Living Cruelty Free

Jane Goodall’s asking the European Union to ban animal testing

Airlines rejecting transporting animals destined for animal testing,

A petition to stop medical students from practicing surgeries on live, healthy animals,

Going on vacation, and,

Returning from vacation.

I just got back from vacationing late on Sunday and after spending the past few days catching up on all kinds of stuff I’m at last able to blog again. I really enjoyed being away and having no responsibilities, but I really missed all of you — all my cruelty-free friends — I really do feel like we’re a little cruelty-free community! Thank you all SO MUCH for being here for me day-in, day-out. Really, this blog has benefited me so much — I’m so glad to have found people out there who want to be cruelty-free. You’re all wonderful

Those of you who’ve left comments in the queue that haven’t been approved yet — do not fear! I promise to get to you as soon as possible.

Hi all,

I’m going on vacation — I shall be back in two weeks.  Until then . . . keep buying cruelty-free products!

Here’s a letter I received from the Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine’s mailing list. It’s a petition asking the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, and Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, to stop horribly carving up live animals (pigs, ferrets, gerbils, and snakes) with scalpels or infecting them with horrific diseases, and then killing them for medical student training courses. I hate this sort of appalling needless animal torture — it’s not just veterinary students that mutilate animals for education — medical students do it too, apparently!

(I’m actually kind of (pleasantly) surprised the medical students don’t use dogs for this (not that I think dogs are better than pigs or ferrets — I just really like dogs) — I was just talking to a very nice pediatrician and she was telling me when she went to medical school (I think in the 1980’s) the medical schools she went to had some sort of thing called a “dog lab” where they used a (healthy) dog for surgical practice and then killed it. She’s an animal nut, so she said it was difficult for her to be involved in, but she managed. Maybe pigs, ferrets, gerbils and snakes are more like human beings from a disease/surgery standpoint than dogs? I have no idea.)

If you find this sort of animal torture disturbing, please consider sending an automatic email to USUHS president Charles L. Rice, M.D., and the dean of the medical school Larry W. Laughlin, M.D., Ph.D., and ask them to end the medical schools’ live animal lab program.

(If you have any questions about whether animals need to be used in medical education, here’s an interesting article about non-animal-using alternatives in medical schools.)

Here is the original action alert from the Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine:

We need your help to end the use of live animals for medical student training at U.S. military facilities. Live animals are used and killed in medical student courses at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Md., and Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. PCRM filed a petition for enforcement with the Department of Defense (DOD) on July 2, 2008, asking for an end to this animal use. The Washington Post recently covered PCRM’s campaign.

USUHS is the country’s only military medical school. The teaching methods it uses impact medical student training at military facilities across the country. There are at least five live animal labs at USUHS. According to the school’s Web site and other documents obtained by PCRM, they include:

• A live pig lab offered to third-year medical students as part of a surgery rotation (this lab also takes place at Wilford Hall). At the end of this lab, the pigs are killed.
• A physiology lab using live pigs, offered to first-year medical students. At the end of this lab, the pigs are killed.
• An intubation lab using live ferrets offered to third-year medical students (also offered at Wilford Hall). Ferrets can suffer fatal injuries during these labs.
• A parasitology lab using live gerbils, offered to students as a means of studying the disease filariasis. For this lab, the gerbils are killed.
• A medical zoology lab using live snakes.

Please call, e-mail, fax, or write a letter to USUHS president Charles L. Rice, M.D., and the dean of the medical school Larry W. Laughlin, M.D., Ph.D., and politely ask them to end the school’s live animal lab program. Being polite is the most effective way to help these animals. Send an automatic e-mail>

Charles L. Rice, M.D.
President
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
4301 Jones Bridge Rd.
Bethesda, MD 20814-4799
Phone: 301-295-3013
Fax: 301-295-1960
president@usuhs.mil

Larry W. Laughlin, M.D., Ph.D.
Dean
F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
4301 Jones Bridge Rd.
Bethesda, MD 20814-4799
Phone: 301-295-3017
Fax: 301-295-3542
llaughlin@usuhs.mil

A DOD directive renewed in 2005 mandates that nonanimal alternatives be used if they exist. There are nonanimal teaching methods that achieve the educational goals for all five animal labs mentioned above. Many of these alternatives are currently in use at the National Capital Area Medical Simulation Center, a state-of-the-art simulation center operated by USUHS.

More than 90 percent of U.S. medical schools have eliminated live animal labs from their curricula altogether. Innovations in medical simulation technology, availability of alternatives, increased awareness of ethical concerns, and a growing acknowledgement that medical training must be human-focused have all facilitated this shift. Only eight out of 154 allopathic and osteopathic medical schools in the United States still use live animals in their curricula.

