Torturing Monkeys. Everyday.

In humans, forms of ill treatment during captivity that do not involve physical pain appear to cause as much mental distress and traumatic stress as physical torture, according to a report in the March 2007 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

A news release from JAMA explained that the researchers interviewed 279 survivors of torture from Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Luka in Republica Srpska, Rijeka in Croatia and Belgrade in Serbia between 2000 and 2002. The survivors were asked which of 54 war-related stressors and 46 different forms of torture they had experienced. Researchers then divided events into seven broad categories: sexual torture; physical torture; psychological manipulations, such as threats of rape or witnessing the torture of others; humiliating treatment, including mockery and verbal abuse; exposure to forced stress positions, such as bondage with rope or other restrictions of movement; loud music, cold showers and other sensory discomforts; and deprivation of food, water or other basic needs.

JAMA summarized the authors' conclusions:

[A]ggressive interrogation techniques or detention procedures involving deprivation of basic needs, exposure to adverse environmental conditions, forced stress positions, hooding or blindfolding, isolation, restriction of movement, forced nudity, threats, humiliating treatment and other psychological manipulations do not appear to be substantially different from physical torture in terms of the extent of mental suffering they cause, the underlying mechanisms of traumatic stress and their long-term traumatic effects. These findings do not support the distinction between torture versus “other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” Although international conventions prohibit both types of acts, “such a distinction nevertheless reinforces the misconception that cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment causes lesser harm and might therefore be permissible under exceptional circumstances. These findings point to a need for a broader definition of torture based on scientific formulations of traumatic stress and empirical evidence rather than on vague distinctions or labels that are open to endless and inconclusive debate and, most important, potential abuse.”
(Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2007;64:277-285.

At least 25% of the rhesus monkeys in US laboratories mutilate themselves. Research suggests that 10% wound themselves so severely that they require veterinary intervention. This has been the subject of some research due to the added costs of having to care for these animals. See for instance: Tiefenbacher S, Fahey MA, Rowlett JK, Meyer JS, Pouliot AL, Jones BM, Novak MA. The efficacy of diazepam treatment for the management of acute wounding episodes in captive rhesus macaques. Comp Med. 2005 Aug;55(4):387-92.

Among the listed forms of "inhuman and degrading treatment" in the JAMA report are many that are routine in the monkey labs: deprivation of basic needs, exposure to adverse environmental conditions, isolation, restriction of movement, threats, and witnessing the torture of others.

Claims that the monkeys in the nation's labs, and in labs around the world are treated humanely is debunked by this report in JAMA. An accompanying editorial is titled: "No difference between torture and other forms of abuse."

Don't hold your breath waithng on the primate vivisection community to draw attention to the implications of this study.

See too, the ScienceDaily article.

Could You Recognize Evil if It Stared You in the Face? (Will the anti-Christ come wearing a t-shirt saying I'm the anti-Christ?)

If you looked into the eyes of evil, would you even know? What if someone claimed to be good, compassionate, or even holy? If evil wasn't branded with a swastika, wearing a mask, or had a pointed tail, could you distinguish it from good?

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On February 13, 2007, Richard Davidson, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, gave a public talk titled “Be Happy Like A Monk.” For his work on the neurobiology underlying Buddhist meditation, Davidson was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2006. He is a personal friend of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2005.

Davidson explained to the audience his methods for studying emotion and the effects of meditation in volunteers, both members of the general public and Buddhist monks. He defined happiness and talked about some epidemiological studies that have looked at possible correlations between happiness and marriage and happiness and money. The research strongly suggests that neither marriage nor money buy happiness. Then he went on to discuss the “Voluntary Cultivation of Compassion.”

The lecture hall was completely filled. The overflow was placed in a nearby hall and watched on closed circuit television. Davidson took questions after his presentation.

As people arrived they were given a leaflet that called attention to a part of Davidson’s research that he was unlikely to call attention to himself.

He finished his presentation with what he explained was one of his favorite quotations and a short video clip of the Dalai Lama urging students at MIT to embrace compassion. The quotation was from a letter to a friend written by Albert Einstein:

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Davidson announced at the beginning of his lecture that he would respond to the leaflet at the beginning of the question and answer session at the end of his talk. He did; this was his response:

I want to ask myself and respond to the issue that was raised in the leaflet that was handed out. Let me begin by saying that this is a very complicated and nuanced issue and I think that it is important at the outset to calmly and dispassionately reflect on this question. We have – I personally as a scientist have struggled with this issue a lot, and in fact I’ve spent many hours talking with the Dalai Lama himself about this issue, because it is something that has been of deep concern to me.

It is very clear to me as a scientist, that research on animals is important for the alleviation of suffering on our planet. I’m committed to that as a scientist and I believe that there are certain kinds of research which are just critical to do which will have enormously widespread impact in the relief of suffering.

