Today’s DawnWatch Alert features front-page coverage in USA Today about the need to end non-human animal experimentation in the U.S. When you buy any product, make sure it’s cruelty-free and stop supporting animal testing.
It feels great to have done my last book event for the year and to get back to DawnWatch. It is particularly great to come back on a day, Monday December 15, when USA Today, the most highly circulated newspaper in the US, includes an op-ed piece headed “Replace Animal Experiments.” (pg 11A)
The article is by John J. Pippin, a senior medical and research adviser with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. To learn more about that group, which focuses on the dangers to humans inherent in tests on animals, check out www.PCRM.org.
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Pippin opens by condemning recent attacks on researches (such as car bombings at UCLA) saying, “In addition to being anathema in our society, such tactics obscure important issues regarding animal experiments and human health.”
He tells us he is a cardiologist and a former animal researcher who “came to doubt the medical value of such research.”
He writes:
“Numerous reports confirm very poor correlations between animal research results and human results, and the research breakthroughs so optimistically reported in the media almost always fail in humans.“Examples abound.”
And he gives some compelling examples such as noting that “simple aspirin produces birth defects in at least seven animal species, yet is safe in human pregnancy.”
He asks, “When even identical human twins have different disease susceptibilities, how can we think answers will be found in mice or monkeys?”
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Then he tells us:
“The National Cancer Institute now uses panels of human cells and tissues to test treatments for cancer and HIV/AIDS, and to detect drug toxicities. And the National Research Council now recommends replacing animal toxicity testing with in vitro methods.”Pippin ends with:
“I can attest that animal research is inherently cruel. Animal protection laws do not mitigate this reality. Whether the debate involves humane issues or human benefits, the evidence confirms the need to replace animal experiments with more accurate human-specific methods. That’s the best way to make progress and improve health.”You’ll find the full piece online at: http://tinyurl.com/5ou5la.
Please, keep the discussion alive on the country’s most highly circulated editorial page with letters to the editor appreciative of the op-ed and in favor of alternatives to animal testing. USA Today takes letters at http://tinyurl.com/hvsuz.
Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to read reviews of Karen Dawn’s new book, “Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals” and watch the fun celebrity studded promo video.
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Filed under: animal rights, vegan living Tagged: | animal testing
All I can think about is Chapter Six. Thank you Pippin.
(ed. note) And now for a word from someone who works for Big Pharma! Y’know, I’d take this a lot more seriously if you could spell correctly but I guess that’s not a necessary skill to shill for Big Pharma?
(Yes, yes, I know this is spam but it’s so entertaining I can’t resist publishing it.)
Errr. Sorry, but you’re a bit out on that one!! Lots of human diseases have analogues in animals. Any drug that makes it onto the market is only there because it’s been through INCREDIBLY stringent tests for safety before it can be allowed to be tested on humans. There are also such tight controls around animal testing it’s pretty much impossible to do any kind of tests unless the cause ABSOLUTELY outweighs the cost to the animals. There’s also regulations that say that anything that will cause distress or pain greater than that of being given a general anaesthetic either must not be done at all, or must be done under the use of a general anaesthetic. Any animals that are in unrelievable pain/distress must be euthanased. Animal testing isn’t *right*, but until more alternative techniques can be found, it’s the safest way of getting a drug onto the market.
As an aside to this, I would suggest that anybody who disagrees with animal testing for medicines should not take any drugs that are currently on the market. It’s double standards and hypocrisy!! And yes, that includes things like paracetamol…
Very informative, saddening…but informative. Thanks for getting the word out about how inhumane animal testing is.
http://www.OCveganista.com
xo
As a person studying biology ie. science as a degree, I agree with Int89. I do not agree with testing products on animals. Especially stuff like make-up etc. That is truly unnecessary and definitely cruel.
But when it comes to certain drugs and certain tests they may have to be conducted on animals first. Generally these are things like testing breast cancer by inducing cysts in a mouse’s mammary cells and seeing how preventative drugs react with the cyst cells but also with the mouse itself. Not without numerous tests in vitro beforehand though.
This research is important, as you surely understand and surely you understand that there is no real way we can test that kind of important experiment on people?
This is not spam, this is an alternative opinion to your own. Please do not dismiss it instantly. At least let people hear me out.
Thanks
CJ
OK, that’s enough fun with CJ or INT89 or whatever your username is … Here’s the deal: I disapprove of testing on non-human animals for ANYTHING to be used on humans. PERIOD. We do not need to live forever or continually overpopulate this planet to the point where it can no longer sustain life. I’m vegan, and if you’d bothered to look around my blog you’d know that, so I don’t take anything that’s been tested on non-human animals. I muddle through colds, flu, pollen allergies and whatever else using herbal remedies.
I’m closing the comments on this year-and-half old blog post because THIS IS spam when you use a different e-mail address to get around me.