Shocked, shocked to find some macaques hurt young!

July 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

ATLANTA––Thirty-five years of records
pertaining to the sooty mangeby and pigtail macaque
colonies at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research
Center show that about 5% of their newborns are abandoned
by their mothers, who tend to be the least experienced
mothers, while another 5% to 10% are actively
abused by mothers who range in age and tend to repeat
the abuse with successive offspring.
This parallels the rates of infant neglect and
child abuse in humans, and is reason, argued
researchers Dario Maestripieri and Kelly A. Carroll in
the May 1998 edition of Psychological Bulletin, that
the use of nonhuman primates in researching neglect
and abuse should be stepped up.

VIVISECTORS IN SPACE

July 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

MOSCOW, CAPE CANAV
ERAL––Fifteen two-year-old
Oriental newts and 80 snails were
brought aboard the Russian space station
Mir on May 18, to resume neurological
studies of the effects of
weightlessness on anatomy that were
disrupted in February when eight
newts died during their return to earth
aboard a cargo shuttle.
The newts and snails are to
remain in orbit until August––if they
endure that long.
Similar work undertaken by
the 16-day, $99 million “Neurolab”
flight of the NASA space shuttle
Columbia during April and early May
brought mostly unplanned early
deaths of the specimens. The casualties
might have contributed to
NASA’s May 5 announcement that
the Neurolab would not fly a second
time in August, as had been tentatively
planned.

House Speaker Gingrich favors research chimp retirement

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

SAN ANTONIO––Eight adult
chimpanzees and two infants, all nearly lifelong
residents of laboratory cages, scrambled
into new quarters at Primarily Primates on
May 7––some experiencing direct sunshine
and outdoor habitat for the very first time.
“This enclosure is one of the largest
ever built for the retirement of chimps used in
research,” said Primarily Primates president
Wally Swett. “The toddlers played chase and
tickle games. The males and females are
resolving their dominance hierarchy. They are
a troop for the first time in their lives, learning
how to be chimpanzees.”
The 10 chimps arrived at Primarily
Primates from the now closed Laboratory for
Experimental Medicine and Surgery In
Primates at New York University.

N.Y. sues feds over top secret Plum Island lab

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

New York attorney general Dennis
Vacco on May 1 sued the USDA for allegedly failing
to prevent pollution of Long Island Sound
resulting from operations at the supposedly ultrasecure
Plum Island Animal Disease Laboratory.
“The most gruesome animal experiment
stuff I’ve ever seen was at Plum Island,” State
University of New York–College at Old Westbury
professor of American Studies Karl Grossman
recently told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “They look
into foreign animal diseases there. It’s a horrid
scene, with cattle and horses tethered in stalls,
dying.” As a reporter for the now defunct L o n g
Island Press, Grossman said, he “was on the
island three times,” investigating allegations that
“the claimed sealed systems they have were not
working,” including a case “about 20 years back”
when “cattle in a holding pen outside ended up
picking up a disease from work going on inside.”

Talking to our ancestors

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

STATE COLLEGE, Pa., WOODSIDE,
Calif.––Eight thousand America
OnLine members on April 28 flooded Koko
the “talking” gorilla with more than 13,000
questions, in the first-ever public interview
of an animal of another species.
Actually “speaking” through a special
computer with a symbolic keyboard,
Koko answered about a dozen inquiries in 45
minutes. Monitored by reporters, who
packed the kitchen of the Gorilla Foundation
headquarters in Woodside, California,
Koko’s longtime teacher/translator Penny
Patterson converted typed text into sign language,
then summarized Koko’s responses
and e-mailed them out.
Koko talked about apple juice, her
favorite foods, her pet cats, her dreams, and
her personal aspirations. Nobody asked how
she’d like to become “bush meat,” the
African euphemism for poached primate.

Editorial: Peace plan two years later

May 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Wesleyan University psychologist Scott Plous’ article “Signs of Change Within the
Animal Rights Movement,” just published in volume 112, #1 of the Journal of Comparative
Psychology, rates an exception to the usual rule that two-year-old opinion polls are not news.
Plous in June 1990 surveyed 402 participants in the first March for the Animals in
Washington D.C., and followed up in June 1996 by surveying 372 participants in the second
such march. These subjects were each at least 18 years of age, identified themselves as animal
rights activists, and “reported traveling from another state expressly to join the march.”
Their profiles each year were so similar, except in average duration of animal rights involvement,
which increased by three years, that Plous concluded the animal rights movement has
essentially stalled in terms of recruitment for a decade––a point increasingly evident to grassroots
organizers such as Joe Haptas of the Northwest Animal Rights Network, who says as
much in his letter on page 5 of this edition.

COURT CALENDAR

May 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Genetic patents
New York Medical College cellular biologist Stuart A. Newman,
cofounder with biotechnology critic Jeremy Rifkin of the Council for
Responsible Genetics, revealed in the April edition of Nature that on
December 18, 1996 he and Rifkin applied for a patent on three techniques of
mixing human embryonic cells with the embryonic cells of other species to produce
part-human, part-animal “chimeras,” named for beasts of Greek myth
who had lion heads, goat bodies, and snake tails. Explained Newsweek, “The
two activists hope that a patent would give them the legal means to block scientists
from using any of the methods they lay out in the application.” Patent
Office verdicts, N e w s w e e k continued, “can be appealed all the way to the
Supreme Court––a prospect that delights Rifkin and Newman. Bioethicists say
that the ensuing court battles may force the first real legislation on what constitutes
a human,” thereby legally limiting many potential uses of both human and
animal genetic material in research.

Sales to labs

May 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

“Berkeley County Animal
S h e l t e r in Berkeley County, South
Carolina, has been sending shelter animals
to the Medical University of South
Carolina and University of South
Carolina for years,” Carol Linville o f
Pet Helpers wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE
on March 20. “I contacted Berkeley
County supervisor Jim Rozier on Friday,
March 13, with a request that this practice
be stopped immediately. I am thrilled to
report that Mr. Rozier contacted me on
Monday, March 16, and announced that
Berkeley County would stop immediately
the practice of selling shelter pets to universities
for teaching and research.”

THAIS MULL MACAQUES

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

MADISON, BANGKOK
––Efforts to keep 143 rhesus macacques
from the Vilas Park Zoo colony
of the Wisconsin Regional Primate
Research Center out of laboratories
failed on March 5, but as ANIMAL
PEOPLE went to press on March
17, animal rights activists and conservationists
around the world still
hoped to send 51 stumptailed macaques
from the disbanded facility to
their ancestral home in Thailand.
The Thai Forestry Department
during the second week in
March appointed a working group to
study repatriating the stumptails,
chaired by Wildlife Research
Division director Chawn Tunhikorn.

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