One of the things that the Dalai Lama always asks us is, “What is your intention?” What is the scientist’s intention in the work that he or she is doing? The leaflet refers to the fact that a good portion of my work is on fear and anxiety, and it is.

If you look at the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, the first noble truth is that life is suffering and we don’t have to look very far to see suffering in our world, and my research is deeply committed to understanding the nature and roots of suffering and to eradicating suffering in whatever ways that I can contribute to that enterprise. And so the work that we do in rhesus monkeys, and I must say it’s a really small portion of what we do, and it’s all done collaboratively, is done, in that context and with that intention.

The research on fear and anxiety is not because we want to promote fear and anxiety, it’s because we want to eradicate suffering of all sentient beings. And moreover, at the Waisman Brain Imaging Laboratory one of the things that we have been among the world’s leaders in is developing ways to non-invasively image the rhesus monkey brain, the non-human primate brain so that we don’t have to use invasive procedures. We actually have at the Waisman Brain Imaging Laboratory a small PET scanner that is specifically designed for pets, for rhesus monkeys, and it is a way that we can image the brain using the same imaging devices that I go into all the time. So this has been a tremendous advance because we can now see things in the brain of an animal without having to actually do surgery and engage in invasive procedures.

So it is a very important issue and I think that anyone who does research at the animal level needs to ask him or herself what his or her intention is, and if the intention is, the work is being done for the purpose of alleviating suffering and if everything possible is done to minimize the discomfort and suffering the animal subjects and if there’s reason to believe that the work will benefit the alleviation of suffering in sentient beings.

I personally have made the decision that this work is important and should go forward, and I will stand up to that position and I will advocate for it and I will defend it. [Seemed to wait for applause that never came.]

So, I do think it is an important issue. I appreciate it being raised. I think it’s important for those of us who do work at that level be reminded us of its importance. So, I will now take questions from the audience.

The remainder of this essay is a response to Davidson’s remarks above and a few others from the lecture.

Davidson: “Let me begin by saying that this is a very complicated and nuanced issue and I think that it is important at the outset to calmly and dispassionately reflect on this question.”

The issue is neither complicated nor nuanced. Beginning his response in this manner suggests that the simple details of the matter will leave him looking anything but compassionate. His admonition to reflect on the question dispassionately seems contrary to his comments concerning compassion. He mentioned compassion nearly 20 times during his talk. Compassion is the deep emotional response to suffering in others. Telling his audience that a deep emotional response to life is laudable except when it has to do with him injecting acid into the emotion centers of monkeys’ brains, frightening them, and taking public funds to do so, should signal us that he is a little less than transparent or a man of compassion.

Davidson: “It is very clear to me as a scientist, that research on animals is important for the alleviation of suffering on our planet. I’m committed to that as a scientist and I believe that there are certain kinds of research which are just critical to do which will have enormously widespread impact in the relief of suffering.”

Davidson seems to view science as a fundamentalist. When he says that it is clear to him – as a scientist (is this like being a Baptist?) – that research on animals is important and critical to relieve suffering, just what could he be referring to?

It is a simple matter of fact that very little actual science exists to support his claim. It is only very recently that any careful study of this question has taken place. The results have supported the anecdotal studies that have seemed to demonstrate the generally uniform failure of using any species as a good predictive biological model of another species.

Davidson either ignores or is ignorant of the recent and widely reported conclusions by Perel et al., in the British Medical Journal: “Discordance between animal and human studies may be due to bias or to the failure of animal models to mimic clinical disease adequately.” [Perel P, Roberts I, Sena E, Wheble P, Briscoe C, Sandercock P, Macleod M, Mignini LE, Jayaram P, Khan KS. Comparison of treatment effects between animal experiments and clinical trials: systematic review. BMJ. 2007 Jan 27;334(7586):197. Epub 2006 Dec 15. Review. See too: Pound P, Ebrahim S, Sandercock P, Bracken MB, Roberts I; Reviewing Animal Trials Systematically (RATS) Group. Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans? BMJ. 2004 Feb 28;328(7438):514-7. Review. ]

Making a claim that “as a scientist” he is convinced, implies that he is aware of scientific evidence to support his claim. But there isn’t such evidence. Davidson was actually citing the dogma he thought might convince his audience that he isn’t evil, that the ends justify his means, that a man of compassion can torture restrained animals.

Davidson: “One of the things that the Dalai Lama always asks us is, ‘What is your intention?’ What is the scientist’s intention in the work that he or she is doing.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Intention is very important, there is little doubt about that and good intention is why we have Good Samaritan laws that protect people from being sued if an injury occurs during the course of trying to rescue someone. And no one faults a dentist when she drills out your cavity.

