A lab animal's life
You're taken from your home, shoved into an unmarked truck, and driven to a strange place. Nobody knows or cares about your name there, so you're assigned a number and put into a small cage.
Soon, strangers take you out and grab you, immobilizing you. A tube is forced down your nose into your stomach. It hurts. You're really scared.
Then they start pumping poison into you. It burns, but they ignore your cries. They repeat the procedure many times. You die alone in agony and your body is thrown out with the trash
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Cruel? Yes. Unusual? Hardly.
Just business as usual in today's research laboratories. |
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If you think experimenting on animals is necessary and right, ask yourself this:
Would it still be okay if it were my dog?
Dogs and other animals that are specifically "bred for the purpose" are no better able to handle what happens to them, physically and emotionally, than your pet would be. |
Click here to read more about why animal testing is scientifically and ethically bankrupt. |
Further food for thought
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Thousands of drugs that tested safe in animals have been withdrawn or banned because of adverse effects on human health.
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Digitalis, insulin, penicillin, and aspirin all failed animal testing. If animal testing is so accurate, why haven't these drugs been pulled from the marketplace?
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IS RENO BECOMING
"THE CRUELEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD"? |
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Charles River Laboratories, a company whose business is animal testing, has opened a new facility on Longley. This new venue, an expansion of their current Sparks location, houses 900 employees. |
If you care about animals,
you should care about this.
Why? Animal testing/experimentation is a minimally regulated industry, and labs can withhold veterinary treatment or pain relief for ANY animal simply by writing up an exclusion in a rarely read report. And consider this:
- CRL was prosecuted in New Mexico for institutional negligence and criminal animal cruelty stemming from the deaths of two chimpanzees and the near death of a third. (CRL did not deny that the events occurred, but they escaped conviction by convincing a judge they were engaged in the "practice of veterinary medicine.") Read more here.
- Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee reports found many violations of the Animal Welfare Act at CRL facilities, including inadequate veterinary care and lack of administration of analgesics (pain relievers). Read more here.
- An undercover investigation of Shamrock Farm, a "primate importation and quarantine centre" in the U.K. owned by Bausch & Lomb and run by Charles River, found high mortality rates and abysmal living conditions for the animals held captive there. Animal rights activists mounted a 15-month campaign, which resulted in Shamrock Farm closing its doors. Read more here and here.
With this less than stellar track record, isn't it time we made them accountable? Write to our city government (see below) to let them know you're concerned and ask that Charles River Laboratories make their IACUC reports public.
What kinds of animals does Charles River use?
- CRL is the world's largest importer of nonhuman primates, including Great Apes.
Research on Great Apes has been banned or severely restricted in the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany and Japan, and has been proposed in Austria. These countries have determined that chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans are cognitively so similar to humans that using them as test subjects is unethical.
- CRL is the world's largest supplier of laboratory animals for experimentation purposes. Rabbits, rats, mice, dogs, monkeys, chimpanzees...you name 'em, they've got 'em.
Read CRL's 2004 USDA report regarding their usage of animals.
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| The Reno Gazette Journal's "Mostly Dogs" blog (by Mark Robison) has several articles on Charles River and animal testing. Click here to read them. |
| RIGHT NOW IN SPARKS |
| PharmAthene has hired Charles River to test a new drug on monkeys (the drug is a prospective antidote for VX nerve gas, the most lethal and toxic form of chemical weapon). Guinea pigs, rabbits and pigs will be exposed to VX at a special facility in Canada. This project is scheduled to run through May of 2011. E-mail PharmAthene (or call them at 410-571-8920) and tell them you oppose this cruel research. |
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Would you like to contribute to or comment on this site? Write to contribute@arreno.com. |
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