I admit, I’m not enjoying Fringe as much as J.J. Abrams’ other tv shows, but I still watch it because I’ll watch anything J.J. Abrams does (despite J.J. Abrams shows frequently showing violence towards animals that I have to fast-forward.  Ahem.)  However, I thought the “Unleashed” episode of Fringe was very interesting — it involves a group of animal rights supporters breaking into a lab (just like Dollhouse a few weeks ago!  It’s interesting how the same ideas occur at the same time in various tv shows.  I guess a lot of writing for television involves ripping off stories from the news?  

Anyway, I really enjoyed the depiction of these animal rights supporters as being nice people who just want to free tortured animals.  It’s SUCH a welcome change.  

However, the episode did promote the fallacy that “animal testing is necessary” the way so many television shows erroneously do.  To quote exactly, the lab scientist states that animal testing is “an unfortunate but necesssary step.  it’s better to have an animal experience an allergic reaction to a certain perfume so that you don’t have to.”  

Aaaargh!  Why must they promote this drivel?  Dear screenwriters: do some research please!  There is NO REASON to test allergic reactions with animals.  Especially for perfume!  Sheesh, people.  There are TONS of alternatives to animal testing.  Especially for something as non-lifesaving as perfume causing a rash.  Non-animal tests have been shown to be far less horrific, and actually BETTER than animal-testing in many situations.  Non-animal-using tests (1) mimic human responses better than animal tissue — scientists take discarded bits of skin from surgeries and “grow” it in petri dishes and then run tests on it — for all intents and purposes it reacts much more like human skin than any live rat/rabbit skin would, and animal skin is far different from human skin — human skin is bound tightly to muscle underneath it, whereas most other mammal skin slides over the underlying muscle, human skin has a few hairs on it whereas most animals have a thick coat of fur, etc., (2) non-animal-tests are much cheaper — raising genetically mutated mice to have no immune system and then house and feed them costs a LOT more money than storing petri dishes, (3) allows scientists to run hundreds more tests, leading to better results — you can test skin irritancy on a thousand petri dishes in one day, whereas you’d have to have a really huge kennel to test skin irritancy on a thousand rats in one day, and (4) more environmentally friendly — disposing of dead rat/rabbit bodies infused with hazardous waste takes up a lot of landfill space.    

Want some proof?  There’s some evidence that non-animal-testing is BETTER than animal-testing at detecting skin irritancy:

Cell Culture Beats Animal Tests for Irritancy Accuracy 
posted 4/21/08

A test method derived from cultured human skin cells is more accurate than animal tests at identifying skin irritants, according to a new report from MatTek, Inc., a Massachusetts company that develops alternatives to animal tests. While tests in rabbits misclassified 10 out of the 25 test chemicals, the company’s EpiDerm™ method detected all irritating chemicals correctly.

Another study found that EpiDerm™ and another MatTek cell model, EpiAirway™, contain the enzymes necessary to metabolize toxic chemicals in the same way that these tissues would in an intact human. EpiAirway™ is a model constructed from cells that line the human airway passages, and can be used to test chemicals for potential toxicity to the respiratory system.

So, please remember — there’s NO REASON to test perfume allergies on animals.  Non-animal-testing methods are better!  If you know any screenwriters, please email them this message from me.

Wow — I’m finally not crazy-busy and I can blog!  It’s so nice to be back!  

I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to talk about and I will later this week, but I’ll talk about that later — I am REALLY happy to tell you that I watched an episode of Dollhouse and I was just blown away!  The main character– wait for this — breaks into an animal-testing lab and tries to film horrific animal testing conditions!  Yes!  In a MAINSTREAM TV SERIES!  

I’m sorry for all the explanation points, it’s just so VERY, VERY rare to see this sort of thing!

Not only was it:

1) the MAIN character, not a side character, who was opposed to animal testing, but! 

