{"id":142997,"date":"2019-09-16T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=142997"},"modified":"2019-09-23T10:17:48","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T09:17:48","slug":"how-animal-researchers-stay-out-of-the-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/09\/how-animal-researchers-stay-out-of-the-news\/","title":{"rendered":"How Animal Researchers Stay Out of the News"},"content":{"rendered":"

10 Sep 2019 – <\/em>If you are like most people, you know a lot more about how farm animals are treated on factory farms than dogs, primates and other animals are treated in US labs. It is no coincidence.<\/p>\n

Exposure of what occurs behind the Plexiglass Curtain would be so damaging to National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded university research contracts that millions are spent to prevent transparency. For example, in 2009 the University of Iowa was cleared<\/a> to construct an $11.2 million, 35,000 square foot \u201csubterranean vivarium that will house experimental animals to be used in biomedical research and offer an extra measure of protection from animal rights extremists,\u201d reported The Scientist<\/em>. The experimental animals include primates, sheep, pigs and rabbits.<\/p>\n

Lab animals are the actual currency<\/em> of government grants to medical centers and universities\u2014a kind of academic pork. At a medical center where I worked, researchers felt they had not \u201cmade it\u201d until they were given primates instead of lowly cats or rodents. And while NIH Director Francis Collins, who describes himself <\/a>as a \u201cserious Christian,\u201d has tackled<\/a> a lack of minorities and sexism in science, he is strangely silent on the millions, probably billions, of animals he sends to their death.<\/p>\n

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A monkey being tortured in a ‘scientific’ research laboratory. | Photo: Cruelty Free International<\/p><\/div>\n

Animal research at the highest government levels<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thomas R. Insel directed the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University, one of the world\u2019s largest centers for primate research, before becoming director <\/a>of the NIH\u2019s National Institute of Mental Health. In one experiment Insel participated in, newborn monkeys were \u201cremoved from their mothers within 48 h of birth,\u201d and subjected to \u201cstressors\u201d without being \u201cable to use a social companion to buffer their response to a stressor.\u201d What was learned? \u201cAs expected from previous studies, monkeys removed from their mother shortly after birth and raised in standard nursery conditions develop a syndrome characterized by decreased affiliation, increased aggression, and increased self-directed, repetitive behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another experiment<\/a> conducted by Insel on voles, a mouse-like mammal, \u201can animal was placed in the start box\u201d with 2-8 days old pups. \u201cParental behavior was recorded as time spent with pups, either nursing, grooming or crouching during a 5-min period. Females were decapitated the same day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar banal, cruel and taxpayer funded research has been conducted by Nora Volkow, director of the NIH\u2019s National Institute on Drug Abuse. One research paper co-written<\/a> by Volkow shows a bloody \u201cpregnant bonnet macaque in transverse position within HR+ PET scanner . . . positioned so that maternal and fetal organs were within same field of view.\u201d The paper concludes that when female primates are dosed with cocaine, fetuses are affected too. Does anyone not know this?<\/p>\n

The NIH\u2019s National Institute on Aging (NIA) is also complicit. A few year ago, when I inquired about degrading and mocking primate images posted on its web site from an official NIA workshop created by Wake Forest\u2019s Thomas Clarkson, the images were promptly removed with no written explanations. The photos showed monkeys posed with glasses, posed at typewriters and dressed in clothing. \u201cFunny\u201d cartoon bubbles were added.<\/p>\n

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Nearly all dairy cows live in factory farms, which make up 99 percent of farms, and they spend their lives almost entirely indoors.
Photo Credit: Official\/Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n

Defending their dollars<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is probably no industry more afraid of transparency than animal research. Ever since Alex Pacheco exposed treatment of the Silver Spring <\/a>monkeys in 1981, animal researchers have been reduced to uttering \u201cit\u2019s not how it looks\u201d or \u201clet us explain\u201d when unwanted images surface.<\/p>\n

And, expectedly, animal researchers turn nasty when their deeds are exposed and career security threatened. For example, when a group called Progress for Science dared to question<\/a> taxpayer funded primate research conducted at UCLA in 2014, they were met by an angry mob<\/a> of as many as 40 UCLA researchers and their supporters who yelled obscenities. Some pro-animal research protesters became so livid they had to be restrained by police. It was hard to believe the mob was, by day, men and women of \u201cscience\u201d dedicated to advancing human medicine. It was reminiscent of Northwestern University medical students who jeered protestors of their \u201cdog labs\u201d outside their medical building in 1988\u2014future healers.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s, the animal research industry tried to spin negative public opinion with campaigns like \u201cyour daughter or your dog\u201d implying your child would die if the dog or chimp didn\u2019t. Then researchers replaced dog labs with pig labs, a less loved animal. But by the 2000s, the animal research industry, running scared, pushed through the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act<\/a> which criminalizes interference with \u201cthe operations of an animal enterprise\u201d a precursor to \u201cAg-Gag\u201d laws covering farm operations.<\/p>\n

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Dow AgroSciences: research torturing dogs in name of science. (Foto: Reprodu\u00e7\u00e3o)<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, the public can judge animal research<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition to underground vivariums, electronic surveillance, code cards, high tech security and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, the animal research industry has another way of evading scrutiny: the public can\u2019t judge their \u201chigh level\u201d science. You can\u2019t judge the work of scientists plus it is for your own good. Yet revealing that maternal deprivation causes harm in babies or maternal cocaine use affects the fetus is not \u201chigh level\u201d science\u2014it is a waste of taxpayer dollars, cruelty to animals and an insult to our intelligence.<\/p>\n

Millions of restrained, conscious<\/a> animals\u2014usually albino rabbits but sometimes dogs\u2014are subjected to the \u201cDraize Test\u201d which involves applying test substances to the eye or skin and observing for redness, swelling, discharge, ulceration, hemorrhaging, cloudiness, or blindness in the tested eye. Yet when product liability cases actually come to court, these \u201ctests\u201d are thrown out because \u201canimal results cannot be extrapolated to humans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The animal-research industry is a vast, macabre enterprise richly supporting medical centers and individual researchers with almost no transparency or accountability. The public is denied a right to \u201cknow\u201d even though the public pays for it.<\/p>\n

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University of Utah\u2019s beagle experimentation program<\/p><\/div>\n

__________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Martha Rosenberg is a freelance journalist and the author of the highly acclaimed, <\/em>Born with a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp the Public Health<\/a>, published by Prometheus Books.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 intrepidreport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Sep 2019 – Perhaps you know a lot more about how farm animals are treated on factory farms than dogs, primates and other animals are treated in US labs. It is no coincidence. Exposure of what occurs behind the Plexiglass Curtain would be so damaging to university research contracts that millions are spent to prevent transparency. The animal-research industry is a vast, macabre enterprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":111773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,62,242,60,170,145],"tags":[229,786,619,570,232,120,840,857,651,109,287,647,831,991,126,75],"class_list":["post-142997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism","category-media","category-exposures","category-whistleblowing-surveillance","category-animal-rights-vegetarianism","category-science","tag-activism","tag-animal-justice","tag-animal-rights","tag-animals","tag-capitalism","tag-conflict","tag-cruelty","tag-exploitation","tag-justice","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-slavery","tag-veganism","tag-vegetarianism","tag-violence","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}