But intention is not the carte blanche that Davidson implies. If a scientist wants to find ways of helping rape victims recover, she is not at liberty to have people raped, no matter how honorable her intention. Davidson argues that because he wants to study the neurobiology of fear and potentially alleviate anxiety in human patients, he is then at liberty to experiment on the brains of monkeys and frighten them.

Davidson: “If you look at the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, the first noble truth is that life is suffering and we don’t have to look very far to see suffering in our world, and my research is deeply committed to understanding the nature and roots of suffering and to eradicating suffering in whatever ways that I can contribute to that enterprise.”

Davidson’s comment is misleading. The Four Noble Truths are at the heart of the Buddha’s teachings. Upon his enlightenment, awakening to the nature of reality, Siddhartha Gautama, now the Buddha, the Enlightened One, met some fellow aspirants with whom he had previously wandered and practiced various deprivations.

He said to them that he had realized four truths concerning the cause of suffering and its cessation. He explained that suffering was an inevitability of life. Being born means that one will experience various pains, sorrows, illnesses, losses, and finally, death.

He explained that this suffering is caused by the fact that we have desires and that all of our desires are for things that are impermanent. Everything that we want, good health, love, wealth, friends, satisfaction, power, life, everything, will pass.

He explained that if we can overcome our desires, our longing, our wanting, that we can escape from suffering.

The Fourth Noble Truth is the Buddha’s method for doing this. He called his method the Eightfold Path.

Right View
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration

This is the Buddhist path to ending suffering. Right action includes abstaining from harming sentient beings. Right livelihood includes abstaining from dealing in enterprises based on using sentient beings. Not one of these parts orders us to hurt others or condones hurting them, no matter our intention. Buddha explains the certain detriment to anyone intentionally harming another.

This message of concern and compassion for all is repeated throughout the Buddhist canon.

Davidson: “And so the work that we do in rhesus monkeys, and I must say it’s a really small portion of what we do, and it’s all done collaboratively, is done, in that context and with that intention.”

Davidson makes two interrelated arguments: a little sin isn’t so bad, and he wasn’t the only one doing it. (And he appeals to his “good” intention once again.)

Imagine using this argument in a court of law. Your Honor, torturing children is a very small part of how I spend my time, and it was, after all, a gang rape. What’s the big deal? In fact, I was helping a scientist who wants to learn how to help rape victims.

Davidson: “[A]t the Waisman Brain Imaging Laboratory one of the things that we have been among the world’s leaders in is developing ways to non-invasively image the rhesus monkey brain, the non-human primate brain so that we don’t have to use invasive procedures.”

Davidson’s experimental work using rhesus monkeys is decidedly invasive.

Experimental subjects. Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were used as experimental subjects. The animals were housed at the Harlow Primate Laboratory and at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center. Animal housing and experimental procedures were in accordance with institutional guidelines. Eighteen males underwent lesioning procedures at an average age of 34.9 months. Sixteen unoperated male controls were used for comparison and at the beginning of the study were on average 34.6 months of age. [The role of the central nucleus of the amygdala in mediating fear and anxiety in the primate. Kalin NH, Shelton SE, Davidson RJ . J Neurosci . 2004 Jun 16;24(24):5506-15.]

Davidson: “I personally have made the decision that this work is important and should go forward, and I will stand up to that position and I will advocate for it and I will defend it.”

In spite of Davidson’s claim that he has thought long and hard about this issue and has had long talks with the Dalai Lama about the use of animals, this seems to be his first public comment about the matter. It looks to me that he was embarrassed into making these comments because everyone in the audience had the flier that made his claim of compassion appear to be something other than genuine.

Before ending, I want to point out two interesting facts. First, His Holiness, the purported Dalai Lama, the incarnation of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, supports animal experimentation. He has said so on a number of occasions at public presentations. This suggests that either Tibetan Buddhism is an aberration or there was an error made by the Lamas who identified Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, as an incarnation of Avalokiteśvara. If the Buddhism practiced by the Tibetans is authentic, there seem to be few other possibilities.

Second, Davidson appealed to Martin Seligman as an authority on happiness. This is telling. Martin E. P. Seligman should be remembered for his studies on the behavior of dogs exposed to uncontrollable electroshock under a variety of conditions. Generally, dogs were placed in slings and repeatedly shocked. After a period of time, a dog was placed in a shuttle-box to test the dog’s ability to learn to avoid electroshocks.

A shuttle box is an apparatus with two sections that an animal is able to move back and forth between. The floor of each side can be electrified independently. Dogs who had been restrained and shocked repeatedly were less able to learn to avoid the energized floor of one compartment by jumping to the other compartment.

Seligman reported that his observations were based on over 150 dogs.