2) She was also NOT portrayed as an insane person! Also,

3) she was not portrayed as a hippy! (Not that of course there’s anything wrong with being a hippy who is against animal testing, and in fact, if you are a hippy and you’re NOT against animal testing I’m a little disappointed in you.  It’s just that usually tv portrays animal-friendly people as being 100%-hippy 100%-of-the-time.  So It’s a break in stereotyping!)  Also, even better,

2) There was no raise-my-ire talk about how animal testing is necessary for scientific purposes a la Veronica Mars (boo, hiss!).  (It isn’t necessary!  Really!  I swear!  Even scientists and physicians admit that animal tests are not the be-all end-all).  Go read all the stuff I’ve written on alternatives to animal testing!)

So, anyway, if you want to watch the episode, click here.  It will take you to Hulu — on the off chance you’re unable to get that link to work, or you want to Tivo it, it’s Dollhouse episode 7: Echoes “Echo heads back to school where pieces of her past come into focus.”  Here’s the background on Dollhouse:

Joss Whedon, creator of groundbreaking cult favorites “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly,” returns to television and reunites with fellow “Buffy” alumna Eliza Dushku for a thrilling new drama, Dollhouse. Echo (Dushku) is an “Active,” a member of a highly illegal and underground group who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas. Confined to a secret facility known as the “Dollhouse,” Echo and the other Actives, including Sierra and Victor, carry out engagements assigned by Adelle, one of the Dollhouse leaders. The engagements cater to the wealthy, powerful and connected, and require the Actives to immerse themselves in all manner of scenarios - romantic, criminal, uplifting, dangerous, comical and the occasional “pro bono” good deed. After each scenario, Echo, always under the watchful eye of her handler Boyd, returns to the mysterious Dollhouse where her thoughts, feelings and experiences are erased by Topher, the Dollhouse’s genius programmer.

If you’d like to watch the series from its pilot episode, here’s Dollhouse’s page on Hulu.  

Can I just mention how much I heart Joss Whedon right now?

So I was watching an episode of Privileged the other day, and I noticed in part of it the protagonist says she wants to interview the Democratic senator from Florida, who is “all about education reform, and animal rights.”

That’s right — animal rights.  Not you know, kindness to animals or enforcing leash laws (though those are admirable, I have to say) but animal rights.  Wanting to give animals greater protection via the law.

I was a little surprised by this.  Do any of you know of any actual senators who are into animal rights?  Because honestly, I’d LOVE to know.  This is especially ironic because an actual Florida senator was recently spotted going to a Ringling Brothers Circus.  Now, you may not be aware, but actual animal rights people hate, hate, hate circuses, and REALLY hate Ringling Brothers because they abuse (baby) animals.  Really.  I think the HSUS has a whole campaign devoted to hatred for circuses.  Or maybe it’s PETA.  Probably both.  (Needless to say, I personally will never go to a circus again.  The Ringling stuff is especially horrifying.)

Anyway, I did a little digging, and I found out there is one easily findable senator — Senator Lieberman from Connecticut (lucky Connecticut!) — who “believes the government has a responsibility to protect our non-human friends.”  He also received the Humane Appreciation Award in 2005 from the HSUS recognizing his leadership and advocacy on animal protection issues.  Isn’t that nice?  Though I think if I had to sum up Senator Lieberman in three bullet points I don’t know if “animal rights” would be at the top of my list.  

Anyway, one day I hope to see a senator who really IS an animal rights activist.  

(Do you know of any senators who are interested in animal rights?  Even ones who just do a few pro-animal-rights sorts of things?  Please tell me about them!)

I’m watching a rerun of Miami Vice.  I’m excited to learn that Rico Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) is a vegetarian!  So out there for the 1980s!  Today I’m sure he’d be a vegan.

(Can you tell there’s been no mention of animal testing in any popular culture lately?  I’m grasping at straws here.)

I’m also amazed to realize what I once thought was cutting edge fashion is aqua sleeveless shirts matched to aqua shoes.  Seriously.  On a police officer.  This screen capture does not do this outfit justice:

This episode is also quite amazing because it includes both a very young Nathan Lane, and a very young James Remar.  Just . . . wow.

I learned this from Ecorazzi — actress Christian Serratos has a video up on PETA2 in which she advocates against educational dissecting, animal testing, and fur.  I’m VERY excited to see a celebrity advocate against animal testing (!).  Apparently Ms. Serratos was involved in some Nickelodeon tv show that had an episode against animal dissection — doesn’t exposing young minds to alternatives to dissection sound great?

