Category: Animals in Research

Lab shorts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

The debut edition of Forward Focus: A P&G Update on
Innovation in Alternative Testing and Care is available for free
downloading at <www.pg.com/science/ animal_alt.jhtml>. The new
quarterly bulletin details Procter & Gamble progress in developing
alternatives to animal research.

The Vancouver (British Columbia) school board on April 18,
2005 “recognized a student’s right to refuse to participate in or
observe animal dissection, and unanimously passed a student choice
policy,” according to Lesley Fox, founder of the Vancouver-based
national anti-dissection network <www.FrogsAreCool.com>. Fox said
that Vancouver is the first Canadian city to adopt a student choice
policy, but added that a campaign seeking one “is currently being
initiated in Toronto.”

Garments & the Gorilla Foundation

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

SAN MATEO, California– Former Gorilla Foundation employees
Nancy Alperin, 47, and Kendra Keller, 48, both of San Francisco,
on February 15, 2005 sued the foundation in San Mateo County
Superior Court for alleged wrongful dismissal and gender
discrimination, claiming damages of $719,830 and $366,192,
respectively.
Alperin and Keller in January 2005 gave the California
Department of Fair Employment and Housing “identical reasons for why
they were fired: ‘I refused to expose my breast to perform acts of
bestiality with one of the gorillas,’ said San Francisco Chronicle
staff writer Patricia Yollin.
“The lawsuit goes into more detail,” Yollin added. “One
example: ‘In at least two incidents in mid-to-late June 2004,
Patterson intensely pressured Keller to expose herself to Koko while
they were working outside where other employees could potentially
view Keller’s naked body.'”

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USDA closes C.C. Baird

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

ST. LOUIS–C.C. and Patsy Baird, of Williford, Arkansas,
longtime suppliers of random-source dogs and cats to laboratories,
have paid a record penalty of $262,700 to the USDA for breaking
“practically every regulation and standard applicable to dogs and
cats,” USDA attorney Colleen Carroll told Todd Frankel of the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch on February 1, 2005, three days after the
settlement was finalized.
The Bairds’ daughters Jeannette and Patricia reportedly also
worked in the business.
Wrote Frankel, “The agreement between the USDA and the
Bairds calls for the fine, plus the permanent loss of the family’s
four animal breeding and dealer licenses and the threat of an
additional $250,000 fine if they are caught handling animals in the
next five years. As part of the deal, the Bairds neither admitted
nor denied the allegations.”
Frankel said that about 90 dogs and 120 cats rescued from the
Baird kennels were up for adoption.
In August 2003 federal and state investigators turned over to
rescue groups about 125 dogs seized from the Bairds. Many were
believed to be lost or stolen pets.
Last Chance for Animals called the USDA action a victory,
after an eight-year campaign against the Bairds, “but Carroll said
her office’s investigation did not rely on the group’s work and she
never viewed the videos” that LCA sent her, Frankel wrote.

Patent on hybrid human denied

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on February 11, 2005
rejected the 1997 application of New York Medical College professor
of cell biology and anatomy Stuart Newman for a patent on a
theoretical method of combining human embryonic cells with cells from
a nonhuman primate to create a “chimera,” meaning an animal with
traits of multiple species. The Patent & Trademark Office ruled that
the chimera would be too close genetically to a human being to be
patented. This was as Newman hoped, since he filed the application
to seek a precedent against patenting life forms.
“I don’t think anyone knows, in terms of crude percentages,
how to differentiate between humans and nonhumans,” deputy
commissioner for patents John Doll told Rick Weiss of the Washington
Post, adding, “It would be very helpful to have some guidance from
Congress or the courts.”

How P&G avoids animal testing

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Replacement Method

Cytosensor microphysiometer method
Ex vivo rabbit enucleated eye irritation test
Bovine ex vivo corneal opacification permeability test
Chicken ex vivo enucleated eye irritation test
In vitro matrix corrosivity assay (Corrositex) *
Eye human tissue equivalence assay (EpiOcular) *
Eye in silico structure/activity relationship model
Skin human tissue equivalence assay (EpiDerm) *
Skin human tissue equivalence assay (EpiDerm + MTT, IL-1)
In vitro skin penetration assay *
In silico skin penetration SAR model
Proportionality (calculation) method for acute toxicity *
In vitro tissue equivalence assay for gastric irritation
Peptide reactivity screening assay
Skin allergy genomic assay
In silico sensitization SAR model
In vitro guinea pig antibody assay for Type I anaphylaxis
In silico SAR, coupled with in vitro peptide binding
Estrogen receptor competitive binding assay
Androgen receptor competitive binding assay

