There is no reason to test anything on animals, Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis ends live animals use, Herbal Essences is now cruelty free, Hershey's Bans Animal Tests however LSU's vet school buys dogs from local shelter to use deadly lab & Physicians Committee Recognized as Top 10 Health Influencer!
Animal testing is a hot button issue with a multitude of opinions on each side. It’s an industry where there are entire companies dedicated to the breeding of animals used for experimental purposes. You can order whatever sort of beagle, rat, pig or mouse (to mention a few) that your laboratory wants to test on. Universities, corporations and companies all play a part in perpetuating the use of animals as research subjects.
But it doesn’t need to be this way. The future of research is becoming more humane and positive each day. To start helping animals, it is important to understand the issue of animal testing and we hope that this article gives you a beneficial overview of the topic.
We encourage you to share this information with friends and people you know. We do not need to continue testing on animals, and here are five great reasons why.
1. Alternative testing technologies exist.
Humane alternatives are out there, and they’re becoming more accurate as technology improves. Here’s just a sampling of some of the new testing technologies that have the potential to replace animal experimentation for good:
Entire organizations such as New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS), Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS), American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS), to name a few, are dedicated to raising awareness about animal testing and supporting and developing humane and accurate alternatives, which are becoming increasingly available. Soon, there will be no excuse not to use alternatives.
2. Public awareness about animal testing is growing.
Did you know that even items like contact lenses, pet food, diapers, Splenda, and some “green” cleaning products are tested on animals? If you didn’t, now you do. It’s now simpler than ever to get information on what products are tested on animals, and in some cases even know how the research is performed (check out our list of ten commonly performed experiments on animals for more information).
We may not be able to end all forms of animal testing as quickly as we want, such as experiments in medical facilities or at pharmaceutical companies, but we can control what we purchase. We can also let our universities know that we do not support testing on animals.
3. Cruelty-free products are on the rise.
Websites like the Leaping Bunny, and PETA’s cruelty-free search engine make it easy to start finding products that do not test on animals. Brands like Lush use their anti-animal testing stance as a selling point and to raise awareness. We have published shopping guides on cruelty-free mascara, shampoo, and lip balm, as well as a guide on recognizing animal ingredients in makeup, illustrating that cruelty-free is becoming the preferred choice for many conscious companies.
From our article on vivisection (which is also worth a read), Caroline Lennon compiled this super helpful list of companies and products that are 100 percent vegan (i.e. no animal testing and no products derived from animals):
In addition, we can now ensure that our charitable contributions are not going toward non-human animal experiments. Animal Aid and Humane Seal provide information to donors on which charities are cruelty-free.
4. Non-human animals are imperfect analogs for the human body.
In the words of Biomedical Science and Electrical Engineering Professor James Hickman, “We have cured over 200 diseases in rats and mice that hasn’t translated to humans because our physiology is different, a lot of the basic functions you know … There is all kinds of things a rat can do that looks like things that we are doing. The problem is the small little modifiers, you know the channels and the receptors in those cells are just a little different than ours.”
Physiologist Ajay Chawla of the University of California in reference to testing on mice, said, “An important issue that I think most of us have ignored … I tell my colleagues, ‘You’re modelling human disease and pathology in an organism that is like somebody who is on speed.’”
According to NAVS, “People, in general, have longer life expectancies than most nonhuman species, metabolize substances differently, and are exposed to a multitude of different environmental factors over our lifetimes. Diseases that develop in people differ in significant ways from artificially imposed symptoms or in animals that have been genetically engineered.”
There are a wide variety of studies and books that demonstrate the weak link between testing on non-human animals and producing usable results. To scratch the surface, visit Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, read research by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and catch up on chapters dedicated to the subject in Peter Singer’s “Animal Liberation.”
5. Animal testing has no place in our modern world.
It was a sad day when the first animal was used in an experiment for human benefit — when the human race decided that because we could, because they cannot say no, we would use them as test subjects. These animals have a right to live in a world without suffering just as much as we do. We should know by now that asserting our dominance over another species does not make us look strong, but rather makes us look weak, as if we’re moving backward, not forward.
We have the capacity to research and develop alternatives that are more accurate and more humane. These alternatives, medically and within product testing, are the way of the future. It’s time to let animals out of the world’s laboratories.