When an experimentally naive dog receives escape-avoidance training in a shuttle box, the following behavior typically occurs: at the onset of the first traumatic electric shock, the dog runs frantically about, defecating, urinating and howling, until it accidentally scrambles over the barrier and so escapes the shock. On the next trial, the dog, running and howling, crosses the barrier more quickly than on the preceding trial. This pattern continues until the dog learns to avoid shock altogether. Overmier and Seligman (1967) and Seligman and Maier (1967) found a striking difference between this pattern of behavior and that exhibited by dogs first given inescapable electric shocks in a Pavlovian hammock. Such a dog’s first reactions to shock in the shuttle box are much the same as those of a naive dog. In dramatic contrast to a naive dog, however, a typical dog which has experienced uncontrollable shocks before avoidance training soon stops running and howling and sits or lies, quietly whining, until shock terminates. The dog does not cross the barrier and escape from shock. Rather, it seems to give up and passively accepts the shock. On succeeding trials, the dog continues to fail to make escape movements and takes as much shock as the experimenter chooses to give. [Seligman, M.E. “Depression and Learned Helplessness.” In (R.J Friedmand and M.M. Katz Eds.) The Psychology of Depression: Contemporary Theory and Research. V.H. Winston and Sons. 1974.]

Seligman and Davidson seem peas in a pod. They both claim to be experts on happiness, yet their careers are studded with instances of profound callousness and cruelty.

The idea that society accepts them as experts and looks to them to help people be happy seems to be a corruption of truth, of justice, and to subtly victimize those who seek them out as authorities on anything good and wholesome.

Primate Experiments: The Painful Reality

In a shocking new dossier, Animal Aid reveals how monkeys are made to suffer and die inside British laboratories and the ‘reasons’ given for their deaths. All the experiments revealed in the dossier took place in Britain (apart from one which was conducted in the USA with a British scientist) in the past two years and were published in 2006. The experiments include monkeys being deliberately brain damaged and then frightened, in order to assess their responses, and a 16-year old macaque being dosed with a drug that induces tremors, rigidity and incapacity.

Much more, here.

It's worth keeping in mind that vivisectors and their supporters in the UK are quick to claim that the rules for conducting research in the UK are among the strictest anywhere. Keep in mind too, that the number of studies conducted in the UK amounts to a tiny sliver of the studies (less well regulated according to the Brits) conducted here.

Why People Smoke? Nicotine May Be the Answer.!?!

Well duh! And I always thought it was to look cool.

How stupid is this? Really stupid, and, cruel.

According to an article in the Toronto Daily News with the headline Why People Smoke? Nicotine May Be the Answer: "Nicotine use is highly addictive, which is why most smokers who want to quit may not be able to succeed." May be the answer?? Bet you didn't know that.

This news comes from a publicly-funded study at the Preclinical Pharmacology Section, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health-Department of Health and Human Services in Baltimore. The paper is freely available on line here.

The problem addressed in the study was explained by the authors:

"[The] reinforcing effects of nicotine alone have often been difficult to demonstrate directly in controlled laboratory studies with both animals and humans as experimental subjects. Consequently, there has been continuing controversy in the literature about the validity of previous findings of reinforcing effects of nicotine in experimental animals and human subjects."

Did you get that? These dick wads (and everyone along the way who felt this study had merit) claim that there is controversy concerning whether nicotine is addictive. And so, they decided to torture five monkeys.

Subjects
Five naive male squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciurea), weighing 730 to 950 g were subjects. They were housed individually in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room and were maintained on a 12-h light/dark cycle; the lights were on from 6:45 AM to 6:45 PM. Experiments were conducted during the light phase. Animals were maintained in facilities fully accredited by the American Association for the Accreditation of Laboratory Animals used in this study were maintained in facilities fully accredited by the American Association for the Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) and all experimentation was conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the Institutional Care and Use Committee of the Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, and the Guide for Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (National Research Council 2003). In each monkey, a polyvinyl chloride catheter (inside diameter, 0.38 mm; outside diameter 0.76 mm) was used for i.v. injection of drug and was passed through the right or left jugular vein or through the femoral vein to the level of the right atrium under halothane anesthesia. Subcutaneous catheters led to the monkey's back where they exited the skin. The monkeys wore jackets at all times to protect these catheters. Each weekday the catheters were flushed, refilled with saline (0.9% NaC1) and sealed with stainless steel obturators. Before acquisition of nicotine self-administration, the monkeys have been euthanized to performed brain imaging experiment using positron emission tomography to measure the expression of brain nicotinic receptors. These results will be reported elsewere.

What total pricks.

The Authoritarians

If like me, you have noticed the cult-like quasi-religious overtones of the vivisection industry, you might find The Authoritarians, by University of Manitoba Associate Professor Bob Altemeyer, of interest.

If you have merely scratched your head wondering how Bush and company came to power and why they have done the things they have, then you'll find this a facinating examination of our darker side.