Learn more about Twilight at peta2.com

Hal Sparks is on the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act bandwagon!  Yay!    Let’s all vote to end keeping livestock (who give their milk, eggs, and lives for us) in horrific conditions!  Florida and Arizona have already passed this sort of regulation!

Here’s the video of Hal Sparks speaking in favor of the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act on Youtube — check it out!  (I have to admit I haven’t watched this video because I’m Afraid of the Animal Cruelty I Might See, and as you undoubtedly know, I’m 100% in favor of the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act so I don’t need any convincing from the video — I hope it’s not too graphic, but I’m sorry I can’t vet it for you.)

The original article I found this information in is from a post by Erinnuallain over at Ecorazzi.com, (my source for celebrity anti-animal-testing news!):

Hal Sparks wants your votes to save animals, California!

Hal Sparks (VH1, Queer as Folk, Zero1) may make a living cracking jokes, but the treatment of animals is something that he takes very seriously. If you watched him in Celebracadabra as I did, you probably picked up on that when he refused to do an escape that might harm snakes and also lamented over an earlier trick involving butterflies. In a video message for Californians for Humane Farms, Hal shows his support for the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act by saying that “Treating an animal like a widget is cruel” and “Animals deserve to be treated humanely, even if they are raised for food.”

Hal is just one of the many celebrities who will be voting YES on Prop 2 in November. Others include: Ed Begley, Jr. (will Bill Nye be getting in on this too?), Hayden Panettiere, Alicia Silverstone, Rikki Rachtman, and many more.  (Source)

This isn’t really an animal testing issue, but I was thrilled to find this PETA anti-fur poster with Jared Padalecki, one of the stars of Supernatural , on it. (Thanks Natasha for telling me about this! I love it!). I think PETA should run full-page ads of this in major newspapers. Aren’t Jared Padalecki’s dogs adorable? I love that one on the left — is it some kind of hound?

If you click on this link it will take you to a page where you can vote whether you would wear your dog or not, and sign a petition against (horrible) fur farms.

This is yet another blog post in which I combine two of my favorite things — television watching and opposition to animal testing.

Are any of you Torchwood fans? It’s a spinoff of Dr. Who, and I’ve started watching the first season.  According to Wikipedia, Torchwood is “a British science fiction drama television programme, created by Russell T Davies and stars John Barrowman and Eve Myles. It deals with the machinations and activities of the Cardiff branch of the fictional Torchwood Institute, who deal mainly with incidents involving extraterrestrials.”

Unfortunately, one of the episodes I’ve watched involves the Torchwood characters injecting a rat with an alien virus, seeing the rat explode, and concluding that the alien virus was lethal.

Firstly, this bothered me because I was not expecting to watch a rat be killed. I have a policy of not watching videos of animals dying (which is why I never watch Old Yeller or show those horrifying animal testing pictures or videos in this blog, despite the fact I think they’re fairly informative), and I feel like they should put warning labels on dvds — “don’t watch this if you don’t want to see violence against animals.” I mean, if I’d just known they were going to blow up a rat in that one episode, I could have just not watched that one episode. Sheesh.

Though I suppose I’m the only person on this planet who finds violence to animals disturbing, so that’s why they don’t put animal-violence ratings on movies, so I’m not going to hold it against them.

But secondly, and I was very annoyed by this, is that this is another popular culture reference that doesn’t mention the advances in alternatives to animal testing. Really, the Johns Hopkins people should get out there and advertise that there are alternatives.

And thirdly, I also think the Torchwood characters should have mentioned that the rat’s death was useful to them to discover that the virus was lethal, that they are sorry they had to kill the rat to find out, but it has helped them in their scientific investigation, and that if they could have used in vitro technology which has caused a huge reduction in the number of live animals used in animal testing in the past twenty years, they would have. Ahem.

As it is, they’re just perpetuating the myth that the only way to scientifically test anything is to harm a rat, and that human beings shouldn’t care about the pain and suffering rats endure in laboratories.

So — this isn’t really an animal testing issue, like my previous Supernatural animal testing reference, which I still like a lot — I was watching an episode of Supernatural, and the two main characters find a rabbit dead and strung up in someone’s living room. Instead of making a joke about it or ignoring it, one of them is appalled and says:

“Why does the rabbit always get screwed in the deal? Poor little guy.”

