Why did it take an old story about horrific dog experiments to convince people that it’s time to #ArrestFauci?
The rediscovery of a series of grisly experiments on beagle puppies has galvanized social media users into demanding the arrest of “America’s doctor”Anthony Fauci.
But where was everyone when his work was harming humans?
Images of a sad pair of beagle puppies, their heads encased in square cages as they lie hopelessly on a table, have yanked at America’s heartstrings since they were shoved back into the national spotlight by White Coat Waste Project, a group that calls out US government labs for animal cruelty and other misuse (and abuse) of citizens’ money.
Millions of taxpayer dollars were used to essentially torture the puppies to death in labs in and out of the US, according to the organization, which unearthed evidence of the cruelty in the form of over $21 million spent on a total of four experiments – none of which was medically necessary.
One involved severing 44 puppies’ vocal cords so that their pained barking and whining wouldn’t bother the scientists;another deliberately infected them with sand flies over the course of 22 months, restricting their movements by locking their heads in boxes so that they could not even swat the insects away as they were being eaten alive.
The White Coat Waste Project claims the NIAID provided a $375,800 grant to a lab in Tunisia to drug beagle puppies and locked their heads in mesh cages so sand flies could eat the dogs filled with hundreds of infected sand flies
It’s horrific stuff by any measure, beyond cartoonish levels of evil. Indeed, even Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) claimed he thought the tweets he’d read about Fauci “literally ‘torturing puppies’” had to be “metaphorical.”
“I saw several tweets about this and assumed it was metaphorical. Surely Fauci wasn’t literally “torturing puppies.”My assumption was incorrect”.https://t.co/pTY6JueJCA
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 24, 2021
But while the outrage is justified, it’s also old news.
One could ask why the masses have turned against Fauci only now, when his National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases has been funding the torture of puppies for years, with one of the horrific experiments dating from 2016.
PETITION TARGETS: Joe Biden, Congressional Leaders, and the Food and Drug Administration
Millions of animalsare infected, poisoned, blinded, shocked, and tortured in experiments each year globally.
The majority of dogs, monkeys, mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, ferrets, and other animals suffer these agonizing procedures without the use of painkillers or comfort of any kind.
The “safety” tests are not only cruel; due to genetic differences between people and animals, they also are inaccurate and dangerous.
More than 90 percent of drugs deemed “safe” in animal tests fail once they hit human clinical trials.
Other animal-tested drugs get withdrawn from human markets after harming people — including the drug Lipobay, which passed animal trials but then led to kidney failure and death for more than 50 people.
But the cruel and inaccurate tests are federally mandated, by provisions established in 1938 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And that law needs to change now.
H.R. 2565, or The FDA Modernization Act, is a major step in the right direction and would open the door for emerging, superior testing methods based on human biology to be seen as equally valid options for safety testing.
The European Parliament recently demanded a phased-out end to all animal testing. It’s time for the United States to follow that precedent.
Sign our petition urging lawmakers and the Food and Drug Administration to end the outdated mandate of animal testing as the “only” acceptable safety testing method and allow proven, human biology-based methods to take their rightful place in human evolution.
The latest strategy to regulate chemicals in the EU calls for even more animal life than before – without bringing any benefit to humans.
According to the strategy, additional animal experiments are to be carried out from October 2021 to investigate whether certain chemicals are endocrine disrupting, i.e. affect the human hormonal balance.
According to this strategy, even more animals would have to suffer and die in cruel experiments – although the effectiveness of a substance in humans cannot be reliably determined with animal experiments. Animal testing does not protect human health.
What are endocrine disrupting chemicals?
The human body maintains a delicate balance of hormones such as estrogens.
They regulate our most important functions, including development, metabolism and reproductive capacity. Chemicals with endocrine disruptors, also known as endocrine disruptors, interact with the body’s hormones.
In order to ensure that certain chemicals do not disturb our hormonal balance, regulators commission tests.
But instead of using methods that provide results that are relevant to humans, the authorities continue to insist on animal experiments that cannot reliably predict human reactions. Animal experiments do not provide the results that are necessary to ensure the safety of substances in humans.
