Biotech giant Amgen has confirmed that it no longer conducts near-drowning experiments on small animals!

This follows PETA scientists’ outreach to the company about the forced swim test, in which small animals are often dosed with a test substance, put in beakers of water, and forced to paddle desperately out of fear of drowning.

Amgen joins 12 pharmaceutical companies that PETA has persuaded to ban the hideous test, including Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, AbbVie, Roche, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk A/S, Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, and Bristol Myers Squibb.

But David Ricks, the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, continues to reject modern science by clinging to this ridiculous test.

Please join PETA in calling on Eli Lilly to ban the forced swim test.

Take Action:

Eli Lilly’s CEO Refuses to Ban Near-Drowning of Small Animals | PETA

Thank you for your compassion for animals.

Sincerely,

Kathy Guillermo
Senior Vice President
Laboratory Investigations Department
PETA

Regards Mark

An unusual process took place in Vienna on Monday. A woman ex-zookeeper at a mouse breeding laboratory at MedUni Vienna was accused of cruelty to animals.

Around 100 mice died. The woman is acquitted.

Online today at 1:54 p.m.

The prosecution had accused the woman of neglecting around 100 breeding mice that had died.
“In any case, it was hygienic grievances,” judge Stefan Erdei stated after extensive evidence proceedings.

According to her statements, the zookeeper was de facto responsible for a total of 6,000 mice in 1,900 cages at the Center for Biomedical Research.

She was overwhelmed “at least for months”, the judge found.
It would have been the task of the institute management to “organize it differently”.
The fact that the defendant accepted with her actions or omissions that the mice were tortured can “not necessarily be deduced from the external circumstances”.
In the opinion of the court, the incriminated offense was thus not fulfilled (!!!)

During a tour on November 27, 2020, the dead animals were discovered during inspection in the laboratory.
“It stank terribly. After decomposition. It was a sight of horror. I’ve never seen anything like it, ”recalled the vet who had initiated the investigation on the witness stand.
Dead mice were “both in the corridor and in the cages, partly next to live animals”.
In many of the cages there was a lack of water and food.

The defendant did not accept the accusation raised by the public prosecutor’s office that she had not provided the animals with water and food since November 20.
She admitted that she did not put the food in the designated food dispenser, but simply put it in the cages – not out of malice, but out of a lack of time.
She had to look after thousands of mice by herself, hadn’t had a vacation for eight years and even spent the weekends at the institute.

Last November alone, she would have accumulated 198 overtime: “We were certainly too few animal keepers for the work. I was so stupid and been inside all day and weekend. The researchers have already asked me if I sleep at all because I answered emails at 3:00 in the morning. “

Most of the cadavers involved in the process were mice, which she killed according to the order, the woman described.
Every week she killed 300 to 600 animals “with broken necks or gassing because they were not needed for research”.
In the week in question, she had ended the lives of 450 animals.

For lack of time, she “did not dispose of” the corpses, but “simply left them there”.

Richter stated “sense of mission”

Former colleagues and superiors then reported that the defendant was careful that no one else entered her work area.
The head of the facility stated as a witness: “Despite being asked, she repeatedly refused to take vacations and time off.”

In principle, there would have been “always someone who can stand in for her”.

According to the director, the mice were adequately supplied with water and food: “If I had had the feeling that this was not the case, I would have said it clearly. I wouldn’t have looked away. This person would have been brought to justice and immediately dismissed. ”

Regarding the killings carried out by the defendant, the head of the laboratory commented:“ Animals that do not go into experiments are continuously killed. This is Mendel. That is Mendel’s law. “

In the end, the judge summarized his impressions of the accused as follows:

“You had a sense of mission and considered yourself irreplaceable. This is a mistake that many people tend to make. “

https://wien.orf.at/stories/3106276/

And I mean…People who work in the laboratory and who massacre hundreds of animals every day or who witness others doing it in the laboratory MUST be dull and lacking in empathy, this is basically the basic qualification to be able to do the job at all.
Who breaks the neck of 300 to 600 creatures a week with bare hands and is compassionate in the process?

