to expect that publicly funded institutions are more forthcoming, more honest.

Commercial businesses' and even politicians' communication with the public is readily recognized as self-interested advertising because it is usually presented as such in signage, television and radio commercials, print ads, direct mail, and on line.

Some government agencies and public universities' on the other hand can and do promote their public images and hoped for continuing public support with advertising that is made to look like important public announcements. Doing so violates the publics' trust. When those within government agencies and public universities use their position and power in a misleading or dishonest way to benefit themselves, even indirectly, they abuse their authority. Announcements about research using animals are often stealthy promotions of the use of animals; those who use this tactic believe that their industry is dependent on public perception. These are particularly noxious examples of advertising masquerading as news because it isn't just the taxpayers who are being harmed.

There is a near constant rain of this sort of advertising from the vivisection industry. A recent example was the University of Wisconsin's announcement that vivisector Louis Populin had received a grant from a private charity for $100,000 a year for three years to develop a game for children with ADHA that might help doctors better predict the optimal dosage of methylphenidate, more commonly known by the trade name Ritalin, but also Concerta, Methylin, Medikinet, Equasym XL, Quillivant XR, and Metadate.

His hypothesis seems to be that a child's impulsivity predicts the rate at which they metabolize methylphenidate. The current method used by doctors is to start children on a very low dose and slowly increase the dose over time until a therapeutic effect is achieved. That seems like a prudent method to treat children with this powerful drug. Populin's conceived method would apparently allow doctors to prescribe a higher initial dose. You can read the university's April 7, 2015 hype here: Two receive awards for research to benefit children.

Whether or not his plan makes sense, the university says that he learned that different individuals react differently to methylphenidate through his experiments on monkeys. They imply that it will be his use of monkeys that is responsible for any success he might have with his envisioned diagnostic game. If it is unsuccessful, we'll never hear about it again.

.... The work grows from Populin's studies of monkeys, which measured the effects of methylphenidate (Ritalin, a common ADHD drug), on working memory and other aspects of executive functioning.

"We found that the effect varied depending on the dose and the individual, which could explain why these dosing decisions often come down to educated trial and error," he says.

Executive functioning refers to one's conscious decisions and willful behavior. Habitually acting impulsively is sometimes thought to result from an impairment of one's executive functioning. Cognitive control is sometimes used synonymously.

Some close observers of the university's use of animals may recall that Populin collaborated regularly with cat vivisector Tom Yin whose retirement was hastened by the negative publicity generated by the photographs of the mutilated cats he was using in his sound localization experiments. Populin's publication list provides the gist of his career:

1: Dopamine transporter gene susceptibility to methylation is associated with impulsivity in nonhuman primates. J Neurophysiol. 2014.

2: The inferior colliculus encodes the Franssen auditory spatial illusion. Eur J Neurosci. 2013.

3: Dissociative effects of methylphenidate in nonhuman primates: trade-offs between cognitive and behavioral performance. J Cogn Neurosci. 2012.

4: Target modality determines eye-head coordination in nonhuman primates: implications for gaze control. J Neurophysiol. 2011.

5: Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) do recognize themselves in the mirror: implications for the evolution of self-recognition. PLoS One. 2010. [This is Populin's only positive contribution to posterity. Unfortunately, the import was lost on him and his like-minded colleagues.]

6: Time course of allocation of spatial attention by acoustic cues in non-human primates. Eur J Neurosci. 2010.

7: Human sound localization: measurements in untrained, head-unrestrained subjects using gaze as a pointer. Exp Brain Res. 2008.

8: Monkey sound localization: head-restrained versus head-unrestrained orienting. J Neurosci. 2006.

9: Anesthetics change the excitation/inhibition balance that governs sensory processing in the cat superior colliculus. J Neurosci. 2005.

10: (With Yin.) Sound-localizationperformance in the cat: the effect of restraining the head. J Neurophysiol. 2005.

11: (With Yin.) Neural correlates of the precedence effect in the inferior colliculus of behaving cats. J Neurophysiol. 2004.

12: (With Yin.) Effect of eye position on saccades and neuronal responses to acoustic stimuli in the superior colliculus of the behaving cat. J Neurophysiol. 2004.

13: Human gaze shifts to acoustic and visual targets. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2002.

14: (With Yin.) Bimodal interactions in the superior colliculus of the behaving cat. J Neurosci. 2002.

15: Fundamental differences between the thalamocortical recipient layers of the cat auditory and visual cortices. J Comp Neurol. 2001.

16: (With Yin.) Kinematics of eye movements of cats to broadband acoustic targets. J Neurophysiol. 1999.

17: (With Yin.) Pinna movements of the cat during sound localization. J Neurosci. 1998.

18: (With Yin.) Behavioral studies of sound localization in the cat. J Neurosci. 1998.

19: (With Yin.) Topographical organization of the motoneuron pools that innervate the muscles of the pinna of the cat. J Comp Neurol. 1995.

Populin's publications don't show much evidence of him ever having worked with humans. There was the one paper from 2008 that reported on a small project. He explained that he used, "Three female and six male humans ranging from 21 to 43 years of age that were free of neurological disease and reported having normal hearing served as subjects." And there was the even smaller study with four men and a woman in 2002. It isn't clear that he has any research experience with children or in designing games for them.

He has published two papers, nos. 1 (2014) and 3 (2012) in the list above, that sound as if they might be related in some meaningful way to his envisioned diagnostic game, but neither are.*

The university says that: "Luis' study showed that methylphenidate made the impulsive monkeys more willing to wait. We will use the game to look for a similar effect in children with ADHD...".

But methylphenidate's effect on impulsivity in hyperactive children has been known for almost half a century. (Cognitive styles in hyperactive children and the effect of methylphenidate. Campbell SB, Douglas VI, Morgenstern G. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 1971.) In children with hyperactivity disorder for over 30 years (Effects of methylphenidate on reading in children with attention deficit disorder (Ballinger CT, Varley CK, Nolen PA. Am J Psychiatry. 1984.) And in children with ADHD since 1993. (Effects of methylphenidate on impulsive responding in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Malone MA, Swanson JM. J Child Neurol. 1993.)

The university says that Populin's knowledge came from his experiments showing "that methylphenidate made the impulsive monkeys more willing to wait...". This is what tipped him to the fact that the drug reduces impulsivity? And why was he surprised or uniformed about the fact that there is variation in response to the medication. This has been a topic of study in human children for at least a decade. (Pharmacogenetics of methylphenidate response in preschoolers with ADHD. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2006.)

