EUROPE: Animal testing controls to be tightened

An agreement in principle on new rules for animal testing has been reached by the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers, affecting universities and commercial researchers. This will strengthen European controls over experiments on animals without apparently threatening any loss of research to countries with looser controls.

But the final legal text still has to be approved by a parliamentary committee and then by the full assembly, as well as by the EU ministerial council, so there could be changes before it finally becomes law next year.
Animal welfare has been among the leading concerns of voters in the EU in recent years and this is reflected in the relatively tough line taken by the parliament. Its members (MEPs) have also had to take into account warnings by industry that too strict a crackdown on animal testing could impair EU research efforts or drive testing out of the EU.

On balance it looks as though the animal lobby has mostly prevailed. The new draft legislation would reduce the number of animal tests and introduce a compulsory assessment for each experiment to safeguard animal welfare.

Elisabeth Jeggle, a German Christian Democrat who led the parliament’s negotiating team, said: “We were particularly pleased to see that the council accepted our position with regard to inspections of breeders, suppliers and users of animals used for testing. A robust inspection system is essential to ensure that the rules we are introducing are complied with.”

There is new language to ensure that “whenever an alternative, scientifically valid, method is available that does not use animals, it has to be used instead”.

A ban on using great apes such as chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans for scientific testing has been broadly accepted but the text as originally proposed would also have restricted the use of other primates such as ouistitis and macaques, which could have hampered European scientific research on neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, and this has been struck out.

source: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=200912181022474

Vivisector Quotes of the Week

The Quotes Of  The Week

The quotes below by animal abusers should remove any remaining doubt among our dear readers that direct action is an extremely effective tactic in stopping the exploitation, torture and murder of sentient non-human animals:

“It [action by animal liberationists] is changing the kind of work people will do in the future,” he says. “If students come to me interested in primate research, I would tell them to think about other things.” –Dario Ringach, UCLA Vivisector who quit killing non-human primates in his laboratory in 2006 when his colleagues were attacked by the ALF

“The issue he [Oklahoma State University President Burns Hargis] was mostly concerned about was that he really did not want to attract controversy from the violent elements of various animal rights groups. He did not want to put OSU in that spotlight and so unnecessarily distract from or interfere with current research.” — OSU Vice-President for Research and Technology Transfer Stephen McKeever, to Science Magazine when explaining why Hargis had canceled OSU plans to kill baboons with Anthrax.

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source: http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/index.htm

Humans are Amazing…A HOLIDAY THOUGHT

Aren’t humans amazing Animals? They kill wildlife – birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed.

Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative – and fatal – – health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer.

So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing and killing millions of more animals to look for cures for these diseases.

Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals.

Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and once a year send out cards praying for “Peace on Earth.”

~ Revised from Old MacDonald’s Factory Farm by C. David Coates

OSU Stops Primate Torture: Panties Bunched Up by Baboons

Good job Madeline!

By Rick Bogle

12/2/09

Simulposted with Primate Freedom

You may have read about Oklahoma State University canceling planned anthrax experiments on baboons after Madeleine Pickens apparently threatened to cancel her and her husband’s $5 million donation to the university’s vet school. (Anthrax study rejected by OSU: Euthanasia of primates may be to blame for decision to cancel veterinary school project. NewsOK November 30, 2009.)

Please contact Madeleine Pickens and OSU President Burns Hargis and thank them for sparing our primate friends from torture and death:

http://www.madeleinepickens.com/contact/

osupres@okstate.edu

Good job Madeline and Burns! Pickens is better known for her work on behalf of wild horses.

Unsurprisingly, the vivisection community has been unnerved by this. Paul Browne, of ProTest, commented on The Scientist:

… When university administrators go over the heads of university review boards and stop a project without consulting the investigators involved or members of the relevant ethics and safety committees something is clearly wrong, and when it looks as if the administration is acting under pressure from a wealthy donor it is time for us to stand up for academic freedom.

Today the issue is anthrax research in baboons, but what might it be tomorrow? Can any funder trust the OSU administration any more?

Over at ScienceBlogs, DrugMonkey (aka, Michael A. Taffe) said:

This, my friends, is the start of the slippery slope. OSU has put the bit in Ms. Pickens’ teeth and given her (and whatever ARA extremist groups have their claws into her) free rein to bring down any and all of OSU’s ongoing programs she objects to. Unchecked, this is going to end up with the complete dissolution of the baboon research ERV mentioned.

The blogger mentioned above by Taffe, also at ScienceBlogs, the anonymous ERV, [maybe that’s why she feels comfortable throwing around the profanity?] who claims to be a graduate student at OSU,launched into an ad hominem attack on Pickens:

That horribly disfigured woman, Madeleine Pickens? That poor dumb thing married to some rich guy? Rich guy gives money to OSU, so people listen to the stupid blonde who mutilated herself a-la Michael Jackson with ‘animal free’ (**WINK!!**) plastic surgery/botox/hair dye/make-up? Oh, Im sure she had nothing to do with this. **WINK!!**

But none of these deep thinkers have addressed the issue of using baboons or other monkeys in studies like these. All they can do is fan the flames of fear that have erupted in a few vivisectors’ guts because of a potential future loss of income. All they can do is claim that Ms. Pickens has had plastic surgery. Is it any wonder that genuinely hard questions about human biology and health are so rarely answered by scientists of this ilk?

DrugMonkey (aka, Michael A. Taffe) made the doped-up claim that because Ms. Picken’s husband kills quail, that she is a hypocrite if she voices any concern for other animals. The drugs he is probably stealing and secretly consuming must have really kicked in as he was writing, because he then claims that the Pickenses are terrorists. Wow. That sounds like good shit Mike.