So it’s nobody’s fault when hundreds of mice starve and die of thirst in an animal laboratory.
This is obviously allowed in animal experiments.

So dear zookeepers in animal research laboratories! you are obviously allowed to behave as you want.
You do not need to fear the judiciary!

A perpetrator-friendly court will always find an exonerating judgment for animal abusers

My best regards to all, Venus

The organization SOKO animal protection and the magazine “DER SPIEGEL” reveal:

The German Nature Conservation Association # NABU # supplied the University of Tübingen with crows for experiments in which electrodes were operated on in the brain.

Their heads were drilled open, they were locked up, tied up, and all to find out how intelligent the birds are and what goes on in the crows’ brains as they learn.

Carrion crows in the laboratory of the University of Tübingen

SOKO Tierschutz prepares legal steps against the experiments and the improper use of the animals.

According to a statement from NABU on its homepage, NABU was asked for animals by Prof. Nieder from the University of Tübingen, and these were given to him.
In the meantime, NABU has published a statement on this – nothing was known about these attempts, so the argument goes.

“If the Nature Conservation Federation had been aware of such animal experiments, no carrion crows would have been handed in,” says NABU.

That sounds like washing your hands and trying to cover up.

That cannot be true either, because NABU, which learned the facts months ago, will only come to the public after the report by the magazine “Der Spiegel”.

The Nature Conservation Federation (NABU) claims that they assumed that the carrion crows that were sold would only be used for breeding or for non-invasive behavioral research.
This is a pure farce.

Because at the University of Tübingen horrific animal experiments are carried out.
And NABU must have known that.

And one more thing: Shouldn’t NABU already have a contract from the university back then, in which the protection of animals is specified and guaranteed?

In the meantime, every clear-thinking person should be aware that the German nature conservation association does not practice animal protection, but is playing a dangerous game with the razor blade.

Many people support NABU, financially and voluntarily, in good faith in animal welfare.
Animals lost their lives and with it, the trust of supporters was abused.

P.S: the head of the NABU, the president is a hunter.
Such a union cannot represent the animals!

My best regards to all, Venus

I thought that I would write this post now as at the current time, with worldwide Covid killing millions; and the very high view that the disease was originally created by zoonosis transmission form animals held under stress in wet markets, to human beings; do we really want to delve further into ‘chimera’ research, involving more than one animal species ? – has nothing been learned from Covid ?

A zoonosis (plural zoonoses, or zoonotic diseases) is an infectious disease caused by a pathogen (an infectious agent, such as a bacterium, virus, parasite or prion) that has jumped from an animal (usually a vertebrate) to a human.  Wet markets, in which animals are held under immense stress, are an ideal source of zoonotic disease transmission.  It is strongly believed that Covid was a virus that jumped from animals to humans.

So now, is it really time to further investigative work on the ‘Chimera’ ?

What is chimera ?:

A chimera is essentially a single organism that’s made up of cells from two or more “individuals”—that is, it contains two sets of DNA, with the code to make two separate organisms. One way that chimeras can happen naturally in humans is that a fetus can absorb its twin.

It (chimera) is an issue that has been kicking around in animal rights for many years; it is not new; certainly not here in the UK; but with the current Covid situation we really need to look more at this.

Scientists claim to have made an ‘extraordinary medical advance’ by creating an embryo that is part human and part monkey.  The creation of this human – monkey chimera as detailed as being described a ‘medical breakthrough’ by some; others describe it as a ‘Pandoras Box’ with serious ethical questions.  I personally am in this ‘ethical questions’ camp.

In a series of experiments; researchers from the Salk Institute in California (USA) have injected human stem cells into early stage macaque monkey embryos.  This procedure resulted in a number of chimeric embryos that survived for a period of around 19 days before they were destroyed.  Despite the vast ethical concerns; researchers say that the chimera embryos can lead to a ‘much better understanding’ of early human development, biology and disease.

The Chimera, according to Greek mythology, was a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of more than one animal. It is usually depicted as a lion, with the head of a goat protruding from its back, and a tail that might end with a snake’s head.