On the Endangered Lab Chimp

The January 26, 2007 issue of Science includes an article written by Jon Cohen titled “The Endangered Lab Chimp.” [Vol. 315. no. 5811, pp. 450 – 452.]

Mr. Cohen’s article begins with the headline: “A decline in the number of chimpanzees available for biomedical research in the U.S. has sparked a growing debate on the opportunities and costs of studies with our closest relatives.”

I don’t know whether these are Cohen’s words or an editor’s, but they are indicative of the ivory tower or head-in-the-sand mentality so often expressed in Science and similar journals. Who could be so out of touch as to claim that the debate over our use of chimpanzees is a new phenomenon sparked by the decline in their availability? Have Cohen and the editors of Science never heard of Jane Goodall?

Before bloodying my hands with a dissection of Cohen’s article, let me first say a bit about the author and the journal’s decision to have Cohen write about this issue. Cohen is the author of Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine (W. W. Norton & Company; December 2001.)

Cohen believes that the way to an HIV vaccine is a “March of Dollars,” a modern day March of Dimes, that he calls a “grand experiment” that would “possibly use more moneys than are currently available for research.” (p 329.) In the chapter notes he clarifies his estimate to a mere 1000 monkeys. Cohen seems unmoved by the fact that using monkeys in AIDS research has resulted in dozens of vaccines – all successful in monkeys, all failures in humans. Cohen has a hard time understanding that HIV is uniquely a human disease.

In Shots, Cohen urges us to keep doing something that has proven ineffective, like sending more troops to Iraq.

Who better to write about the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research and the debate that’s just been sparked by “a decline in the number of chimpanzees available for biomedical research”?

Cohen begins his article by twisting the facts into a scenario that he presumably finds worrying and apparently hopes will worry the biomedical community as well. He writes:

As a result, [of the 2000 CHiMP Act, and animals being moved into a quasi-sanctuary] the population has dropped from 1500 in 1996 to 1133 in October 2006. Now, many researchers who conduct biomedical research on chimpanzees are worried that the number of breeding animals is declining so rapidly that there will soon not be enough left to sustain the population. “The population is heading for a cliff,” says Todd Preuss, a neuroscientist at Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, which has the country’s oldest colony of research chimpanzees. “If we don’t start breeding these chimpanzees soon, they’re going to go away, and they’re going to be gone for good.”

First, there aren’t “many researchers who conduct biomedical research on chimpanzees.” In fact, in 2004, there were a total of 25 principal investigators (the scientist whose name is on the grant) using chimpanzees. About the only biomedical research niche found for chimpanzees is in hepatitis research. In 2004, there were 21 funded studies underway by 17 principal investigators studying hepatitis. Most of these studies were on-going and using the same chimpanzees year after year. Chimpanzees can remain in a hepatitis protocol for many years and be subjected to many painful and debilitating liver biopsies. In 2004, there were over 1000 studies underway using monkeys, and many thousands of studies using mice. Cohen’s claim is hyperbole.

Cohen writes: “The push to breed more chimpanzees is forcing a reexamination of questions that have long surrounded research with our closest relatives, an endangered species that is rapidly disappearing in the wild.”

Given the fact that so few chimpanzees are being used in so few studies, just what push is Cohen referring to? Most of the 1100 chimpanzees being held at federally funded laboratories are being warehoused. The lack of demand for chimpanzees is exactly what led to the NIH supporting the passage of the Chimpanzees Health Improvement, Maintenance, and Protection (CHIMP) Act of December 2000.

Cohen:

Still other researchers caution against making a blanket proclamation that invasive experiments with chimpanzees are unethical. “To draw a hypothetical line in the air I don’t think does justice to the subtlety of these questions,” says Norman Letvin, an immunologist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who has done AIDS vaccine experiments in chimpanzees and monkeys. “These kinds of discussions need to be focused on very specific questions about a particular study.” Letvin no longer experiments on chimps and says he can’t see any compelling reason today to use large numbers of them for biomedical research. But he stresses, as do many other investigators, that this animal model has led to “enormously valuable” medical advances in the past and may well in the future.

Letvin’s research and his judgment are proven failures. In 1987 he declared:

Substantial advances have already been made in the understanding of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The major issues for AIDS research during the next few years must be practical ones: the development of a safe, effective vaccine for individuals not yet infected with the causative virus and the development of drug therapies for those already infected. Suitable animal models will be needed for studies designed to achieve these goals. Areas of investigation in animal models can be divided into four categories on the basis of increasing direct relevance to AIDS in humans: retroviruses that have no obvious, close relation to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) but can induce chronic diseases with manifestations that include immunologic abnormalities; ungulate lentiviruses; HIV-related viruses of Old World primates; and HIV infection of chimpanzees. It is hoped that important research developments in experimental models can be quickly extrapolated to human AIDS. Desrosiers RC, Letvin NL. Animal models for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Rev Infect Dis. 1987 May-Jun;9(3):438-46. Review.