So, Populin's work merely replicated again in monkeys what had already been recognized and studied in children for many years; he has no evident experience with studying children or designing games that might engage them, and his hypothesis that impulsivity measured through game playing predicts a child's response to methylphenidate seems wildly speculative. But, a charity was convinced to give him some money, so hey, the PR folks must have thought, let's use this to make people think that experiments on monkeys are going to help children.

This sort of baseless hype about the results of animal experimentation is par for the course. It is essentially never challenged or questioned; the public trusts that spokespersons for public universities will be accurate and honest with them. But when a large portion of an institution's income depends on the public's perception, an institution like the University of Wisconsin-Madison is less concerned about the facts than it is about what people believe. Propaganda is accepted and reported as fact. Decision makers at all levels are financially vested in the system so want to grow the industry. They promote and fund research modalities -- like the use of animals -- that validate their own grant requests. Most of the senior decision-makers are themselves vivisectors.

Ike must be turning over in his grave.

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* The earlier of the two papers is freely available. Dissociative effects of methylphenidate in nonhuman primates: trade-offs between cognitive and behavioral performance. J Cogn Neurosci. 2012.

In that paper he reported that he drugged three monkeys with varying doses and recorded the effects on their performance of visual and memory tasks. He says the monkeys participated, but that's a euphemism used to soften the raw and jagged reality of the situation these three animals found themselves in. They weren't participants, they were victims. This is how he prepared them:

Three adult male rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) ranging from 8 to 13 kg participated in this study. These animals were purchased from the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center. The three animals were prepared for eye movement recordings by implanting scleral search coils [Sewing them to the monkeys' eyes] (Judge, Richmond, & Chu, 1980), constructed from teflon-coated stainless steel wire (SA632; Cooner Wire, Chatsworth, CA) and a lightweight titanium head post [screwed to their skull], which was used to restrain the head for experimental sessions and for cleaning the implant area. All surgical procedures were approved by the University of Wisconsin Animal Care and Use Committee and were in accordance with the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. [Which underscores the fact that anything goes in these labs.]

The more recent paper explains that he used four male rhesus monkeys, three had been used in the project mentioned above. The surgical preparation was the same for the fourth monkey. Populin says in the more recent paper that:

The animals were housed individually in two rooms with other monkeys of the laboratory colony in the same hallway of the same facility, permitting rich visual, olfactory, and auditory interactions.

Surgical procedures were carried out under aseptic conditions while the animals were under general anesthesia. All efforts were made to minimize suffering of the subjects.

Double-talk gibberish. Individually housed male rhesus monkeys have high rates of stereotypic behavior and self injury. And all efforts to minimize their suffering certainly weren't taken because he didn't have to hurt them in the first place.

Tom Yin: Cue the Award

I've mentioned Tom Yin a few times here. Here's a new item that adds a bit more to this collection:

"The William and Christine Hartmann Prize in Auditory Neuroscience was established in 2011 through a generous donation by Bill and Chris Hartmann to the Acoustical Society of America to recognize and honor research that links auditory physiology with auditory perception or behavior in humans or other animals. The first Prize was awarded at the Spring meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Montreal (2-7 June 2013) to Tom C. T. Yin." From: http://acousticalsociety.org/funding_resources/prizes

See too: http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/dr-tom-yin-awarded-inaugural-hartmann-prize-in-auditory-neuroscience/41492

Yin winning this newly created award sounds like something other than a coincidence.

William Hartmann is a physicist at Michigan State University who leads a "group" studying psychoacuoustics, which "deals with pitch perception, signal detection, modulation detection, and localization of sound."

This newly minted award isn't just another case of vivisectors giving vivisectors another award for being a good vivisector (a good vivisector is one who publishes lots of scientific papers); no, this seems pretty clearly to be a case of a vivisector needing additional shielding from public scorn and getting it from his buddies.

Psychophysical and physiological evidence for a precedence effect in the median sagittal plane. Litovsky RY, Rakerd B, Yin TC, Hartmann WM. J Neurophysiol. 1997.

Department of Neurophysiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 53706, USA.

Abstract

A listener in a room is exposed to multiple versions of any acoustical event, coming from many different directions in space. The precedence effect is thought to discount the reflected sounds in the computation of location, so that a listener perceives the source near its true location. According to most auditory theories, the precedence effect is mediated by binaural differences. This report presents evidence that the precedence effect operates in the median sagittal plane, where binaural differences are virtually absent and where spectral cues provide information regarding the location of sounds. Parallel studies were conducted in psychophysics by measuring human listeners' performance, and in neurophysiology by measuring responses of single neurons in the inferior colliculus of cats....

Brad Rakerd, one of the authors, is the other principal member of the "group."

You'd have to imagine the press and the public being really, really stupid to think they wouldn't notice the hollow ring to an award like this.

More images from the Yin Lab.

Sound Localization Images Released to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Below is a series of images released in July 2013 to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) under Wisconsin’s open records law. The images, from a procedure performed in 2009, show a surgical procedure to place a cochlear implant into a cat, the subject of a hearing study. Earlier images were used by PETA, an organization that objects to the use of all animal models in research, to misrepresent the clinical and technological value of the work, as well as the treatment and condition of the animals used in the study. We are posting the images to preempt their misuse and continued mischaracterization of a study that has demonstrated clinical and technological benefit for humans.

I was going to title this "It's official: they believe you're an idiot," but didn't. The Yin Lab in the title might help search engines.

The title of this image on the university's page is "Cat fitted for ear molds." Here's the sad image:

Where are the cat's ears? Odd. Self-censored?

Be sure to watch video that they refer to in the sentence: "We are posting the images to preempt their misuse and continued mischaracterization of a study that has demonstrated clinical and technological benefit for humans."

The only reasonable interpretation of this sentence, linking as it does to the UW-produced video, is that the video is clear unambiguous unequivocal evidence supporting the sentence's claim. The university is saying that the benefits to the boy in the video rest on the experiments on the cats in the Yin Lab.

There are ways one could test this claim. Though not perfect, and no one has offered any rebuttal, I've at least made a stab at trying to determine whether Yin's work led to the use of cochlear implants or was in some other way important to the use or development of these devices. Here's my piece from September 21, 2012: Citations of a Yin Publication.

The university on the other hand, simply makes claims. They offer no real evidence. Unless you accept this as evidence that I helped with lunar exploration:

Paid to lie, to you. (Updated 3-28-2013)

"Furthermore, in two separate complaints filed with the USDA, PETA accused UW-Madison of multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act. When two comprehensive, multi-day investigations by USDA veterinarians failed to substantiate PETA's accusations, PETA changed its tune and now says they don't care that the study is being conducted responsibly, they still think it's wrong." -- Eric Sandgren. February 16, 2013. In "Eric Sandgren: Cat research, after all the drama." Wisconsin State Journal.