Louisiana State University's veterinary school buys dogs from a shelter to use in deadly anatomy labs. At least 70 live dogs were supplied for this purpose in 2018 alone.
Brown Alpert Medical School’s Lethal Animal Use Violates Federal Law. Doctors File Complaint to Halt Use of Live Animals to Train Emergency Medicine Residents
Alpert Medical School of Brown University is using live pigs to teach invasive procedures to its emergency medicine residents in violation of federal law, according to a complaint filed by the Physicians Committee—a nonprofit of more than 12,000 doctors. The vast majority of emergency medicine residency programs in the United States and Canada use only human-based methods, such as medical simulation, to train residents.
The Associated Press covered the complaint in an article that was picked up by hundreds of news outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post. It was also covered by The Brown Daily Herald.
“Using live animals to teach human medicine is a substandard practice and Brown Alpert Medical School should switch to simulation,” says John Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C., a Dallas physician and director of academic affairs for the Physicians Committee. “Lifelike human patient simulators and other human-relevant training methods can provide emergency medicine residents the skills they need to save human lives, with the important advantages of anatomic fidelity and repetition to hone procedural skills.”
According to an ongoing survey by the Physicians Committee, 94 percent of emergency medicine residencies—including the only other program in Rhode Island, Kent Hospital in Warwick—exclusively use human-based training methods. In addition, other New England programs at Boston University, Maine Medical Center in Portland, and the University of Connecticut use only nonanimal methods to train residents.
The Lifespan Medical Simulation Center is affiliated with Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and the simulation center offers life-like human patient simulators that could replace the use of live animals in the emergency medicine residency.The Animal Welfare Act’s implementing regulations require that a principal investigator—including course instructors—consider alternatives to the use of animals for such training. The Physicians Committee’s complaint, which is filed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, cites violations of the Animal Welfare Act and inadequate oversight of the training protocol by the school’s animal care and use committee.
Report: Scientists Call for Replacing Animal Tests with Human Tissues
DOWNLOAD: Human Tissue Roundtable Summary Report,
Human Tissue Roundtable Summary Report, PDF 651KB
Research using human tissues instead of animals is critical to advancing medical research and drug development, but accessibility to quality human tissues is often a barrier.
The Physicians Committee convened The Human Tissue Roundtable in October to address the issue. The roundtable speakers covered the full spectrum of the topic, from a transplant surgeon who initiates the cycle of tissue recovery in the operating room to a scientist who uses human cells to study drug development for preclinical trials. The 23 attendees, including scientists, policy experts, physicians, and leaders from U.S. federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations, also discussed the current state of human tissue research and devised a plan to increase the availability and quality of human tissues in research.
But it doesn’t need to be this way. The future of research is becoming more humane and positive each day. To start helping animals, it is important to understand the issue of animal testing and we hope that this article gives you a beneficial overview of the topic.
We encourage you to share this information with friends and people you know. We do not need to continue testing on animals, and here are five great reasons why.
1. Alternative testing technologies exist.
Humane alternatives are out there, and they’re becoming more accurate as technology improves. Here’s just a sampling of some of the new testing technologies that have the potential to replace animal experimentation for good:
- A newly developed technology created by professor James Hickman, at the University of Central Florida, mimics standard human muscular function which allows researchers to monitor muscular function and its response to different treatments without using human or animal subjects.
- Bioengineering PhD student Alan Faulkner-Jones began pioneering the use of 3-D printing to replace medical animal testing.
- A team of Maryland scientists is “using adult stem cells that can grow into cells from just about any of the body’s organs, which they believe will allow them to more accurately and more quickly test effects of a toxin or a drug–potentially any substance–on a person, eliminating the need for animal subjects.”
Entire organizations such as New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS), Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS), American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS), to name a few, are dedicated to raising awareness about animal testing and supporting and developing humane and accurate alternatives, which are becoming increasingly available. Soon, there will be no excuse not to use alternatives.
2. Public awareness about animal testing is growing.
Did you know that even items like contact lenses, pet food, diapers, Splenda, and some “green” cleaning products are tested on animals? If you didn’t, now you do. It’s now simpler than ever to get information on what products are tested on animals, and in some cases even know how the research is performed (check out our list of ten commonly performed experiments on animals for more information).