(Ron Desrosiers, Director of the New England National Primate Research Center may hold the record for announcements that he has found a vaccine for HIV.)

Chimpanzees, the animal model with the most direct relevance to AIDS in humans, according to Letvin, have been abandoned as HIV models. How could Letvin’s opinion on this issue have any weight whatsoever? His claim that this animal model has led to “enormously valuable” medical advances in the past is just more hyperbole. The single medical advance that could conceivably be attributed to some use of chimpanzees is the development of the hepatitis B vaccine, but even this claim has been challenged.

Undoubtedly, Cohen went to Letvin for a statement because Letvin has built his career on plowing ahead with ever more NIH-funded SIV experiments on monkeys, Cohen’s version of the AIDS Grail.

Cohen seems to almost understand that biomedical research with chimpanzees has been a bust:

As many proponents of this animal model note, such research played a crucial role in the development of the vaccine for hepatitis B, a sometimes lethal virus that has infected 2 billion people. But scientists around the world have also performed studies that are now considered bizarre or brutal. The U.S. Air Force’s chimponaut program shot them into space. Other researchers harvested their organs for human transplants, implanted electrodes into their brains to study sleep, and used them to gauge the effects of alcohol and marijuana. And a Soviet scientist attempted to inseminate them with human sperm to make a “humanzee.”

He follows up by noting that: “the chimpanzee AIDS model had problems from the get-go.”

Cohen finally gets to his claim about what "sparked" the "recent debate."

With the publication of the first draft of the chimpanzee genome in September 2005, calls mounted for NCRR to lift the moratorium. In a commentary in that same issue of Nature, the heads of the U.S. primate centers again extolled the benefits of maintaining this “unique resource” and warned that if the moratorium were not lifted, the population would sharply decline within 5 years.

Since then, one of the co-authors, John VandeBerg, director of Southwest National Primate Research Center, has performed a more detailed analysis of the age and health status of the chimps housed at all six facilities. At a chimp meeting at Yerkes in October 2006, Vande-Berg said that of the 1133 animals then available, just 200 females were potential breeders. If the breeding moratorium were not lifted, he added, there will be no research chimps left by 2037 when all of these chimpanzees will have died.

Cohen spins the facts. The commentary he refers to in Nature was not written by “the heads of the U.S. primate centers.” (VandeBerg JL, Zola SM. A unique biomedical resource at risk. Nature. 2005 Sep 1.) The term “U.S. primate centers” is invariably used to refer to the eight NIH National Primate Research Centers.

Not surprisingly, the commentary was written by John VandeBerg, director of Southwest National Primate Research Center, and Stuart Zola, director of Yerkes National Primate Research Center, which just happen to be the only two of the eight National Primate Research Centers that have chimpanzees. To Southwest and Yerkes, these animals are not chimpanzees, they are cash cows.

Co-authors included Jo Fritz, Primate Foundation of Arizona, Mesa; D. Rick Lee, Alamogordo Primate Facility, New Mexico; Thomas J. Rowell, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Louisiana; and William C. Satterfield, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, Texas. These are the only facilities in the U.S. holding chimpanzees for research.

I wonder what the buggy whip manufactures had to say about the importance of buggy whips as their industry failed?

From Table 1: Five-year projection of the number of chimpanzees available for research in the absence of breeding. (VandeBerg JL, Zola SM. A unique biomedical resource at risk. Nature. 2005 Sep 1.)

Cohen claims that VandeBerg report at a “chimp meeting” that current trends suggest that the US chimpanzee population will be too old to breed in a few years “startled many at the meeting…. Others noted that the aging of the population is already limiting brain and behavioral research that depends on younger animals.”

Given the tiny number of studies recently published or underway using chimpanzees in brain and behavioral research, this claim should be understood to be hyperbole as well. It also begs the question as to whether any of these very few studies have any merit in the first place.

Cohen goes on to cite other nations and private institutions that have halted their use of chimpanzees. He quotes a few scientists who argue from an ethical perspective that chimpanzees should no longer be used in research.

To counter this nod to apparent balance, Cohen again relies on vested parties:

In their 2005 Nature commentary, VandeBerg and co-authors argued that chimpanzees should remain available for disease research and for testing drugs and vaccines. VandeBerg notes that some proprietary experiments with monoclonal antibodies done for commercial companies have led to illness or even death of chimps—preventing harmful drugs from entering human trials. “It’s unethical from a human standpoint to not do this research,” he says.

This is a pretty clear example of the spin and fear mongering used by primate vivisectors everywhere. There is no reason to assume that a drug or disease that negatively affects a chimpanzee will have a similar effect in a human or visa versa. The most glaring and ironic example given Cohen’s biases is HIV: deadly in humans, a brief sniffle in chimpanzees. VandeBerg has a weak grasp on ethics.