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"Sandgren said an investigation will validate the department's handling of the research cat, calling PETA's complaint 'a stunt.'" September 12, 2012. "PETA complaint alleges mistreatment of cats in UW research." Wisconsin State Journal

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Eric Sandgren | September 20, 2012 at 6:34 pm | Reply

At UW-Madison, we heard about the complaint, and received a copy from a reporter, at 10:00am on a Wednesday, By 1:00pm that afternoon we were able to state verbally to reporters and anyone else who asked that all of PeTA’s statements were unsupported (we could not respond to specific charges until we knew what they were going to be). That’s 3 hours! The detailed written point-by-point response went up on Monday the next week, after careful review by a lot of people, and we may consider posting something like that sooner should we find ourselves in a similar situation. This all worked because we have developed excellent cooperation among University Communications, our animal research program, and faculty and staff regarding animal activist attacks. We also have people willing to respond immediately. I too am amazed that PeTA keeps getting away with this stuff. How do we put them on the defensive? From the fringe group "Speaking of Research" website/blog

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Federal inspectors have cleared UW-Madison on charges by the animal rights group PETA that university researchers violated multiple provisions of the federal Animal Welfare Act in their treatment of cats used in a 2008 eye movement study.

"I believed all along that we had remained in compliance," said Eric Sandgren, animal research oversight director at UW-Madison. "I'm comforted that the USDA agrees." " On Campus: UW-Madison cleared by feds in PETA cat research complaint." October 11, 2012. Wisconsin State Journal

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Those damn lying animal rights activists; making up things about the University of Wisconsin. How dare they impugn the integrity of the vivisectors at UW-Madison!

The excerpt above is taken from the University of Wisconsin, Madison's appeal of the USDA citations that resulted from PETA's complaints regarding the care and use of the cats used in Tom Yin's highly invasive and cruel experiments on cats.

This is the opening of their appeal of the results of the USDA inspection report dated December 14, 2012.

Less obvious is that the citations they are appealing are the result of a four day investigation that resulted in the USDA documenting the chronic infections endured by the cats in the Yin lab.

So, all the while Eric Sandgren was telling anyone who would listen that PETA's assertions concerning the cats suffering in the Yin lab were false, he obviously knew otherwise -- because he is the university's head vivisector, the university's animal research public apologist, and he is the director of the university's Research Animal Resource Center. The cats in Tom Yin's labs were and are suffering from chronic infections so severe that some cats' eyes have had to be cut out of their heads.

From December 14, 2012, Sandgren knew that the USDA had indeed found problems that even they  thought deserved citations for violations of the minimal standards set by the Animal Welfare Act.

Come on, say it with me: Eric Sandgren is a paid liar.

Update: A few days after posting this demonstration of the most recent example (among many) of Eric Sandgren's and the university's matter-of-fact lying to the public, I was sent a reminder of Sandgren's appearance on the Jane Velez-Mitchell show with me on February 15, 2013.

The university issued a statement which starts out like this:

The information now being disseminated by People for the Ethical Treatmentof Animals (PETA) and advocates like James Cromwell about research at our university is unsubstantiated and flawed. We have conducted a detailed review of PETA's complaint and can find no evidence to support a single claim the organization makes. Moreover, a lab inspection was conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in response to PETA's complaint and their review found no substance to any of PETA's allegations.

The pictures released by PETA show an animal undergoing surgery to receive cochlear implants. Just like in human surgeries, such procedures are performed under anesthesia and animals receive pain-relieving medication during and after a surgery. After surgery, the cats adapt readily to the implants, which do not cause discomfort or distress. They are healthy and behave normally.

This propaganda is chocked full of lies. In fact, the university was secretly appealing the USDA's citations at the same time they were saying that no violations had been found. There is little about what is being done to the cats in the Tom Yin lab that is "just like" therapeutic surgery on willing humans. In fact, the university knew full well that the cats were not readily adapting to the implants and that the  rate of very serious life-threatening infection from the surgeries was sky-high. Sandgren and the university knew all of this, but said the opposite on a nationally-broadcast television program.

Come on, say it with me again: Eric Sandgren is a paid liar.

Censorship

"It's important to know what the cost is to the animal. It's important to know what the potential benefit is to, in this case it's humans, but a lot of animal research also benefits animals. And then you you you come up, you compare those, and decide for yourself whether or not something you think it's ethical, and that where people have a right to differ." -- UW-Madison Research Animal Resource Center Director and university spokesperson Eric Sandgren, February 15, 2013, in a statement to WMTV, NBC 15, on the occasion of James Cromwell's participation in a disruption of a meeting of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to protest the Regents continuing support for highly invasive and painful brain and ear experiments using cats in Tom Yin's laboratory.

Pictured here is one of Yin's victims, Double Trouble. 

I can't get Sandgren's statement out of my head; it is grotesque and matter-of-factually misleading and dishonest. Moreover, many people at the university and at the Wisconsin Department of Justice must know the facts and yet they stand mute.

PeTA spent three years in court trying to get these photos from the university. The Wisconsin Department of Justice acted as the university's counsel -- at the public's expense -- and argued to the court that the photos shouldn't be released.

It was only when they were caught lying about the "proprietary" nature of the hardware that can be seen in the photos that the university, through their Department of Justice de facto accomplices, finally gave up, tacitly admitting that their arguments had been fabricated nonsense.

"Decide for yourself whether or not something you think it's ethical," says Sandgren, all the while knowing that the university had unsuccessfully tried for three years to keep you from knowing, to stop you from seeing the pictures of only one of the cats butchered in Tom Yin's lab.

"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...." -- George Bernard Shaw. The Doctor's Dilemma. 1909.

"It's important to know what the cost is to the animal. It's important to know what the potential benefit is to, in this case it's humans, but a lot of animal research also benefits animals. And then you you you come up, you compare those, and decide for yourself whether or not something you think it's ethical, and that where people have a right to differ." -- UW-Madison Research Animal Resource Center Director and university spokesperson Eric Sandgren, February 15, 2013, in a statement to WMTV, NBC 15, on the occasion of James Cromwell's participation in a disruption of a meeting of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to protest the Regents continuing support for highly invasive and painful brain and ear experiments using cats in Tom Yin's laboratory.

Pictured here is one of Yin's victims, Double Trouble. 

