Animal Writings

I'm pleased to take part in SuperWeed's Carnival Against Vivisection, organized by pattrice jones. I haven't written about vivisection in a while. Lately I've focused mostly on vegan diets and animal agriculture, perhaps because people can make direct decisions about their food consumption every day. But as pattrice cautions, we cannot forget about animals wasting away in cages in laboratories across the world, infected with diseases, denied any semblance of a normal life, and subjected to invasive procedures that are frightening and acutely stressful for them.

As with many of my other posts, my participation will be in the form of a series of several posts. The series is divided into these parts:

• Tragically unnecessary animal experiments at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) and Oregon State University (OSU)


• A modest proposal for the National Institutes of Health


• Practical steps your neighbors and co-workers might willingly take to reduce the number of animals harmed and killed in laboratories

We may as well jump right in to see the ugliness of vivisection, the senseless suffering and violence inflicted on animals in the name of science. This page from In Defense of Animals (IDA) describes how a researcher at OHSU surgically injects nicotine into pregnant monkeys and steals the unborn babies from their mothers' wombs to dissect their lungs. Yes — it should make you wince.

Some mothers in the experiment are "allowed" to keep their babies for a short time. IDA's Matt Rossell, who worked undercover at OHSU as a primate caretaker, and who gave an impactful video presentation of lab animal abuse and suffering and the AR2008 conference, describes the reaction of monkeys whose babies were forcefully taken from them by lab workers:


Grabbing terrified babies from the arms of their mothers, making the mothers scream in horror...There is something just gut-wrenchingly wrong with that. But it's business as normal in the vivisection industry.

Notice also, in the above account, the empathy among the monkeys—all powerless to stop the human from pulling a baby away from his/her mother. Monkeys and rats have both scored better than humans in some empathy tests. And in several species now, I've seen firsthand that members of the group will come to the defense of one individual who's attacked, especially if the victim is a baby. (Even the older members, who have trouble walking, may try as best they can to come to the aid of the victim.) What does an animal have to do, speak English in order to not be treated as a throwaway tool? Really, it comes down in large part to "might makes right" that ultimately drives our decision to dominate animals. Abraham Lincoln was more on the mark when he said "right makes might", but lately I'm starting to think that, if history is any guide, more often than not might makes wrong when it is humans who have the might.

Back to this experiment...We have known for years, beyond reasonable doubt, from clinical evidence, that smoking is harmful to fetuses. In fact, misleading animal experiments delayed our reaching this life-saving conclusion. The biggest challenge now is getting young women not to smoke. From an ethical, scientific, fiscal, and human health perspective, these continued nicotine experiments are a disgrace, and an indictment of our biomedical research system.

I have to wonder...Apart from the sheer brutality and invasiveness, day in and day out, which perhaps numbs researchers to the suffering of all the caged animals in their midst, do the people who do these things—who come up with these outrageous proposals and conduct these blatantly unscientific and/or superfluous projects—actually believe that they're helping humans, and that they're using tax dollars earmarked for health research wisely? I have my doubts—which makes the hell they put animals through even more inexcusable.

And the people that fund them...what are they thinking? Or are they thinking?

Then there are the committees that, in theory, are supposed to filter out proposals for animal experiments that are redundant, or that can be done with cell cultures, computer modeling, human volunteers (including patients who have naturally acquired the condition being studied)—any method that does not require the use of animals. Forget it. As IDA explains:


The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine reports that


I suppose the most die-hard, anti-animal rights, pro-vivisectionist might point out—as a patheticaly weak defense—that at least OHSU in this instance is ostensibly finding out information about a deadly substance. Which leads me to my next topic, the "gay sheep" experiments at OHSU and OSU, which I will explore in some detail starting in the next post.

Labels: animal experiments, In Defense of Animals, nicotine experiments, Oregon Health Sciences University, Oregon State University, pattrice jones, primates, SuperWeed, vivisection