And of course, Cohen gives the last word to Letvin:

… others say the U.S. government should simply support a core breeding group of chimpanzees for biomedical research as an insurance policy for future emergencies. Beth Israel’s Letvin agrees with this minimalist strategy. “If we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that we don’t know what the next epidemic will be and what the next major health crisis is going to be,” says Letvin. “It would be foolhardy to take any potential animal model off the table.”

Letvin’s predictions and research have so far missed the target altogether. Cohen cheers him on.

Dr. Robert J. White

White served as a medical ethics advisor to Pope John Paul II.

The Poisoned Plum

A January 31, 2007 press release from the University of Wisconsin, Madison announced that Thomas McKenna, director of the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Plum Island, N.Y., where he has worked since 1995, has been chosen to head the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory which includes a self-contained Biological Safety Level 3 laboratory, where work with highly infectious organisms and other potential bioterrorism agents will be performed.

The release, disseminated as original writing in a local newspaper, quoted Daryl Buss, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine: “We are highly impressed with Tom's leadership skills, his scientific credentials and his ability to manage a resource that is vitally important to Wisconsin citizens.”

I attended a presentation by dean Buss and others at the November 30, 2006, Town of Dunn town hall meeting. A select group of purported university experts went to Dunn to explain why the University had offered a 160 acre parcel of land it owns in the township to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a site for a new Biological Safety Level 4 laboratory.

A Biological Safety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory studies the most deadly, most contagious diseases known. The new lab, wherever it is finally built, will be called the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility (NABF).

During the Dunn town hall meeting, dean Buss explained that the new facility would be a replacement for U.S. government owned Plum Island. He explained that Plum Island was an exemplary laboratory, but that it was deemed too old to fully renovate, so Homeland Security was trying to find a location to build a new laboratory.

During the Q&A, an elderly woman stood and asked the panel of university experts whether any of them had read the book she was holding, Lab 257. The experts looked around at each other, no, none of them was familiar with the book. Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York, may have been prescient when he worried that if someone didn’t force the government to do something about Plum Island, that the author’s “brilliant work will have been wasted and we may be the victims, once again, of government inadvertence.”

There is something contradictory in dean Buss’s praise for Thomas McKenna’s leadership during his twelve years at Plum Island and the problems at Plum Island revealed by Michael C. Carroll’s Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory.

There is something disturbing about dean Buss claiming that McKenna is impressive without, apparently, having familiarized himself with well researched criticisms of Plum Island’s history of germ research.

There is something nefarious in the fact that the university is trying to convince the Town of Dunn that it has nothing to worry about if Homeland Security builds a BSL-4 lab replacement for Plum Island in its back yard. Now, another expert will be able to say that he worked at Plum Island and the people of Dunn and nearby Madison should feel perfectly safe.

Understandably, getting information from Plum Island has proven to be as difficult as getting information from the UW. What has emerged from a large body of evidence, circumstantial and factual, is the likelihood that Plum Island is responsible for a number of disease outbreaks that have proven to be national public health and agricultural nightmares.

There is compelling evidence that Plum Island is responsible for the introduction into the United States of Lyme Disease, West Nile virus, Dutch duck plague, and the reintroduction hoof-and-mouth disease. Plum Island’s biocontainment mechanisms were allowed to deteriorate and remained non-functional for many years. Security was lax. Accidents were common. Plum Island’s apparent catastrophic failure to protect the public must be borne in part by Thomas McKenna.

Naming McKenna to lead a BSL-3 laboratory and likely become an advocate for the proposed BSL-4 laboratory – without fully understanding the history of Plum Island – is yet another violation of the public’s trust by the University of Wisconsin.

Hook, Line, and Sinker

“I don't believe that nicotine or our products are addictive.” U.S. Tobacco Company CEO Joseph Taddeo. 1994 Congressional Testimony.

Why are so many people so absolutely gullible? Why do so many people trust government and industry spokespersons? Why do so many people think Rush Limbaugh or a priest, a public relations spokesperson, or someone financially vested in whatever they might be peddling can be trusted? What makes us, generally, so stupid?

“If some environmentalists are to be believed, we are on the verge of massive global climate change…” http://www.skepticism.net/

Part of the answer must lie in the fact that many of us are willing to lie, to deceive, are greedy, and simply hate anyone who isn’t also greedier than hell.

“In fact, trans fats have been a part of the American diet since the early 1900s and they are hardly toxic.” http://www.consumerfreedom.com/

Part of the answer must lie in the fact that the intelligence of society’s members falls out along a bell-shaped curve. The median IQ is about 100. That’s not real smart. Many more than half of us are pretty dumb. Real dumb.