I can't get Sandgren's statement out of my head; it is grotesque and matter-of-factually misleading and dishonest. Moreover, many people at the university and at the Wisconsin Department of Justice must know the facts and yet they stand mute.

PeTA spent three years in court trying to get these photos from the university. The Wisconsin Department of Justice acted as the university's counsel -- at the public's expense -- and argued to the court that the photos shouldn't be released.

It was only when they were caught lying about the "proprietary" nature of the hardware that can be seen in the photos that the university, through their Department of Justice de facto accomplices, finally gave up, tacitly admitting that their arguments had been fabricated nonsense.

"Decide for yourself whether or not something [is] ethical," says Sandgren, all the while knowing that the university had unsuccessfully tried for three years to keep you from knowing, to stop you from seeing the pictures of only one of the cats butchered in Tom Yin's lab.

"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...." -- George Bernard Shaw. The Doctor's Dilemma. 1909.

The Calculus of Deceit

Liars calculate the costs of telling the truth and the potential costs of lying, weigh the results, and then choose to tell a lie.

This seems pretty straightforward.

Liars convince themselves that their lies won't be found out. Or, maybe they reason that the costs of being caught lying, while embarrassing and perhaps costly, are less of a problem than the results of telling the truth. After all, if one lies, the truth might not come to light. Maybe the  benefits of the lie, if it remains unrealized, are great enough that the risks of being caught lying simply pale in comparison.

When I was a kid, I lied. The risk of telling my parents the truth was greater than the risk of telling them the truth. I reasoned that the punishment for admitting to having done something that I knew they wouldn't approve of was no worse than the punishment I would have to endure if they caught me in a lie. So, all things being equal, even as a ten-year-old, I understood the odds: certain punishment vs. possible punishment. A no-brainer.

But I grew up. Honesty actually matters. And it matters a whole lot when one is in a position of public trust.

When people involved in the public's business lie to the public, their lies are much more serious than the lies of someone else, or the lies of a ten year old boy.

In the case of the University of Wisconsin, Madison's claim that the United States Department of Agriculture didn't find anything wrong with the treatment of the cats in Tom Yin's laboratory, the institution lied to the public.

It's important to understand this point.

The state university lied to the citizens of the state. 

It's not that they misspoke. They weren't mistaken. No one misled them.

 They lied.

They lied to you.

They lied knowingly. They told calculated lies. Repeatedly.

They hoped and banked on the likelihood that you would never learn the truth. They miscalculated.

But they knew all along that there was at least some possibility that their lies would be discovered.

They must believe that the public, you, are simply too stupid to notice. They believe that you are too stupid, too dull to do anything about it.

It's true that PeTA's first complaint to the USDA about the conditions in the Yin lab was dismissed. But the USDA is filled with people who have varying degrees of respect for animals, so big deal.

Their follow up complaint included statements from a UW veterinarian who added to and validated their observations. The USDA was forced to pay more attention.

The USDA inspected the lab and found wide-spread suffering and evidence of sloppy surgical procedures that failed to meet modern aseptic standards. Many of the cats had serious life-threatening infections associated with the screws driven into their skulls and the surgically implanted eye coils.

And the university knew this. 

And they told the public repeatedly that the USDA had found nothing amiss.

They believe that you are too stupid to notice or to do anything about it.

They might be right.

The university has lied to the public so many times over the years that they have come to believe that they are never, ever, held accountable for their lies.

Eesh.

The willing gullibility of reporters and newscasters makes any genuine discussion of the details of the university's use of animals nearly impossible.

Liars. Matter-of-fact habitual liars lying about the things they do to animals in their hidden labs. Despicable.

Get active. Get involved. Speak out. Call your state legislators today.

PeTA Skewers UW-Madison

Readers of this blog are familiar with the photographs of Double Trouble, the orange tabby tortured in Tom Yin's lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Readers may also have read or know that PeTA filed detailed complaints alleging multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act with the USDA and NIH after long and careful review of records from the Yin lab that they obtained through a public records request. It took a three-year-long court battle to get the photos. The university is all about transparency, they like to say.

Readers may also know that the university rebutted PeTA's complaints. They claimed that not even one of the problems or alleged violations PeTA detailed were true. It was all a publicity stunt explained Eric Sandgren, the university's point-man for triage of all the university's animal cruelty related media headline embarrassments.

Readers who looked at the university's Facebook page might also know that the university's rebuttal was universally and immediately declared absolute proof that the university was 100% right and PeTA 100% wrong by the tiny outspoken minority of pro-vivisection nutters who usually turn out to have clear financial stakes in the continuance of animal experimentation.

The simple fact that the university claimed it was innocent was more than sufficient proof for them. (Proof seems generally to be a difficult concept for vivisectors.)

PeTA has responded to the university's defense and exposed the spin and misleading claims they made. It appears that the university inadvertently admitted to yet further violations in its quick off-hand rebuttal to PeTA's charges. This won't have been the first time I've seen them trip over their protestations if this turns out to be the case.

Whether or not PeTA's claims are found to be substantial and actionable is a decision that will be made by NIH and the USDA, not the university. This simple fact has upset a number of the university's and the industry's supporters who see no reason for third-party oversight of what happens in the labs. Too bad for them.

You can read PeTA's response to the university's rebuttal here: PETA Response to University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Claims about Cruel Sound Localization Experiments on Cats.

A little more traction

I'll go out on a limb and assume that most readers of this blog are well aware that James Cromwell and and my friend Jeremy Beckham who is a PeTA employee and representative disrupted the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents meeting that was held today in Madison. You can watch a video of the the disruption on the PETA website.

I'm writing here to call attention to the statements made by Eric Sandgren, the front man for the university whenever their cruelty is mentioned by the media.

His statement that has been printed in a couple places was this:

Today's events are just another attempt by these outside activists to get attention. They have attacked and distorted this line of research, which has very real benefits for people who are deaf, from every angle, and they are getting no traction with the public.

There are two equally erroneous claims here. It's hard to know whether he believes them himself or believes that the public will believe them. Maybe both these things are true; maybe he believes them and so also believes that the public will believe them. It's hard to tell whether he's simply wrong or being misleading or both.

He says "Today's events are just another attempt by these outside activists to get attention."

Does he believe that "outsiders" shouldn't be involved in what happens in Madison? Or has he been prepped by some university spin doctor who has told him that painting critics as "outsiders" will play well in Madison?

Mere pennies of the 100s of millions of dollars that pay for his and his cronies' experiments on animals here in Madison come from Madisonians. It is outsiders who pay local people to experiment on animals. It is outsiders who are getting attention by hiring Sandgren and his crew. He should have clarified his position. He'll suck up to outsiders who give him money, but outsiders who take exception to the university's cruelty ought not be listened to.