It should come as no surprise that the hormonal balance of rats or mice differs from that of humans.
Nevertheless, a research group compared the effects of six possible endocrine disruptors on the function of the testes in rats, mice and humans. They found similar reactions in humans and rodents only with two of the six substances.
The effects of two other chemicals were similar, but the mice and rats had to be given a much higher dose than humans. More worryingly, the effects observed in rodents on the latter two substances did not occur at all in humans (!!)
In addition, it must be taken into account that the animals abused in the experiments are often frightened, stressed and painful.
All of these factors affect their hormonal balance, which further weakens the informative value of the experiments.
Such inadequate practices not only cause senseless animal suffering, they also put people at risk.
The authorities responsible for our security must finally move away from animal experiments.
What is the solution?
The solution is simple: Germany and Europe must advance the development of animal-free methods that are relevant to humans.
Results from animal experiments can lead to incorrect conclusions and result in regulatory authorities not being able to keep their promises to the public to ensure the safety of chemicals. Today there is a multitude of modern and animal-free research methods that can replace animal experiments and provide reliable results.
“The European Parliament voted on September 15, 2021 for a comprehensive plan to phase out animal testing The EU Parliament (EP) has passed a resolution calling on the EU Commission to present an action plan to get out of animal testing.
Some animal rights activists have called it a historic step, others have seen it as the beginning of a cruelty-free era.
Of course, we always have to maintain a certain optimism, otherwise we will not achieve anything.
But anyone who has many years of experience in this field learns over time to look forward to and hope for the good but, on the other hand, to be prepared for the worst.
Especially when the EU and its servants – as in the present case – crush the good decisions and our optimism at will, disregard them and bow to the pharmaceutical industry.
This is why an animal rights activist must always stay a realist.
Then it doesn’t hurt if he’s an optimist too.
Again and again he keeps his mouth in the bowl, dips it into the slimy food, tries desperately to ingest something, to swallow – to be full and relaxed for once.
But the muscle paralysis is so advanced that he can hardly move his jaw.
Most of the pulp just runs out of his mouth again, he even finds it difficult to breathe – and the despair keeps growing.
At the Alfort National University of Veterinary Medicine in France,dogs are bred to have paralyzing muscle diseases in order to experiment on the animals.
Actually, the organization wants to find cures for the disease muscular dystrophy.
That is why it finances experiments at the French Alfort National Universitywith donations.
The problem: Instead of working with modern research methods, Alfort conducts animal experiments in which it specifically breeds the disease for dogs that it wants to cure, deliberately creating sick animals that suffer extremely and usually die early. Research doesn’t get anywhere.
The dogs can only walk, swallow and breathe with great effort. This was shown by shocking recordings from the French animal welfare organization Animal Testing in 2016.
The animal experiments on the dogs are financed by the French aid organization AFM-Téléthon.
PETA France has received shocking images from the Alfort National Veterinary College from the French animal welfare organization Animal Testing.
They show dogs that were specifically bred to have crippling muscle diseases.
The animals can only walk, swallow and breathe with great effort.
Some of them are completely paralyzed before the age of 6 months, and every second animal dies before it is 10 months old.
At some point, some dogs can no longer eat independently and have to be fed through a gastric tube. Heart problems often develop over time as the disease attacks and weakens the heart muscle.
A lab worker admitted that the dogs are suffering: “I don’t want to swap with the beagle. The suffering is real. “
In the video, a man with a censored face explains that a large part of the money for the experiments would be lost if the public learned about the conditions in the laboratories. “Clearly, if we showed them our dogs with myopathy, they would lose a lot of money,” he explains.
To date, the lab has not commented on the allegations.
A month ago, the EU Parliament voted to actively end animal experiments – with an overwhelming majority of 667 votes, 4 against and 16 abstentions.
The MPs are calling for the EU Commission to phase out animal experiments. Unfortunately, as a result of this vote, the EU Commission is not obliged to implement such an exit plan.