“When you track the genealogical record in God's Word you will discover that the earth is just over 6,000 years old.” http://www.godsaidmansaid.com/home.asp

Add greed into this mix and you find lots of self-serving predators and their hirelings willing to sell you a medicine they know is going to do nothing or even hurt your child, hide the fact their products are poisoning the earth, or the fact that they get their money directly from your paycheck and contribute nothing but sorrow and suffering.

“Animal research has played a vital role in virtually every major medical advance of the last century.” Foundation For Biomedical Research.

It’s pretty sad. In the past, this recognition has led to revolution. Unfortunately, during a revolution dummies get used and different liars take control.

“One of the main goals of laboratory animal scientists is assuring research animals are not exposed to any unnecessary pain or stress.” Kids 4 Research. http://www.kids4research.org/animals.html

The way out of this morass is probably a governmental system based on proportional representation. With our current winner-takes-all system, money can be concentrated on key races and assure that the powerful stay in control.

“Nuclear energy has perhaps the lowest impact on the environment—including air, land, water, and wildlife—of any energy source, because it does not emit harmful gases, isolates its waste from the environment, and requires less area to produce the same amount of electricity as other sources.” The Nuclear Energy Institute.

America is capitalism run amok.

“These results show that HIV-1 can induce AIDS in chimpanzees and suggest that long-term passage of HIV-1 in chimpanzees can result in the development of a more pathogenic virus.”

Virol., May 1997, 4086-4091, Vol 71, No. 5 Development of AIDS in a chimpanzee infected with human immunodeficiency virus type Francis Novembre, et al. Department of Pathology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. fnovembr@rmy.emory.edu

Hook, line, and sinker.

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” Remarks by the Vice President to the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National Convention. August 26, 2002.

Who gives a hoot about hungry kids?

Research results direct from the National Institutes of Health. Rather than a national healthcare system we support a white-coat welfare system.

Age-Dependent Variation in Behavior Following Acute Ethanol Administration in Male and Female Adolescent Rhesus Macaques(Macaca mulatta). Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2007 Feb;31(2):228-37.

Schwandt ML, Barr CS, Suomi SJ [Harry Harlow's best-known grad student], Higley JD. Laboratory of Clinical and Translational Studies, National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, NIH Animal Center, Poolesville, Maryland.

Background: There has been considerable focus on the adolescent stage of development in the study of alcohol use and the etiology of alcohol-related problems. Because adolescence is a process of dynamic change rather than a discrete or static stage of development, it is important to consider ontogenetic changes in the response to ethanol within the adolescent time period. In rodents, levels of ethanol-induced motor impairment have been shown to increase from early to late adolescence. This study investigated associations between behavior following acute ethanol administration and age, rearing condition (mother-reared vs nursery-reared), and serotonin transporter (rh5-HTTLPR) genotype in a sample of alcohol-naive adolescent rhesus macaques. Methods: Rhesus macaques (n=97; 41 males, 56 females), ranging in age from 28 to 48 months, were administered intravenous (IV) doses of ethanol (2.2 g/kg for males, 2.0 g/kg for females) twice in 2 separate testing sessions. A saline/ethanol group (n=16; 8 males, 6 females) was administered saline in 1 testing session and ethanol in the second session. Following each IV injection, subjects underwent a 30-minute general motor behavioral assessment. Behavior in the saline/ethanol group was compared between the saline and ethanol-testing sessions using analysis of variance. Behavioral data for the larger study sample were averaged between the 2 testing sessions and summarized using factor analysis. Rotated factor scores were used as dependent variables in multiple regression analyses to test for relationships between behavior and age, rearing condition, and rh5-HTTLPR genotype. Results: During the ethanol-testing session, behaviors indicative of motor impairment (stumbles, falls, sways, bumping the wall, and unsuccessful jumps) were frequently observed in the saline/ethanol group, while they did not occur under the saline-testing session. Factor analysis of behavior following ethanol administration in the larger study sample yielded 3 factors: Ataxia, Impaired Jumping Ability, and Stimulation. Significant negative correlations between age and Ataxia were found for both males and females. Females also exhibited positive correlations between age and Impaired Jumping Ability and age and Stimulation. No significant correlations were found with either rearing condition or rh5-HTTLPR genotype. Conclusions: These findings suggest that ontogenetic changes during adolescence in the behavioral response to ethanol differ between rodents and primates. Furthermore, sex differences in the behavioral response to ethanol appear to develop during adolescence.

"During the ethanol-testing session, behaviors indicative of motor impairment (stumbles, falls, sways, bumping the wall, and unsuccessful jumps) were frequently observed in the saline/ethanol group, while they did not occur under the saline-testing session."

Wow! That knowledge is much more important than making sure children get food and healthcare. I trust the govenment to always act in my best interest.