He goes on to say that these outsider's criticisms "are getting no traction with the public."

He must believe that censorship means that the people who are kept in the dark don't really care or are actually happy that disturbing facts are kept hidden from them, or he must believe that the local media is clairvoyant and knows precisely what the public's opinion is and merely and conveniently repeats it in their reports.

For reasons I can only guess about, no one in the local media market has been willing to report on the university's use of animals since Bill Lueders left the Isthmus and Todd Finkelmeyer left the Capital Times. A lack of courage? Awe of people with titles? Inferiority complexes about not working in the ivory towers? Intimidation? I don't know why local media has decided to shield the university from criticism or even simply take note of its very dirty laundry. Media hasn't even had the gumption to accurately report on the very serious public health risks related to the university's sponsorship of incredibly dangerous infectious disease research. What goes on in the university labs is a black box as far as the local media coverage is concerned. And Sandgren says PETA's criticism of Tom Yin's cruel experiments on cats isn't getting any traction? Is he really this stupid? Maybe he recognizes that local media have for some reason decided to shelter the university from any substantive criticism and is just playing to that fact? Maybe he's just playing his part in the charade.

As stupid or dishonest or both as the above claims might be, the real gem is the comment he made to Madison's NBC affiliate, Channel 15:

It's still important to have the discussion. It's important to know what the cost is to the animal. It's important to know what the potential benefit is to, in this case it's humans, but a lot of animal research also benefits animals. And then you you you come up, you compare those, and decide for yourself whether or not something you think it's ethical, and that where people have a right to differ.

It took PETA three and a half years to get the photographs of Double Trouble. The university fought tooth and nail every step of the way to keep them hidden from the public. How could someone begin to imagine "what the cost is to the animal" when something as simple as a picture of the animal paying that cost is kept hidden? Sandgren's statement is typical. UW monkey eye vivisector Paul Kaufman made a similar claim during a public debate with me. He said that hurting animals is just a sacrifice we have to bear. It is you and me who are sacrificing, not the monkeys whose eyes are being mutilated or the cats in Yin's lab, we are the one's suffering.

Sandgren says that everyone should decide for themselves what is or isn't ethical, but the university works very hard to keep you and me from knowing what it is doing. How can we decide? He's either stupid or a liar. Or both. What other option is there?

The university literally shredded 628 videotapes of various experiments that had been conducted on monkeys after we asked for a single one. How can they claim that they think everyone should decide for themselves what is and isn't ethical? How can they make such an outlandishly misleading claim? Easily. They believe that the public is too dull and stupid to notice and they believe that they will continue to be sheltered by local media's voluntary censorship of all things evil at the university.

WMTV - NBC15 Madison, Wisconsin:

Vivisectors Love Animals - Part 4 Dogs and Cats

Vivisectors love animals and other lies the shitheads tell.

In Vivisectors Love Animals - Part One and Part Deux, I reported on the nature of the event that led to me picking up the little booklet -- "Love Animals? Support Animal Research" -- from the Foundation for Biomedical Research, paid for by 176 companies including a number taxpayer-funded laboratories and institutions. 

In Vivisectors Love Animals - Part 3A, I began looking at how FBR and the little booklet's 176 co-sponsors attempt to bamboozle the public. Nowhere in the little booklet is there an honest representation of what is done to the animals used in the labs.

In Vivisectors Love Animals - Part 3B, I also pointed out the little booklet's misleading claims regarding the federal and local oversight of the labs and FBR and the little booklet's 176 co-sponsors continuing use of intentionally misleading images.

The presentation in Mount Horeb by three "experts" brought in for the occasion, was part of the industry's effort to defeat an amendment to the village's public nuisance ordinance making it illegal to breed dogs or cats for research or to transport dogs or cats bred for research through Mount Horeb. Ridglan Farms, a beagle breeding farm, is in Mount Horeb.

Last year, animal rights activists gained entry to the buildings and videoed what they saw. You can read an in-depth article about their efforts and the use of beagles in research here, it includes numerous pictures and video clips.

Here is an image from "Love Animals" (the middle one, as if that needs saying), and two from inside Ridglan:

All the images in the little booklet are intended to deceive the public; there isn't any other rational explanation for using pictures of seemingly happy and well-cared for animals rather than pictures actually illustrative of what is happening in the labs and in the breeding sheds.

The claims, in the text accompanying the happy beagles, are equally skewed and misleading. The entire book is clearly meant to mislead readers.

FBR and the little booklet's 176 co-sponsors write: "The number of dogs involved in research is small (less than 1/2 percent)." Presumably, they mean 1/2 percent of all animals used, but it is certainly an even smaller percentage if all the invertebrates, fish, mice, and rats are included. But so what? Why does the number of animals being hurt matter? Further more, the largest consumer of dogs are the product testing labs like Covance in Madison, which reported consuming 4,297 dogs in 2016.

FBR and the little booklet's 176 co-sponsors pose the question, "But can't you just use rats and mice?" They say "No, not really. The path from concept to cure is complicated." They make the tired claim that researchers begin with cell cultures, tissue samples, and computers and then must add animal models to their study. They say, "Most start with mice and rats. When they get positive results, they advance to an animal model that more closely resembles humans. That's where dogs usually come in."

But that is pretty much gibberish, a commonly told story told to quell alarm and anger. Reality is much different.

A recent case in point is the outbreak of birth defects associated with the Zika virus. On February 1, 2016, the World Health Organization declared that the association between Zika and the cluster of birth defects in Brazil was a public health emergency.

Within a few months of that news, vivisectors who had been (and are) infecting monkeys with an AIDS-like virus began infecting pregnant monkeys with the Zika virus. There was no gradual build-up to using monkeys, they simply went right to them. This is a common pattern. In the 1950s, scientists injected human tissue from people with Kuru into the brains of two chimpanzees to see whether they would become ill; they did.

Having looked for about 20 years at the research conducted by vivisectors around the county, it has become quite clear to me that the NIH-funded scientists are not involved in some sequential series of steps as is claimed in "Love Animals." Those whose work I've followed and examined have done the same sort of experiments on the same species for decades; most of the animal experiments taxpayers are forced to pay for is basic science that rarely -- essentially never -- gets translated into clinical care.

FBR and the little booklet's 176 co-sponsors also make the crazy claim that dogs are used because humans and dogs share 4 out of 5 genes. That's sort of true, but its like saying that because two concertos use many of the same musical notes that we will learn the melody line of one from hearing the other. Here's an interesting resource on comparative genomes.