Learn more about live animal labs and what you can do to help end them. If you have any questions, please contact me at rmerkley@pcrm.org or 202-686-2210, ext. 336. Thanks so much for your help!

Best regards,

Ryan Merkley
Research Program Coordinator

I thought this was really interesting — many airlines, apparently, refuse to transport animals destined for short unpleasant lives as laboratory test subjects. Isn’t that intriguing? I think, in a way, it’s kind of silly. The same people who run the airlines probably buy drugs and cosmetics that are tested on animals. But perhaps it’s a sign that public opinion is against animal testing to some degree? No one wants to transport any creature to his or her painful death, I suppose.

Airlines Reject Cruel Trade

Many airlines that have transported primates destined for laboratories have also washed their hands of the bloody business. British Airways imposed a blanket ban on the transport of live animals for use in experiments—joining Virgin Airlines, a company that has never engaged in such transport. China Airlines—once the second-largest transporter of primates to the United States—also stopped carrying primates destined for experimentation. Currently, no major U.S.-based airline will fly nonhuman primates to the United States from other countries, and the number of foreign international airlines that will carry them to the United States is limited. However, some carriers, including American Airlines, continue to ship primates who are destined for laboratories between cities within the United States.

You can see the original article here.

According to Ecorazzi, Jane Goodall has presented a petition to the European Union asking to stop animal testing in Europe. This would save 12 million animals every year.

I think this is very interesting — when I read the latest figures on the number of animals used in animal testing in Europe each year, I was really surprised to learn that many of them are chimpanzees, apes, monkeys, etc., (0.1% of 12.1 million animals used in animal testing — that is 12,100 primates horribly tortured every year), so it makes sense that Jane Goodall would be active against animal testing. (Though luckily the EU is planning to stop using primates as test subjects in the near future — so Jane Goodall must be doing this out of her compassion for nonprimates!)

Unfortunately I doubt this petition will have much of an effect — animal testing is incredibly difficult to even get people to understand how awful (warning: disturbing pictures on that site) and needless it is. I’m not saying that animal testing could be eradicated completely — but that number of hurt animals could be seriously reduced.

I can only hope Ms. Goodall presents this petition to the U.S. sometime!

Here is the text from Ecorazzi — you can read the original here:

Jane Goodall is one pretty remarkable woman. A UN Messenger of Peace, primatologist, ethologist and anthropologist, Jane is famous for her 45-year study of the chimpanzee and for founding the Jane Goodall Institute. Well it looks like Jane is back in the news and once again standing up for the rights and fair treatment of animals.

Goodall, along with a group of world renown scientists, presented a petition with 150,000 names asking the European Union to put an end to the nearly 12 million animals that are used each year for animal testing. And that’s just in the European Union. Around the world it’s estimated that 115 million animals are exploited each year for medical testing, and guess who’s the ”single largest user?” Yep, it’s us — your friendly neighbors here in the United States.

Jane said: ”We need to recognize at the outset that what we do to animals from their perspective certainly, and probably from ours, is morally wrong and unacceptable.” In reference to alternative technologies for medical research, she asked, “Where is the big encouragement, where is the political will, where is the funding for this kind of research and where are the prizes?” Goodall asked. “Why is animal-alternative work never recognized in the Nobel Prize for medicine, for example?”

To learn more about how YOU can help stop animal testing, visit stopanimaltests.com and let’s put an end to all this ridiculousness. Come on ya’ll…it’s 2008!

via: canadianpress.com

Here are the topics I covered in June:

I joined some social networks: I’m Joining Social Networks — Myspace and Facebook! (I now have a bunch of wonderful friends! It’s so nice to have met all of you! I swear I’ll start doing more cruelty-free community-building stuff on Facebook and Myspace in the near future.)

I read Australia’s and France’s lists of 100%-cruelty-free companies carefully and found a few companies that are commonly available on American shelves, which made me very happy: Things I Learned From Reading Australia’s List of 100%-Animal-Testing Free Products, Things I Learned from Reading the French 100%-Animal-Testing-Free Company List.

I reviewed two 100%-cruelty-free products: Hard Candy Sorbet Lip Gloss (4/5 stars), Juice Organics Lip Amplifier (2/5 stars)

I revamped my lists of cruelty-free companies — I put up a list of 100%-Cruelty-Free Companies, a list of 50%-Cruelty-Free Companies, and a list of Cruel Companies that Test on Animals. I also explained Why I Describe Some Companies as 50%-Cruelty-Free, and Others as 100%-Cruelty-Free.

My list of things I wish I could find from cruelty-free companies remains the same as last month. If you’re a cruelty-free company, could you please look into making these? I’d be ever so grateful

1) Unscented, aluminum-containing deodorant.

2) Instant stain remover wipes.

3) Teeth whitening strips.

4) Eye drops.