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GlaxoSmithKline joins British firms jobbing safety testing overseas

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

LONDON–“The drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline
is moving a third of its clinical trials offshore
to countries such as India and Poland to cut
costs,” Heather Tomlinson of The Guardian
revealed on November 1.
Her report confirmed that break-ins,
arsons, home invasions, and similar tactics by
militant antivivisectionists are combining with
market factors to drive experiments on both human
and animal subjects beyond the reach of British
regulation, believed to be among the strongest
in the world on behalf of either humans or
nonhumans used by science.
“If ending cruelty is really the goal,
not merely achieving a hollow symbolic ‘victory’
by removing torture out of sight and out of mind,
forcing vivisection abroad is moving in the wrong
direction,” ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton
warned the British activist community in a
mid-2002 guest column for the newsletter of the
Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals.

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Lab demand threatens Asian urban monkeys

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

“For lab animals who have died for the health of humans,”
reads the inscription on the front of a newly installed monument in
front of the Wuhan University animal research center, in Hubai
state, China.
On the back it reads, “In special memory of the 38 rhesus
macaques whose lives were devoted to SARS research.”
Both inscriptions were authored by vaccine researcher Sun
Lihua, the Xinhua News Agency reported in early October 2004.
Researchers rarely welcome such public reminders that their
work causes animals to suffer and die.
In 1903, for example, British National Anti-Vivisection
Society president Stephen Coleridge had a fountain built in the
Battersea district of London to mark the life and death of a dog who
had been vivisected at nearby University College. Seven years of
frequent street fighting followed between medical students trying to
smash the fountain and local working class youths who defended it.
The Brown Dog Riots, as the conflicts are remembered, ended
after the city council had the fountain removed in 1910, but
modern-day University College students and faculty objected when a
replica fountain was installed at Battersea Park in 1985.
Opposition to animal research tends to be quiet in China.
Protests of any kind have long been repressed, and there is no
visible antivivisection movement.

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While monkey use booms, laboratories are retiring great apes

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

In contrast to the expanding laboratory demand for monkeys,
use of great apes in biomedical research has fallen for about 15
years, partly because they are harder to house and handle, partly
because of the success of the Great Ape Project, the lectures of
wild chimp ethologist Jane Goodall, and others who have gradually
persuaded much of the public that great apes are human-like enough to
have moral standing.
The hottest issue in great ape research in recent years has
been how to retire them from lab use.
First, in 1996, the former LEMSIP chimp colony at New York
University was retired to the Wildlife Waystation sanctuary in
southern California. Then many of the former Buckshire Corporation
and NASA chimps went to Primarily Primates in Texas. Wild Animal
Orphanage, nearby, built a “level 2 biosecurity” facility to
accommodate ex-research chimps who couldn’t be kept at other
sanctuaries because of the diseases they had been exposed to during
their lab years.
As existing sanctuaries reached capacity, primatologist
Carol Noon formed the Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care and in 2002
bought out the Coulston Foundation, formerly the largest chimp
research facility in the world.

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New Indian lab animal use regs proposed

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

NEW DELHI–The Indian federal Ministry of Environment &
Forests on September 24, 2004 recommended new guidelines on animal
use in laboratories, three years after they were reportedly being
prepared. The proposed guidelines are to be offered as amendments to
the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty of Animals Act.
“All experiments on animals,” reported The Hindu, “will be
carried out for the advancement of knowledge that is expected to be
useful for saving or prolonging human life, alleviating suffering,
and combatting disease, whether of human beings, animals, or
plants.”
“The animals lowest on the phylogenetic scale (i.e. with
least degree of awareness) among those whose use may give
scientifically valid results are to be preferred for experiments,”
The Hindu summary added.
“Experiments will be designed to use the minimum number of
animals needed to give statistically valid results. Alternatives to
animal testing are to be given due consideration, and sound
justification must be provided if alternatives, when available, are
not used…Unless the contrary is scientifically established,
investigators should proceed on the basis that procedures causing
pain or suffering in humans will cause similar pain in animals,” The
Hindu summary continued.
A separate summary published by the Deccan Herald confirmed
details and quoted researchers who favor the proposals.

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