It is all the more important that we now maintain the pressure on politics and science. Please help us today!
Help the dogs by calling on AFM-Téléthon to stop supporting the cruel experiments!
And I mean…“92% of the potential drugs that have been shown to be effective and safe in animal experiments do not make it through clinical trials, either because they are ineffective or because of undesirable side effects.
Of the 8% of active ingredients that are approved, half will later be withdrawn from the market because more serious, often fatal, side effects are found in humans. ”
Source: The website of the organization “Doctors Against Animal Experiments”.
The reality of genetic experiments, for example, is unduly brutal – and mostly without value: half a million transgenic mice died last year in Germany alone for basic research.
To use? Not visible.
Because: What helps the mouse against Alzheimer’s disease does not help humans by a long way.
However, the pharmaceutical industry tries to convince us otherwise.
In the meantime, the “producers” advertise their laboratory animals as “customized manipulated animals”.
Ethically extremely reprehensible
Behind this is the hunt for patents from multi-billion dollar corporations such as Pfizer or Novartis, which even have genetically engineered chimpanzees patented.
Animals are thus declared to be the product of industry.
It is about senseless cruelty with no real benefit to people, in a world in which there would already be many, many different and more modern methods of research.
Instead of brutally torturing animals, it makes more sense to invest in research into alternative methods.
We cannot support the suffering, the pain, the agony and the terrible death of the animals in the laboratory.
We don’t see any plausible reason for experiments on animals.
The singe reason, why animals are used for experiments ist just because they cannot defend themselves.
That is the ethical basis for all animal testing.
We are in favor of scientific research that does not exploit animals and torture them senselessly.
And will continue to actively fight against animal testing
“Hamburg Town Musicians”: Riddle about sculpture on the Alster/Hamburg
A dog, a monkey on its back, a rabbit on it and a rat at the top: a sculpture has been on the picnic area on the Outer Alster since Wednesday, erected in a nightly action by unknown animal rights activists.
The “Hamburg Town Musicians” are supposed to be a protest against animal experiments.
The animal figures by the unknown artist appear very lively, the sculpture is heavy, and presumably even made of bronze. The base is embedded in the ground, there is a commemorative plaque:
“Dedicated to all the victims of animal experiments worldwide”, even Chinese characters are engraved.
In a “confessor writing” it says on the website hamburger-stadtmusikanten.org:
“We, the ghosts of the killed laboratory animals, erected a memorial for the victims of animal experiments on October 12, 2021 on the picnic meadow in Uhlenhorst / Hamburg. It’s the Hamburg Town Musicians. ”
And a photo: A person with a hoodie, his face hidden behind a rabbit mask, crouches next to the plastic.
The background of the elaborate art campaign is explained in small notebooks that the anonymous activists on site tied to trees.
It reads: “The Hamburg Town Musicians – a current fairy tale, inspired by the Brothers Grimm”.
It tells the story of the test dog that escaped from the qual laboratory of the LPT company (Laboratory of Pharmacology and Toxicology now renamed Provivo Biosciences GmbH and Co. KG).
The dog meets the monkey, which was intended for an experimental laboratory in Bremen, the rabbit, whose eyes were supposed to be tested for cosmetics, and finally the rat, which has escaped from a laboratory.
And like the Bremen Town Musicians, the Hamburg animal quartet also sets out in the fairy tale according to the motto … “We find something better than death everywhere.”
In Germany, according to conservative estimates, animal experiments are funded with at least four billion euros, research on alternatives with around 20 million, according to the opponents of animal experiments. At least three million laboratory animals die every year, according to animal rights activists.
The “monument” meets with approval from passers-by, many stop and take photos. “That should stay here for ever,” demands a walker.
Someone has planted some heather in front of the statue.
Are the “Hamburg Town Musicians” tolerated on the Alster?
The northern district says vaguely: “We first check whether the sculpture poses a hazard.”
And I mean…A hazard situation for animals and us, humans, arises with certainty in the experiment laboratories, not from the monument.
People are already laying flowers there, silently kneeling down to commemorate the victims.