And then, there's this caption and image:

I suggested previously that FBR et al's claim concerning dogs and muscular dystrophy was probably motivated by Peta's campaign to stop Texas A&M's hideously cruel experiments using dogs with an inherited mutation causing them to develop severe symptoms reminiscent of the human disease.  I pointed out that FBR's income is generated by defending institutions and labs that come under fire for the terrible things they do to animals.

I suspect that the allusion to cochlear implants and cats might be a similar case. A few years ago it came to light that a vivisector at UW-Madison was using cats in his research on hearing. and that he had photographed some of the cats who had undergone surgery to implant the cochlear devices and hardware in their brain and screwed to their skulls. His name was Tom Yin. (An aside, he had never used mice, rats, cell cultures, or tissue samples.) You can read about that case here.

This orange tabby used and eventually killed by Dr. Yin was aptly named Double Trouble:

Can you see the difference? FBR and the little booklet's 176 co-sponsors want the public to think about the cat with the cone around his/her neck when they imagine cats being used in research. They too must believe that were the public to learn the truth that their ilk might be driven out of business or at least dramatically constrained compared to what they are allowed to do right now.

The two images, the happy beagles playing together and the cat with the cone around his neck make it abundantly clear that the reality of what is happening in the labs is so terrible that those associated with the industry will do everything they can to keep the reality hidden from the public. And not just hidden; they aim to deceive. There isn't an easy alternative explanation for publishing the little booklet. 

Give Us More Money, or Else!

Be Very Afraid!

The March 19, 2007, press release from Johns Hopkins University begins like this:

JOHNS HOPKINS JOINS SEVEN OTHER INSTITUTIONS TO WARN CONGRESS ABOUT DANGERS OF FLAT FUNDING OF BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH
New Report Outlines Threat to Medical Progress in Combating Cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, Spinal Cord Injuries and Other Conditions

Johns Hopkins University and a consortium of seven other leading U.S. scientific and medical institutions today warned Congress that persistent flat funding of biomedical research could thwart advances in treatments for such diseases as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, and erode U.S. dominance in science.

In its 21-page report, Within Our Grasp-Or Slipping Away? Assuring a New Era of Scientific and Medical Progress, the consortium said years of stagnant budgets for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) also has interrupted promising research and forced young investigators to leave their scientific careers.

The group calls on Congress to provide more consistent and robust NIH funding levels to maintain U.S. global leadership in biomedical research. Other members of the consortium include the University of California system, Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Texas at Austin, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Wisconsin Madison, and Yale University....

This is hoodwinking and fear-mongering at its best, er, lowest.

Rather than torture readers by picking the report apart one sentence at a time, I'll debunk it globally and then will look at the featured quotes, since the authors felt these gems to be particularly convincing.

Global debunking

The spin supporting the report has been significant. One of the "contributers" to the report is Joan Brugge, chair of the department of cell biology at Harvard Medical School. She is quoted in a United Press International story as warning us that the fight against cancer could lose ground if ever-increasing amounts of tax money aren't provided to scientists. It's like we're being held hostage. Maybe we'll all start smoking again as we worry about these scientists struggling to make the mortgage payments on their summer homes.

Brugge says: "The number of drugs moving into the pipeline based on our new, more profound genetic and molecular understanding of cancer are extraordinary -- and there's no money to handle the testing of these compounds."

Let's think about this pipeline for a minute.

At one end (think of this as the gaping maw of the universities screaming "More, more, more! Feed me Seymore!") we are pouring in literally tens of billions of dollars for basic research on species other than humans, and between 1998 and 2003, the amount more than doubled. At the other end -- if this research paradigm is legitimate -- we would expect a somewhat proportional increase in benefit. But the results have been very unimpresive.

Consider Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis's 2004 commentary in the Journal of Translational Medicine regarding the pipeline that begins: "There is considerable evidence that the translation rate of major basic science promises to clinical applications has been inefficient and disappointing."

Consider Dr. Roger Rosenberg's editorial comments in the Journal of the American Medical Association regarding the pipeline:

Lives are literally being lost daily because of inertia in the system to move promising research quickly enough to the patient in need... There is an assumption that the recent exponential growth of scientific information about disease, as evidenced by the substantial increase in the numbers of published articles in biomedical journals, heralds a rapid move to improve human health.

This illusion is the subject of an intense analysis.... [Rosenberg, RN. Translating Biomedical Research to the Bedside: A National Crisis and a Call to Action. Journal of the American Medical Association 2003;289:1305-6.]

In 2004, William Richard Rodriguez, M.D. Chief Medical Director, Veritas Medicine and Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School had this to say:

Exactly one year ago, the nation's most thoughtful and deliberative body devoted to translating the fruits of biomedical research into meaningful improvements in patients' lives … released a quiet, highly critical indictment of the biomedical research effort in the United States.[Rodriguez, WR Can biomedical research in the United States be saved from collapse? 2004 MebMD, Veritas Medicine.]

Rodriguez said that enormous sums of money invested in biomedical research is being wasted because of "inertia and disorganization" because of two stumbling blocks: "difficulty in translating laboratory findings into results that actually make a difference to patients; and difficulty in taking proven, successful treatments out of the research setting where only a few patients can use them, and into the real world."

In otherwords, dumping massive amounts of money into the gaping maws of the universities has made little difference to patients. And now, they want even more.

You can tout the possible benefits of drugs and treatments in the pipeline all you want, but if nothing's coming out, pouring in good money after bad is just dumb.

Notice too, the first stumbling block: "difficulty in translating laboratory findings into results that actually make a difference to patients." This refers to the near impossibility of translating animal data into human data.

Those gems

Sprinkled throughout the report are statements by the "contributers" that seek to convince Congress with nothing more than blatant appeals to authority and fear mongering; but then, they've nothing else to draw upon. Let's look at some of these gems:

Before the human genome was sequenced, researchers would take a single protein and study it intensely. It was like studying a single screw from an airplane to figure out how the airplane flies. With the genome sequence and new tools, we now have the complete parts list and can begin to understand the collective behavior of the components. There’s no way we could've done that previously.
Vamsi Mootha, M.D.
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School

In otherwords, in the very recent past he and others were making wild and silly claims about the importance of their research and its liklihood to lead to benefit. But now, it's important.

Here's a quote from one of Mr. Mootha's recent papers: "[W]e have mapped 1,404 proteins to ten subcellular locations in mouse liver..." Whoo-hoo!