It is well past time for the NIH to provide an equally weighty counter to the intimidation of the ARA terrorists. Because that’s what this is. A University president fearing “controversial” research has been terrorized by the extremist fringe into deciding that the best path is simply to give in.

Rick Bogle taught in a public elementary school for eight years after serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. After learning details of experiments occurring in U.S. laboratories, he gave up his teaching career in 1997 and began working full time to call attention to the government-sponsored abuse of animals.

Rick is knowledgeable on all issues surrounding the use of animals in science, but is particularly well-informed about the use of monkeys. Rick says, “Science has shown repeatedly and convincingly that other animals have minds and emotions so like our own that their joy and suffering is essentially indistinguishable from our own joy and suffering. People are waking up to the implications of this fact; a revolution has begun.

For the latest updates on the animal liberation movement, visit NAALPO at  http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/

To support or undertake animal rights and liberation activism in the Kansas City area, visit Bite Club of KC athttp://biteclubkc.wordpress.com/.

source: http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/panties-bunched-up-by-baboons/

NASA’s plan to zap monkeys with radiation riles physicians’ group

A physicians’ group is asking NASA to delay plans to zap up to 27 squirrel monkeys with radiation to see how cosmic rays might affect humans on a three-year trip to Mars, Florida Today reports.

The monkeys will be hit with a single blast of gamma rays, then observed to see how they perform certain tasks.

“There could be horrible side effects, for all we know,” says Dr. John J. Pippin with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

The non-profit group calls the $1.75 million NASA-funded project “one giant leap backward for NASA,” which hasn’t experimented on monkeys since the 1970s, the paper says.

NASA officials say the agency would follow widely accepted ethical standards in the four-year study, which will be led by a Harvard associate professor of psychobiology.

“We understand their concern, which is one of the reasons that we followed such rigorous standards and procedures before we do any kind of research on primates,” said Ashley Edwards, a NASA spokeswoman.

She tells the paper that monkeys make good candidates for the experiment because they’re easily trained and genetically similar to humans.

But Pippin, a cardiologist, says using monkeys is unnecessary and unethical.

“This looks like total nonsense to me,” he tells Florida Today.“It’s almost as if they had some money, they had some monkeys, and they had to find out something to do with it.”

(Posted by Doug Stanglin)

source: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2009/11/nasa-plans-to-zap-monkeys-with-radiation-riles-physicians-group/1

Why Can’t Chimps Speak? Key Differences In How Human And Chimp Versions Of FOXP2 Gene Work

If humans  are  genetically  related  to  chimps,  why did our brains develop the innate ability for language and speech while theirs did not?

 

Scientists suspect that part of the answer to the mystery lies in a gene called FOXP2. When mutated, FOXP2 can disrupt speech and language in humans. Now, a UCLA/Emory study reveals major differences between how the human and chimp versions of FOXP2 work, perhaps explaining why language is unique to humans.

Published Nov. 11 in the online edition of the journal Nature, the findings provide insight into the evolution of the human brain and may point to possible drug targets for human disorders characterized by speech disruption, such as autism and schizophrenia.

“Earlier research suggests that the amino-acid composition of human FOXP2 changed rapidly around the same time that language emerged in modern humans,” said Dr. Daniel Geschwind, Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Distinguished Chair in Human Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Ours is the first study to examine the effect of these amino-acid substitutions in FOXP2 in human cells.

“We showed that the human and chimp versions of FOXP2 not only look different but function differently too,” said Geschwind, who is currently a visiting professor at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. “Our findings may shed light on why human brains are born with the circuitry for speech and language and chimp brains are not.”

FOXP2 switches other genes on and off. Geschwind’s lab scoured the genome to determine which genes are targeted by human FOXP2. The team used a combination of human cells, human tissue and post-mortem brain tissue from chimps that died of natural causes.

The chimp brain dissections were performed in the laboratory of coauthor Todd Preuss, associate research professor of neuroscience at Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

The scientists focused on gene expression — the process by which a gene’s DNA sequence is converted into cellular proteins.

To their surprise, the researchers discovered that the human and chimp forms of FOXP2 produce different effects on gene targets in the human cell lines.

“We found that a significant number of the newly identified targets are expressed differently in human and chimpanzee brains,” Geschwind said. “This suggests that FOXP2 drives these genes to behave differently in the two species.”

The research demonstrates that mutations believed to be important to FOXP2’s evolution in humans change how the gene functions, resulting in different gene targets being switched on or off in human and chimp brains.

“Genetic changes between the human and chimp species hold the clues for how our brains developed their capacity for language,” said first author Genevieve Konopka, a postdoctoral fellow in neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “By pinpointing the genes influenced by FOXP2, we have identified a new set of tools for studying how human speech could be regulated at the molecular level.”

The discovery will provide insight into the evolution of humans’ ability to learn through the use of higher cognitive skills, such as perception, intuition and reasoning.

“This study demonstrates how critical chimps and macaques are for studying humans,” noted Preuss. “They open a window into understanding how we evolved into who we are today.”

Because speech problems are common to both autism and schizophrenia, the new molecular pathways will also shed light on how these disorders disturb the brain’s ability to process language.

The National Institute of Mental Health, the A.P. Giannini Foundation and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression funded the study.

The UCLA coauthors included Jamee Bomar, Giovanni Coppola, Fuying Gao, Zophonias Jonsson, Sophia Peng, Kellen Winden and James Wohlschlegel.

source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091111130942.htm