The work of art was secretly concreted into the ground on the anniversary of the LPT discovery, according to unconfirmed information.
We thank the brave and great artists for this memorial.
So that the victims are not forgotten.
In rare footage from an animal testing facility, released on October 11, dogs can be seen lying in blood and excrement, while primates spin in circles in tiny cages, visibly in distress. Dead beagles are hung up on meathooks, and macaque monkeys are violently handled, restrained and force fed. Staff also appear to harm cats.
The footage was shot at the Laboratory of Pharmacology and Toxicology (LPT), a contract testing laboratory near Hamburg, Germany, and relates to its toxicity testing for pharmaceutical companies.
The investigation, organised by animal welfare organisations SOKO Tierschutz (based in Germany) and Cruelty Free International (based in the UK), involved getting someone employed at the facility in December last year. This undercover investigator worked there for four months, filming with a hidden camera.
In the US, it is estimated that 100,000,000 animals are used for testing/research YEARLY. Approximately 95-99% are not afforded any legal “protections” under the Animal Welfare Act and are therefore not required to be reported (thus the estimate). Of the few who do receive “protections” under AWA, they still suffer, experience pain and fear, and violently die; sadly, they are often subjected to INTENTIONAL PAIN as it is theorized that pain relief would compromise testing outcomes. These animals include dogs, cats, and primates, totaling >56,000 victims REPORTED, neglecting the vast majority who are not afforded even the illusion of existence by mandated recording of their suffering, pages 7-8:
Animal exploiters DETEST social media for giving activists a platform to publicize the violence they inflict on vulnerable animals, who all experience pain, fear, and suffering as human animals do. If the law doesn’t prevent humans from violent exploitation of animals, then it cannot exempt humans for exposing these criminal, unethical acts.
And to the indignant who equate animal suffering with human health, do remember the negative consequences and fatalities of pharmaceuticals that were considered safe as the result of testing them on different species: thalidomide was a tragedy, and saccharine, which was found to cause cancer in rats, is still marketed to humans. If humans claim human superiority as a validation for condoning animal experimentation, perhaps those “intellectual giants” can determine more effective research methods that do not violently kill billions of animals, a rather contradictory “means” to an uncertain “end”.
Some states have enacted student rights to not use animals in education, determine if you have Student Choice Laws via AAVS HERE or NAVS HERE
The organization “Doctors Against Animal Experiments” in a report on the vote of the EP against animal experiments was delighted and calls this news (caution: no decision) a historic step.
“The European Parliament voted on September 15, 2021 for a comprehensive plan to phase out animal testing The EU Parliament (EP) has passed a resolution calling on the EU Commission to present an action plan to get out of animal testing.
The resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority of 667 votes, 4 against and 16 abstentions. The nationwide association “Doctors Against Animal Experiments” is delighted “
Responsibility for the action plan should not lie in the hands of a few, but a high-level task force should be set up, which brings together various Directorates-General of the Commission and EU agencies as well as involving the Member States and relevant stakeholders. Targeted promotion of animal-free methods and training on these are also part of the requirement.
While the EP recognizes that the EU is striving to reduce and “refine” animal testing, an active, coordinated approach to reducing and ultimately eliminating animal testing has so far been totally lacking. With the request, the EP wants to actively promote the withdrawal from animal experiments.
The umbrella organizations Eurogroup for Animals and European Coalition to End Animal Experiments, of which Doctors Against Animal Experiments is a member, as well as Cruelty Free Europe, Humane Society International and PETA, which together unite over 100 member associations in Europe, have campaigned for the resolution and are calling for it now from the EU Commission to give it the highest priority.
The majority of EU citizens want to get out of animal testing.
This is also shown by the current European citizens’ initiative “Save Cruelty Free Cosmetics – For a Europe without animal testing”, which has already collected over 120,000 signatures within just three weeks.
“The vote in the EU Parliament is a historic moment for the anti-animal experimentation movement,” said Dr. med. vet. Corina Gericke,Vice-Chairwoman of Doctors Against Animal Experiments.