Chimeras are organisms whose cells originate from two or more different organisms.  Professor Juan Belmonte of the Salk Institute (USA) describes the research as being very useful for advancing biomedical research not only at the early stages of life, but also at the latest stage of life.  He further declared that chimeric embryos could allow for the study of early human development and hold great potential in regenerative medicine as well as for producing human tissues and organs for transplant.

Professor Belmonte’s team worked with researchers in China; the original source of Covid and the particular zoonotic associated disease, as much of the research work  was undertaken there to ‘avoid legal issues’.  Chimeric embryos could thus allow scientists to conduct experiments that they are not currently permitted to do on human embryos because of the tight regulations.  Experimenting on embryos containing some human cells could potentially lead to new treatments for diseases that are present at, or before birth, such as heart defects, down syndrome and spina bifida.

They also claim that Type 1 diabetes could be targeted by treatments emerging from chimera research.  Using the human – monkey embryo research; scientists hope to ‘provide valuable insights’ by using animals that are closely related to humans.  Or, in other words, they say that organs which originate in animals, such as pigs, could later be transplanted into human beings.  ‘Interspecies chimeras’ are not new; and have been produced since the 1970’s, but so far, attempts involving human cells have been met with ‘very limited success’.

Professor Belmonte in the USA has worked with researchers from the Kumming University of Science and Technology at Yunnan (China) in a study.  Six days after the monkey embryos were created; each was then injected with 25 human cells.  The cells are known as ‘extended pluripotent stem cells’, which have the ability to develop into many different cell types and tissues both inside and OUTSIDE the embryo. 

After one day, human cells were detected in 132 embryos, and after 10 days 103 of the chimeric embryos were still developing.  But then, by day 19, only 3 chimeras were still alive.

Personal view – the creation of an embryo which is part human and part monkey (primate) raises significant ethical and philosophical concerns as to what it means to be ‘human’.  With this research, are we as the human species once again attempting to dominate the natural systems of the world ? – plants, animals, species; the ‘who we are’ image.

Scientists behind this latest chimera research state that these chimeric embryos ‘offer new opportunities’, because we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans.  So, I thus see this as a ‘well it is ok to conduct the experiments on animals’; type thing then; who cares about the rights ? – we are the dominant species and can thus do as we wish.

Mahatma Gandhi, (1869–1948) once stated:

“To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.

I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.

I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man“.

 

With this chimera research are we not opening up the can of worms to the future ?

Real questions will start to arise when techniques have improved to the point where embryo survival times are greatly improved, and we can ‘grow’ human spare parts in animals; only for them to be cut out and transplanted into our own bodies as we wish.  This is the ultimate goal of this research; to make the human species even more dominant than they currently are; to make big bucks for the developers and organisations involved; whilst largely ignoring the rights of the primates and pigs who would be used as simple living ‘tools’ for the advancement of humankind; what a terrible thought; are there not enough of us ‘planet destroyers’ today, right now, 19/4/21, as it is, without the need for more ?

 

The most difficult issues lie in the future; and the question of potential animal viruses and disease being passed over to humans; or the opposite; as a result of future successful development.  That is ‘life’, that is what makes us (currently) different to the primates; the whales. The dolphins and the wolves.  We have all developed our own ways of survival and existence without interference from others.

Before any experiments are currently performed on chimeras; the key ethical question of their moral status has to be reviewed.  Before they are even currently injected, experimented on, or their organs extracted; it is essential that their mental capacities and lives are properly assessed; and who does this ? – the ‘human’ no doubt !

We need new ways to understand the things we call ‘animals’; their mental lives and their relationships before we ever attempt to ‘use them’.  We should never ‘use them’.  I think a pig or battery hen in an intensive factory farm environment must be pretty ‘pissed off’ with the way is kept – it has an existence; not a life; for the benefit of whom ? – oh yes, us the human being.  It is our own responsibility now  to enact the Ghandi saying – that, “the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man“.

 

Maybe more should be done regarding research into the operation of the human brain; and why we, the destroyer of all; regards ourselves as superior to the simple but peaceful other creatures we share this planet with.  Man has to look at man, and ask the questions of where and why he went so wrong in history. 

 

We are not ‘dominant’; in fact we are ‘assholes’.

 

Regards Mark