Isn’t that nice? Despite the fact that I was wincing at the sight of a dead rabbit and trying not to look too closely at it while hitting the fast forward button on the television remote, I was happy to see recognition of the sacrifices animals make for people acknowledged in film. I mean sure, it’s a teeny-bopper CW horror television series, but I’ll take what I can get. It’s a far cry from Veronica Mars where they seemed to always be discussing how gang members kept nailing live rats to the doors of houses owned by people they didn’t like. Actually I think that happened a total of two times but it made me uncomfortable.

I’m actually really surprised by the Supernatural pro-animal thing — I imagine when writing a horror television series the temptation to have animals be murdered/possessed/tortured must be difficult to ignore. I mean, the people are always being murdered/possessed/tortured in horror series, aren’t they? It’s probably just a matter of time . . .

So, there’s this television show I occasionally watch (because it has new episodes! in the summer!), called Eureka, which is about this seemingly-normal small Pacific Northwestern town that is actually a huge secret scientific think-tank. The paperboy looks like a perfectly normal paper boy, but he has a robotic arm attachment that throws papers from his bag to the front lawns of his customers. The lawnmowers look like normal lawnmowers, but they have a hover feature, the kids write with chalk on the sidewalk, but they write mathematical equations instead of childish scribbles, etc.

It’s a pretty interesting show, with a great premise — though a few of the plotlines appear to be recycled from other science fiction stories and others are just a little . . . strange, plotwise.

But anyway, I really like the free-range reference I found in an episode I just watched — it’s called “E=MC . . . ?” It’s about a bank-robbing super-genius (and why do all the characters have to be super-geniuses? Aren’t there ever any normal nongeniuses involved in scientific research?) particle physicist who comes to Eureka to be part of a team of scientists to recreate the Big Bang. Since the particle physicist (Zane) has a bank-robbing record, the sheriff, Carter, is keeping an eye on him. They have this exchange after Carter gets Zane a chicken sandwich for lunch:

Sheriff Carter: (hands Zane a chicken sandwich).

Zane: “Um, I’m not eating that.”

Sheriff Carter: “What? It’s chicken.”

Zane: “Do you know how chickens are raised?”

Sheriff Carter: “Don’t — just let me enjoy my meal.”

Zane: “Jammed together. In a windowless warehouse. Wading in feces until they get decapitated. Or pecked to death. When you eat that chicken, you’re eating all that hate.”

Sheriff Carter: (Sets his chicken sandwich down. Looks a little perturbed.)

(Later in the plot, it turns out all the people who ate the chicken sandwich become stupid. (Really. That’s the plot. I am not making this up))

I’m moderately psyched by this development — it’s nice to see a pro-free-range dialogue on TV. Though this one is definitely undermined by the fact that the speaker has a thinks-bank-robbing-is-morally-acceptable-if-you-steal-from organizations-you-dislike attitude. I’d prefer it if that sort of statement were made by a less morally ambiguous character like the sheriff, instead.

Though I’m less psyched with what happens later in the show — the nice veterinarian character mentions how she (cruelly) irradiates animals in the name of scientific progress. It always annoys me to see how if you hurt animals at home, you’re considered an animal-abuser, but if you do so in a laboratory, you’re a scientist. I thought it was especially interesting how the (cruel) veterinarian character is also supposed to be a vegetarian. If she doesn’t mind exposing animals to high levels of cancer-causing radiation, why is she a vegetarian? For health reasons? Is she just very cognizant of the tradeoff between scientific research and humane-ness to animals and feels inhumaneness is okay if scientific progress is furthered? And why is it that the criminal character is against cruelty to animals, but the nice save-the-world character is an animal irradiator?

Another not-so-great thing — the plot develops, and it turns out the chicken was being grown in independent parts from chicken stem cells by an insane-genius-free-range-obsessed chicken farmer (really — I am not making this plot up). I just found this insulting because it portrays people who won’t support battery-farmed chicken as lunatics.

Anyway, I’m glad this show is at least discussing farm animal cruelty to some extent. Getting the message out. So overall, I think it’s a good thing.