“The call from European citizens to phase out animal experiments and move on to research that is relevant to humans was heard. In addition to protecting animals, new advanced research systems are, above all, essential to achieve the Union’s environmental and human health objectives. With today’s vote in Parliament, we are making progress on all three fronts, ” concluded Gericke.
Almost ten million animals are “consumed” in animal experiments in EU laboratories every year – monkeys, dogs, cats, rabbits, rats, mice and animals of many other species.
In addition, there are around 12 million animals that are killed as “excess”, mostly because they do not have the desired genetic modification. This enormously high number has hardly changed in the last ten years.
And I mean…one thing must be clear: the EU Commissioners are not elected by EU citizens. Each of the 27 Member countries proposes its representative and, depending on the case, it is accepted.
The members of the EU Parliament are elected, but unfortunately have no executive power. Only the EU Commission has that, according to the statutes.
It can then decide on a proposal from Parliament whether it wants to comply with the request or not. The only thing the Commission is obliged to do is to justify its decision in any case.
We remember…The Danish EU parliamentarian Dan Jørgensen initiated the 8hours campaign and collected well over 1.1 million signatures by the beginning of 2012to limit the transport times of farm animals to a maximum of 8 hours.
At the same time, 395 EU parliamentarians and thus the majority of EU parliamentarians signed the corresponding written declaration 49/2011.
When the list of signatures was presented by the representatives of European animal welfare organizations and EU parliamentarians on June 7, 2012, Dalli (the then European Commissioner for Health and consumer protection) promised for 2014 a new EU bill for the protection of animals on transport.
Although his statements were recorded by a camera, Dalli distanced himself completely from his statements a short time later.
The member states have shown themselves to be unable and unwilling to push through this campaign, and the EU Commission, with its executive power, had the right to decide again what the lobbyists of the animal transport industry wanted.
This makes one thing clear: in the Monster EU, decisions are not made democratically, and when it comes to animals, those who were not democratically elected decide their fate.
We are also happy about the resolution of the EU parliamentarians to abolish animal experiments.
And we remain optimistic that by August 2022 the petition will not only have over 1 million votes (which would force the EU Commission to a legal act) but also act as a strong means of exerting pressure against lax decisions by lax commissioners
From the experience of the past, however, we should have already learned that positive results unfortunately cannot come only from good-willed people, but rather from fighting and working against those who do not respect the will and the voice of these people, although they are obliged to do so according to democratic rules.
The protected witness in the Vivotecnia case accuses the laboratory of manipulating animal tests.
The veterinary technician who recorded the alleged animal abuse that was made public five months ago testifies before the judge about the evidence she collected between 2018 and 2020
Hidden until now in the shadows, the woman who recorded the images that showed the alleged animal abuse in the Vivotecnia laboratory came to light this Wednesday,September 22ndfive months later, to answer the questions of the judge as a protected witness.
She answered a myriad of questions about exactly when and what she saw, who was directly involved, and whom she contacted before she began gathering evidence.
She was the only one who could clarify the most relevant details of an investigation that is being carried out in the Colmenar Viejo Court, under summary secrecy since April, when the scandal broke out thanks to an eight-minute video recorded by her between 2018 and 2020 and edited and published by the NGO Cruelty Free International(CFI).
It showed how different workers allegedly mistreat the animals they experimented with.
She arrived nervous, but she did it in a big way, unveiling one more bomb: in the laboratory, she assured, not only was there “repeated abuse” of the animals, but the results of the tests were also manipulated to approve studies that later went on to a second phase of experimentation with human beings.
All the lights pointed towards Carlota Saorsa, the pseudonym by which the person who signs the video with which she began her particular battle of David against Goliath is known, that of an anonymous person against a company whose main business is commissions of studies of the pharmaceutical industry.
How the cruel death of a little stray dog led to riots in 1900s Britain
Novelist campaigns for statue of terrier experimented on by scientists to regain its place in a London park
An animal in peril can inflame British public opinion like nothing else. Nearly 120 years ago, the fate of one small brown dog caused rioting in the streets of London, to say nothing of the protest marches to Trafalgar Square and questions asked in parliament.