The biomedical research effort in the United States has far exceeded that in any other country—largely due to the steady funding of the NIH research grant program. But we are beginning to lose our competitive edge because of the funding crisis at the NIH. Once the impetus is lost, I fear it will be difficult to reverse.
M. Daniel Lane, Ph.D.
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

The United States spends vastly more on biomedical research than the rest of the world. According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. spends a higher percentage of its gross domestic product on health care than any other country but ranks 37th out of 191 countries according to its performance. According to a 2006 report from Save the Children (see CNN), the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, and American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway.

Who gives a hoot about "our competitive edge" if American babies, pregnant mothers, or anyone else, aren't getting the healthcare they need?

Here's a quote from one of Mr. Lane's recent papers: "Fatty acid synthase (FAS) inhibitors, administered systemically or intracerebroventricularly to lean or obese mice, increase hypothalamic malonyl-CoA leading to the suppression of food intake." Whoo-hoo!

I do science because I believe I can better the lives of patients.... Have you seen the bellies of patients who inject themselves with insulin? Or the skin of women with multiple sclerosis? They have so much scar tissue that each new injection is terribly painful. We owe it to our patients to come up with solutions.
Nicholas Peppas, Sc.D.
The University of Texas at Austin

Here's a quote from one of Mr. Peppas' recent papers: "The objective of this study was to elucidate the mechanisms contributing to oral bioavailability of insulin by poly(methacrylic acid grafted with poly(ethylene glycol)) (P(MAA-g-EG)) hydrogels using the gastric and intestinal fluids from rats."

Mr. Peppas might be genuine in his concern for human patients, but the potential income from his nineteen patents might also be a factor. Which makes me ask, why should taxpayers be forced to help promote his business interests?

And, though I pretend no expertise, maybe Mr. Pappas' description of an "insulin belly" is intended to provoke more concern than is due. I found this on the Humalog website: "[Y]ou may be new to giving yourself an injection. The first question many people in your situation ask is, 'Will it hurt?' Today, insulin needles are short and tiny, so there is minimal discomfort." And, there is an accompanying graphic pointing out the many locations available for an injection. But maybe Humalog is lying.

The doubling brought in a cohort of research ‘baby boomers.’ These new investigators suddenly have to compete heavily against each other and against senior investigators for grants. Many of them are leaving. This is a crisis for the research community. What is going to happen to the future of health research in the U.S?”
Lee Riley, M.D.
University of California, Berkeley

It's a crisis! Right. Ten years ago the research community told the public and Congress that if only they had more money they'd be sure find a cure for Cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Spinal Cord Injuries, and you name it. Now, after more than doubling the budget for basic research, they are telling us its a crisis. What gives?

The inherent risk taking—the driving engine for research—that’s the heavier toll of flat funding. People don’t take as many risks. You can’t afford to swing the bat and miss too many times.”
Jerry Chi-Ping Yin, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Hum, Mr. Yin seems to have done quite well for himself inspite of discoveries like this: "Using a model of protracted social isolation in adult rats, we observed increased anxiety-like behavior and deficits in both the latency to initiate sexual behavior and the latency to ejaculate."

In the past, it took four to five years of work to characterize genes involved in one species, then jump to humans or mice to ask its role in disease. Now we can do that in 10 minutes.”
Carol Greider, Ph.D.
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

10 minutes? Ten years ago she wrote:

We are interested in using the mouse as a model system for the study of telomerase. We studied telomerase activity and expression of the mouse telomerase RNA component (mTR) in two different transgenic mouse models of multistage tumorigenesis: models of islet cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.

Today, she says on her website:

To understand how telomere functions to provide chromosome stability and how telomerase might play a role in cancer, we generated a telomerase null mouse. Mice that lack the gene encoding the mouse Telomerase RNA (mTR) show progressive telomere shorting during successive breeding. The mice are viable for up to six generations although in the later generations there is severe reduction in fertility due to apoptosis in the germ cells. Crosses of these telomerase null mice to other tumor prone mouse models suggest that under some circumstances tumor formation can be greatly reduced when telomerase is absent.

She just wants more money.

Microchip technology allows us to scan for SNPs—single changes in the human genome. Originally, one chip could scan DNA for several hundred SNPs. The next generation chip will cover 1 million SNPs. We are using this technology to scan DNA from 1,000 families with Alzheimer’s, looking for common genetic patterns and the genes involved in late-onset Alzheimer’s disease.”
Leon Thal, M.D.
University of California, San Diego

Mr. Thal seemed to be claiming that without ever increasing amounts of money, researchers like him would what? Stop using gene chips? Here's how his website starts out:

My current research interests focus on three areas: the effects of basal forebrain lesion-induced memory loss, clinical pathological correlations in Alzheimer's disease (AD), and the conduct of clinical drug trials in AD.

In the laboratory, we are studying destruction of the basal forebrain in the rat which results in a marked decrease in cortical cholinergic markers as well as a multiplicity of learning and behavioral deficits secondary to impaired attention and acquisition.

As far as I know, people with Alzheimer's disease usually develop the symptoms in the absence of destruction of the basal forebrain. But what do I know?

Whatever you do to understand how a bacteria causes a disease, helps to understand how to prevent it.
Jorge Galán, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Yale University School of Medicine

I hope he meant to say that learning how a bacteria causes a disease might help one find a way to prevent it. The idea that whatever one does will be of value is just dumb. But, maybe this attitude -- anything a researcher chooses to do is meritorious -- contributes to the failure of basic research to deliver on its promises. And, maybe that explains why he thinks this sort of research is worthy of more money:

[W]e show here that mice deficient in the adaptor protein myeloid differentiation factor 88 (MyD88), which is required for signaling through most toll-like receptors, can be stably colonized by C. jejuni but not by isogenic derivatives carrying mutations in known virulence genes.

Have you noticed the trend in the research being conducted by the report's "contributers" yet?

We have learned so much about how diabetes and obesity damage blood vessels. All of the consequences of diabetes—kidney failure, blindness, loss of limbs, heart disease, and stroke—are vascular issues. And, in obesity, fat cells are factories of inflammatory substances that harm the blood vessel walls. All this knowledge comes from basic research.
Amparo Villablanca, M.D.
University of California, Davis

"Basic research" is code for experimentation on animals. Ms. Villablanca is a true believer; she probably believes that air travel is the result of animal experimentation as well. One of her recent papers starts out like this: "The overall goal of this project was to examine the interactions of hyperglycemia and loss of ovarian hormones on the artery wall in a type I diabetic mouse model."

