PETA Sues the University of South Dakota

They're trying to get records released on animal experiments.

Oklahoma State Stops Anthrax Vaccine Testing

It's too controversial because the baboons involved would have to be destroyed after the testing.

From Bioprepwatch.com...

Administrators at OSU decided not to let the project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, commence as the primates being used would be euthanized. An internal faculty committee spent more than a year preparing protocol for the care and use of the primates...

OSU administrators said in a statement that, "this research was not in the best interest of the university. The testing of lethal pathogens on primates would be a new area for OSU that is controversial and is outside our current research programs.

"OSU is focused on enhancing and expanding its existing research strengths including our ongoing programs in bioterrorism research. The proposed work would have distracted from those efforts.”

I think this is the first time I've personally heard of a University pulling away from primate research due to controversy.

PETA Undercover Agent Also Worked in Oregon

The PETA activist who worked undercover at the University of Utah, and collected video footage of alleged mistreatment of lab animals, was also involved in an operation at the Oregon National Primate Research Center.

I say "good for her!" She has a lot more guts than I do.

Student Researcher Says "Hooray for Animal Research"

This kid is a biochem major at the University of Southern Mississippi. He's helping to investigate possible drug cures for obesity.

Listen to this...

Freeman says that the most difficult thing he has encountered so far in his research comes not from the lab, but from people’s attitudes about animal testing. He said this research, along with other research that could vastly improve human quality of life, could absolutely not be done without animal testing, and wishes more people understood that “animal research is not cruel or inhumane, it benefits us all.”

Interesting that animal research is not cruel or inhumane because it benefits US. Does it benefit the animals? Why do humans always have to get everything we want and we have to do it at the pain and expense of animals?

And by the way, I can tell you the cure for obesity. Diet (eat less!), exercise (walk more!) and counseling to ease off the psychological dependence on food. Drugs are not the cure for everything, although they are very profitable for whoever licenses them.

Another young person indoctrinated by the animal researchers.

What if the Public Truly Probed Animal Research Funding?

This is a great short column by Martha Rosenberg. It's in response to the arrest of Yale animal technician Raymond Clark for the murder of Annie Le, but makes some important points about animal research.

There's a reason for the security that keeps Beagle burn videos from surfacing like egg farm videos. Animal research is too lucrative for the university/government/pharma complex to risk macaques on YouTube and the public judging the asinine and repetitive experiments many researchers know they live on.

Do you think Northwestern University--or the National Institutes of Health (NIH)--want to acknowledge that every year from l978 through l985 Associate Professor Dr. Charles Larson fused monkeys' necks to their skulls and deprived them food five days per week to make them cry out in a specific manner according to Concerned Citizens for Ethical Research? At a tax payer cost of $472,370? To "gain insights into some of the neurological disorders affecting vocalization?" Even as his colleagues scoffed?

...No, for animal researchers the bigger fear from Le's murder than technicians like Clark is the public seeing the heaps of unsupervised government pork behind their Plexiglas curtain. No wonder the research community wraps a "saves lives" cloak around its work whether falsified journal articles or Larson's "speech" studies.

It keeps the public from saying YOU'RE FUNDING WHAT? For how many years? With what results? about its tax dollars.

Animal Lab Tech Arrested in Yale Killing

I don't know if this guy working in an animal lab has anything to do with the crime he is accused of committing. But, if he's guilty of such a horrible and violent crime, it makes me wonder how he treated his animal subjects when no one was around.

I guess we'll see what happens next.

It's Tough to Report about OHSU's Primate Lab

Sounds like there can be a whole lot of drama surrounding the Willamette Week's attempts to report about this place. Here's an example. I wish the Seattle weeklies would at least try to cover the University of Washington's Primate Center.

Texas Tech Allowed to Withhold Info on Animal Testing

The Texas Attorney General ruled earlier this month that the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center can withhold records of a committee that oversees the use of animals in training and research.

PETA was trying to get the information to find out why the university is buying cats and dogs from a West Texas animal shelter for university training or research.

I bet there's probably some ugly stuff in those records. From the Avalanche-Journal:

The university has purchased cats already scheduled for euthanasia from Odessa Animal Control since the 1980s, a shelter spokesperson, Cpl. Sherrie Carruth, told The A-J {Avalanche-Journal.}

Students training to save babies and small children in emergencies insert breathing tubes and needles into the cats, which are anesthetized during the training and then euthanized, according to HSC officials.

The university also purchased dogs from the shelter up until 2007, Carruth said.

Northwestern University NOT Signing HSUS Pledge to Prevent Pain in Lab Animals

The Humane Society began a campaign in March 2008 to get 600 university presidents to sign a pledge to prevent severe pain and distress in animals used in research. So far only 37 presidents have signed it.

HSUS is now attempting to reach students through Facebook.

Here's a campus article about Northwestern University, one of the schools that have NOT signed.

Uncovered Reports Show Three Research Labs Fined for Violations

Here's the Honor Roll from Fox News. These entities were all cited for violations by the USDA. Thanks to Stop Animal Exploitation Now! for finding them.

1) BioReliance Corp., Rockville, MD: A lab assistant reported a hamster running loose inside a walk-in refrigerator and a live hamster was found in a euthanasia bag inside the walk-in freezer. Another report said a lab assistant reported finding a dead hamster in a cage in June 2008 after the cage was removed from a sterilizer. "It is assumed the animal was alive prior to being placed" into the sterilizer, the report said...

2) Charles River Laboratories, Sparks and Reno, NV: Two primates undergoing surgical procedures were handled improperly. One subsequently had to be euthanized. A dog also had to be euthanized after a gauze square was left in its abdominal cavity during a previous surgery and caused an obstruction.

The USDA also entered an out-of-court $10,000 financial settlement with Charles River for a May, 2008 when too-hot temperatures led to the deaths of 32 primates.

3) Tufts University's School of Veterinary Medicine, North Grafton, MA.: A 2006 USDA inspection report faulted the school for withholding anesthesia from piglets and lambs during procedures without adequate scientific justification for doing so. The report does not identify the procedures. School spokesman Tom Keppeler said it was castration.