Now the astonishing, little-known story – involving anti-vivisectionist campaigners, an eminent doctor, a legal battle and a controversial memorial statue in a park – is the subject of a new book and of a fresh campaign to honour the lowly terrier at the heart of it all.
An “affair” that made headlines and provoked disorder, but has since been forgotten, the Brown Dog story is a tale that has “obsessed” the imagination of first-time novelist Paula S Owen ever since she heard it.
“The book and the campaign really are a dream come true for me after all this time,” Owen said this weekend before the publication of Little Brown Dog, her fictionalised account of historic events. “I’ve been obsessed with this story for so long, it’s fantastic to know it has been told.”
The extraordinary row began with the public vivisection of a stray dog carried out in 1903 by Dr William Bayliss, a renowned physiologist who was also instrumental in the discovery of hormones. Operating alongside his brother-in-law, Professor Ernest Starling, Bayliss demonstrated the procedure to medical students at University College London, including a duo of undercover Swedish feminists and animal rights campaigners, Leisa Schartau and Louise Lind-af-Hageby. The operation, the women declared in their diary, was cruel and unnecessary, and the dog, which had been previously experimented on, had not been properly anaesthetised.
Months later, the campaigners recruited the help of a barrister Stephen Coleridge, a descendant of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and secretary of the National Anti-Vivisection Society. He spoke out in public against Bayliss, prompting, first, an action for slander, and then one for libel, once the accusations of cruelty had been repeated in print.
The case quickly became a cause célèbre, discussed across the country, and when Coleridge eventually lost the case, Britain’s animal lovers were enraged. A fundraising drive resulted in the erection of a statue in Latchmere recreation ground in Battersea, south London, to commemorate the life of the stray dog. But, as Owen explains in a note at the end of her novel, in the 1900s the nation was not prepared to let a deceased dog lie.
The issue, she recounts, “became a lightning rod for continuing disturbances, riots, and rallies across London.
[The statue] was subjected to repeated attacks by outraged medical students. And was defended by the equally outraged working-class locals of Battersea, plus a cast list of feminists, suffragists and suffragettes, trade unionists, radical liberals and anarchists. The situation became a national talking point and was debated in parliament. The statue was protected, at great expense, day and night, by the police.”
Eventually the council acted, taking down the statue covertly at night. It has never been seen since.
In 1985, a bronze statue by Nicola Hicks, which commemorates the dog and the lost memorial, was unveiled in nearby Battersea Park. But on Sunday Owen is to visit the spot in Latchmere recreation ground where the original statue once stood to launch her campaign for a new monument to the terrier. She will put up a carefully re-created lightweight model.
“It’s incredible that the team who helped me have made something so realistic and 3D from a grainy old picture,” she said.
Owen, who is Welsh but lives in south London, has worked as a climate change campaigner and environmentalist. Her factual book about the Brent Spar controversy of 1995, when Greenpeace fought Shell’s plan to sink a decommissioned North Sea oil storage and loading platform in the Atlantic, is being adapted for a television series. And she sees a clear link between the animal protection story at the heart of her novel and her environmental work.
“This isn’t simply the tragic tale of one stray dog, appallingly treated and abused in a less enlightened age,” she has written. “Nor is the hysteria, violence and bewildering behaviour directed at a lump of stone and metal – so feared by authorities it drove them to steal and destroy it – the main focus of the novel.
“It’s more complicated than that. The whole sorry episode is an echo, a mirror, reflecting the endless injustices and evil carried out by humans on other species throughout history.”
Her novel is being published by Honno Press, a supporter of Welsh women’s writing for 35 years, and Owen said it keeps very close to the facts. “I have stayed true to events but I have changed the key characters a little. My surgeon is Bayling and my heroines are now British ≠ one upper class and one a working-class young woman from Wales.”
On Wednesday, when Owen launches her book and the new statue campaign, it will be the 115th anniversary of the day the original Brown Dog statue was unveiled to gathered celebrities, including Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw.