We may not be able to end all forms of animal testing as quickly as we want, such as experiments in medical facilities or at pharmaceutical companies, but we can control what we purchase. We can also let our universities know that we do not support testing on animals.
3. Cruelty-free products are on the rise.
Websites like the Leaping Bunny, and PETA’s cruelty-free search engine make it easy to start finding products that do not test on animals. Brands like Lush use their anti-animal testing stance as a selling point and to raise awareness. We have published shopping guides on cruelty-free mascara, shampoo, and lip balm, as well as a guide on recognizing animal ingredients in makeup, illustrating that cruelty-free is becoming the preferred choice for many conscious companies.
From our article on vivisection (which is also worth a read), Caroline Lennon compiled this super helpful list of companies and products that are 100 percent vegan (i.e. no animal testing and no products derived from animals):
- Companion animal food: Natural Balance
- Cosmetics: Beauty Without Cruelty
- Household goods: Method
- Office supplies (incl. pens): Pilot
- Skincare: Hugo Natural Products
- Supplements and vitamins: NuTru
In addition, we can now ensure that our charitable contributions are not going toward non-human animal experiments. Animal Aid and Humane Seal provide information to donors on which charities are cruelty-free.
4. Non-human animals are imperfect analogs for the human body.
In the words of Biomedical Science and Electrical Engineering Professor James Hickman, “We have cured over 200 diseases in rats and mice that hasn’t translated to humans because our physiology is different, a lot of the basic functions you know … There is all kinds of things a rat can do that looks like things that we are doing. The problem is the small little modifiers, you know the channels and the receptors in those cells are just a little different than ours.”
Physiologist Ajay Chawla of the University of California in reference to testing on mice, said, “An important issue that I think most of us have ignored … I tell my colleagues, ‘You’re modelling human disease and pathology in an organism that is like somebody who is on speed.’”
According to NAVS, “People, in general, have longer life expectancies than most nonhuman species, metabolize substances differently, and are exposed to a multitude of different environmental factors over our lifetimes. Diseases that develop in people differ in significant ways from artificially imposed symptoms or in animals that have been genetically engineered.”
There are a wide variety of studies and books that demonstrate the weak link between testing on non-human animals and producing usable results. To scratch the surface, visit Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, read research by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and catch up on chapters dedicated to the subject in Peter Singer’s “Animal Liberation.”
5. Animal testing has no place in our modern world.
It was a sad day when the first animal was used in an experiment for human benefit — when the human race decided that because we could, because they cannot say no, we would use them as test subjects. These animals have a right to live in a world without suffering just as much as we do. We should know by now that asserting our dominance over another species does not make us look strong, but rather makes us look weak, as if we’re moving backward, not forward.
We have the capacity to research and develop alternatives that are more accurate and more humane. These alternatives, medically and within product testing, are the way of the future. It’s time to let animals out of the world’s laboratories.
LSU BOUGHT AT LEAST 70 LIVE DOGS FROM A SHELTER FOR DEADLY TRAINING
LABS?! Listen Now! 🎧
| Cajun Was Not 'Adopted,' Records Show—He Was Sold by a Shelter for a Deadly Anatomy Lab |
Louisiana State University's veterinary school buys dogs from a shelter to use in deadly anatomy labs. At least 70 live dogs were supplied for this purpose in 2018 alone.
According to documents obtained by PETA and disturbing reports from a whistleblower, the Louisiana State University (LSU) School of Veterinary Medicine has, for years, purchased dogs from a local animal shelter for use in deadly training laboratories. Worse yet, it appears that the shelter was knowingly cooperating with this deadly practice, marking the dogs it supplied to LSU as "releases" in its records and advertising that at least some of the dogs had been "adopted," perhaps as part of a deceptive scheme to manipulate its shelter statistics.
Alpert Medical School of Brown University is using live pigs to teach invasive procedures to its emergency medicine residents in violation of federal law, according to a complaint filed by the Physicians Committee—a nonprofit of more than 12,000 doctors. The vast majority of emergency medicine residency programs in the United States and Canada use only human-based methods, such as medical simulation, to train residents.
The Associated Press covered the complaint in an article that was picked up by hundreds of news outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post. It was also covered by The Brown Daily Herald.