Our product is not just our technology or medical breakthroughs. Our College of Natural Sciences alone puts 1,000 undergrads in research situations in labs, and most with NIH funding. That is a catalyst for creating innovative new scientists.”
Brent Iverson, Ph.D.
The University of Texas at Austin

Here's what Mr. Iversen has to say about his recent research: "These results represent the detection of free PA and LF by ELISA in the systemic circulation of two animal models [guinea pigs and rabbits] exposed to either of the two fully virulent strains of anthrax." Whoo-hoo!

Ten years ago, the search for treatment for spinal cord injury was a daunting and hopeless task. Then molecules like NOGO were discovered. Now there is hope. The neurological sciences are on the launching pad of a revolution.
Stephen Strittmatter, M.D., Ph.D.
Yale University School of Medicine

It's always, "We're on the launching pad," or "A breakthrough is just around the corner!" A recent Strittmatter discovery: "Corticospinal axons extend within the lesion site, but not caudal to it, after dorsal hemisection in the transgenic mice." Bet you didn't know that!

Studies now show you can train spinal cord circuits to restore function. Understanding the basic circuitry of the spinal cord has the potential to address a wide variety of human diseases—from Lou Gehrig’s Disease, to spinal muscular atrophy in children.
Thomas Jessell, Ph.D.
Columbia University

Only a cad wouldn't want to give endless and vast sums of money to help children with spinal muscular atrophy. Do you think Jessell's research involves children with spinal problems? Nope, almost all of his work is focussed on chick embryos. The rest uses mice and mouse cells.

Until recently, young minority investigators have been making unprecedented gains in the laboratory and in access to career-making grants. Their work is addressing everything from the biology of cardiovascular disease to cancer, and their research is generating knowledge and applying it in ways that will help eliminate health care disparities between minority groups and the larger population.

A flattening of the NIH budget—in real terms, a decrease in funding is already having a serious impact on the ability of these young investigators to realize sustained federal support. Without reasonable growth in NIH funding of basic science, our nation will be at risk of losing the remarkable perspective this generation of researchers brings to science.
David Nichols, M.D.
Vice Dean for Education
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

That makes sense. If there isn't money to burn, the major research universities dump the minorities. If we don't give the NIH ever increasing sums, we hate children and minorities.

Young people are not going to pursue a career in science because the funding situation is so bleak. That will have a generational impact that will take
15 years to fix.
Richard Davidson, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Complete crap from a scientist who is content to allow decades of his research data be destroyed rather than risk the public seeing what he does to monkeys in his lab. What a guy!

We have led the world in biomedical sciences—primarily due to NIH support. We’ve created an infrastructure that draws the best people in the world. We’ve spawned a biotech industry second to none and a pipeline of products. The fuel has been NIH funding. Choking that off is shortsighted and will have economic impacts.
Samuel Stanley, M.D.
Washington University in St. Louis

Well, there could be some economic impact if we really took the time to fund important and meaningful research instead of the deadend studies represented by the "contributers" to this report. The main impact will be the unemployment premiums we will have to pay until these bums can find gainful employment. Mr. Stanley uses severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) mice. He has explained that a decade of research using animals as models of amoebic infections in humans has led to no human trials.

Over the past decade, progress in vaccine development has been facilitated by new animal models that allow better testing of potential vaccine candidates and the application of recombinant technology to vaccine design. Oral vaccines and DNA-based vaccines have been successfully tested in animals models for immunogenicity and efficacy. There has been significant progress on a number of fronts, but there are unanswered questions regarding the effectiveness of immune responses in preventing disease in man and, as yet, no testing of any of these vaccines in humans has been performed.

He even admits that improved sanitation could eradicate of the disease.

Very, very productive scientists are doing no research. They are spending all of their time trying to get their labs funded again.
Robert Siliciano, M.D., Ph.D.
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

This must explain where the public's money is actually going. Presumably, when Mr. Siliciano gets a grant, he pays himself to write more grant proposals and appeals to Congress like this one. Who paid for this report? Did the "contributers" record their own time and refund that percentage of their federal grants? This must be what Mr. Siliciano means by being productive:

There is currently no SIV macaque model in which the effects of combination antiretroviral therapy on tissue immune responses and latent reservoirs have been measured. This study was performed to define the impact of combination therapy on the specificity and distribution of the T lymphocyte response in multiple tissue compartments. Pigtailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina) were infected with SIV/17E-Fr...

Studies of different diseases in differents species are unlikely to ever be very productive if productivity is measured by how much the results help humans. So far, the SIV studies have been a colossal failure.

The last 10 years saw a tremendous build up in scientific capacity. The country needs this. The scientific community drives the economy. In biology, it drives the pharmaceutical industry, and will help people live longer in a productive way. Now, the rug has been pulled out. We’ll lose manpower to European countries, India, China, and Japan.”
Eric Kandel, M.D.
Nobel Laureate, Columbia University

Spare me the drama. Mr. Kandel's Nobel does not seem to have dampened his ego or his xenophobia. Here's the title and a link to one of his recent papers: Identification of a Signaling Network in Lateral Nucleus of Amygdala Important for Inhibiting Memory Specifically Related to Learned Fear. I hope he loses all his funding.

The impact of flat funding has been felt all over. Certainly, senior investigators are not immune. It is causing us to reduce the size of our labs. People are working on conservative topics. And there will be less international collaboration in the future, because people are feeling less inclined to split resources.”
Jon Clardy, Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School

Flat funding? Consider "contributer" Richard Davidson's funding over time.

The doubling built the momentum. Then the momentum comes crashing to a halt. That threatens the foundation in a very insidious fashion.”
Ira Mellman, Ph.D.
Yale University School of Medicine

Mr. Mellman's momentum: "In vivo, Myo1f-deficient mice showed increased susceptibility to infection by Listeria monocytogenes and an impaired neutrophil response. Thus, Myo1f directs immune cell motility and innate host defense against infection."

This report, Within Our Grasp-Or Slipping Away? Assuring a New Era of Scientific and Medical Progress, is a perfect example of the hoodwinking that keeps the vivisection industry afloat. Throughout the report the authors employ sick children, cancer, Alzheimer's, anything that might evoke our fear or evoke our fundamental concern for others in a seedy attempt to grub more money for deadend archaic experimentation with animals.

Looking deeper at that researchers' actual work, it is clear that they are part of the obstruction in the biomedial pipeline. The real constipation in the system comes from clinical scientists and epidemiologists having to having to compete with vivisectors for funding.

Throughout this essay, I've repeatedly put quotation marks around the word contributer. The researchers cameoed here, probably contributed to the report to the degree that they contribute to progress in medical care. It's all smoke and mirrors.