In the spirit of the words of Lena, Owen’s fictional heroine, who argues “our humanity is defined by how we treat, respect and nurture other species, not just our own kind”, the author now says she hopes her book will ask: “Can we say, hand on heart, we are any more ‘humane’ today than we were one hundred years ago?” This article was amended on 16 September 2021 to include reference to the 1985 memorial by Nicola Hicks that stands in Battersea Park.
On Wednesday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution vote calling for the European Commission to develop a definitive action plan to bring an end to lab animal testing. This should clearly identify key milestones and targets in order to ensure and incentivize meaningful progress.
Cross-party members of the European Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority (667-4) in favor of a transition from animal testing to ethical and effective alternatives.
In a press release, animal advocacy NGO Human Society International (HSI) welcomed the vote, calling it a “historic opportunity” to protect the almost 10 million animals used by EU laboratories every year in invasive experiments.
The vote is not legally binding, but it does place political pressure on the European Commission to respond to the results and take action. (Earlier this year, a similar process began to ban cruel caged animal farming in the EU, which the commission is now moving forward on.)
“This vote signals the need for systemic change in the EU’s approach to safety science and health research,” says Troy Seidle, vice president for research and toxicology at HSI.
Seventy-two percent of European citizens agree that the EU should set binding targets and deadlines to phase out animal testing, while 70 percent of adults believe full replacement of all forms of animal testing should be prioritized. Sixty-six percent say that all animal testing should be ended immediately.
“We need to let go of the unfounded belief that these animals are miniature people and get serious about understanding and predicting human biology in the real world,” says Seidle.Nearly ¾ of adults in Europe believe the #EU should set targets to phase out experiments on animals. We want to see humane, human-relevant, animal-free science properly funded and fully utilised in Europe. If you AGREE sign here ➡️ ➡️ https://t.co/Tve5BC9vNL#EndAnimalTestingpic.twitter.com/rGVt5zOkxE
Pharmaceutical testing, in particular, receives criticism for its relative lack of reliability. Small animals are not humans, and “successful” initial tests can lead to dangerous clinical trials. A 2015 study titled the Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation explored this.
“The unreliability of animal experimentation across a wide range of areas undermines scientific arguments in favor of the practice,” wrote the study author. “Animal experimentation often significantly harms humans through misleading safety studies, potential abandonment of effective therapeutics, and direction of resources away from more effective testing methods.”
Seidle lists human organ chips, stem cell models, and next-generation computer modeling among the most successful modern alternatives. Some companies are even developing cultured human skin for the cruelty-free testing of both pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
Cosmetic animal testing is even less necessary, reputable, and popular than pharmaceuticals. Mexico recently became the first North American country to completely ban cosmetic animal testing, while Hawaii became the fifth U.S. state to implement a ban earlier this year.
The UK, however, could be about to pivot back towards animal testing after more than 100 years of slow progress and over 20 years after a national ban. This news also comes in the midst of ongoing protests over a beagle factory farm located near the notorious Huntingdon Life Sciences. According to activists, the site breeds up to 2000 puppies every year specifically to sell them for animal experiments.
To learn more about the history of animal testing in the UK, read on here.
One involved severing 44 puppies’ vocal cords so that their pained barking and whining wouldn’t bother the scientists; another deliberately infected them with sand flies over the course of 22 months, restricting their movements by locking their heads in boxes so that they could not even swat the insects away as they were being eaten alive.
At the Alfort National University of Veterinary Medicine in France, dogs are bred to have paralyzing muscle diseases in order to experiment on the animals.
A month ago, the EU Parliament voted to actively end animal experiments – with an overwhelming majority of 667 votes, 4 against and 16 abstentions.
We cannot support the suffering, the pain, the agony and the terrible death of the animals in the laboratory.
The background of the elaborate art campaign is explained in small notebooks that the anonymous activists on site tied to trees.
The “monument” meets with approval from passers-by, many stop and take photos.
She answered a myriad of questions about exactly when and what she saw, who was directly involved, and whom she contacted before she began gathering evidence.
World Animals Voice 