“Using live animals to teach human medicine is a substandard practice and Brown Alpert Medical School should switch to simulation,” says John Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C., a Dallas physician and director of academic affairs for the Physicians Committee. “Lifelike human patient simulators and other human-relevant training methods can provide emergency medicine residents the skills they need to save human lives, with the important advantages of anatomic fidelity and repetition to hone procedural skills.”
According to an ongoing survey by the Physicians Committee, 94 percent of emergency medicine residencies—including the only other program in Rhode Island, Kent Hospital in Warwick—exclusively use human-based training methods. In addition, other New England programs at Boston University, Maine Medical Center in Portland, and the University of Connecticut use only nonanimal methods to train residents.
The Lifespan Medical Simulation Center is affiliated with Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and the simulation center offers life-like human patient simulators that could replace the use of live animals in the emergency medicine residency.The Animal Welfare Act’s implementing regulations require that a principal investigator—including course instructors—consider alternatives to the use of animals for such training. The Physicians Committee’s complaint, which is filed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, cites violations of the Animal Welfare Act and inadequate oversight of the training protocol by the school’s animal care and use committee.
Report: Scientists Call for Replacing Animal Tests with Human Tissues
Human Tissue Roundtable Summary Report, PDF 651KB
Research using human tissues instead of animals is critical to advancing medical research and drug development, but accessibility to quality human tissues is often a barrier.
The Physicians Committee convened The Human Tissue Roundtable in October to address the issue. The roundtable speakers covered the full spectrum of the topic, from a transplant surgeon who initiates the cycle of tissue recovery in the operating room to a scientist who uses human cells to study drug development for preclinical trials. The 23 attendees, including scientists, policy experts, physicians, and leaders from U.S. federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations, also discussed the current state of human tissue research and devised a plan to increase the availability and quality of human tissues in research.
GREAT NEWS: Hershey's Bans Animal Tests After Talks With PETA
At PETA's request, the chocolate giant has established a new policy that ends cruel and deadly experiments on animals. But other pointless and painful experiments are still being conducted on mice and rats in university laboratories. Take action to help stop the funding of cruel experiments on animals. Read more and help raise more awareness...
I am excited to share good news with you today. The Physicians Committee just learned that Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis—which has one of the most highly regarded emergency medicine residency programs in the United States—has ended live animal use! It took years of persistence, but we got there.
We would like to thank YOU for making this victory possible.
In April 2016,
after first attempting to communicate privately, we launched our public campaign
against Hennepin, which was using up to 300 sheep and rabbits per year to teach
procedures to its emergency medicine residents. Up to 20 procedures were
practiced on the sheep alone, including splitting open their breastbones to
access the heart and drilling holes into their skulls. If the animals managed to
survive the invasive procedures, they were killed following the training
session.
We filed a
federal complaint, held public demonstrations, and erected billboards in
downtown Minneapolis. Most recently, in July 2018, we held a protest at Hennepin
while Dr. Kerry Foley presented comments to the medical center’s Board of
Directors and delivered more than 72,000 petitions from Physicians
Committee supporters! At the same time, five mobile billboards circled
the medical center’s campus and downtown Minneapolis for the day, urging
Hennepin’s leaders to end animal use. Your support made this possible!
And with that
ongoing pressure, we finally brought about change. Hennepin’s board of directors
initiated an internal review of animal use that concluded this month. The
medical center now joins the 94 percent (252 of 267) of surveyed emergency
medicine residencies in the United States and Canada that exclusively use
human-relevant training methods.
We congratulate
Hennepin Healthcare for making the decision to utilize superior nonanimal
methods for training its emergency medicine residents. While we celebrate this
achievement, we’re reminded that there is still work to be done. Just down the
road from Hennepin, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., is still using live pigs
for the very same type of training. Please urge Mayo to follow Hennepin’s
lead!
|
Don Lichterman
Sunset Corporation of America (SCA)
Sustainable Action Network (SAN)
Media Contact for Brown Alpert Medical School’s Lethal Animal Use Violates Federal Law: JEANNE STUART MCVEY: 202-527-7316 - JMcVey@PCRM.org
Don Lichterman
Sunset Corporation of America (SCA)
Sustainable Action Network (SAN)