On March 3, an illegal bio lab was discovered in a believed-to-be vacant building in Reedley, California in Fresno County. City code enforcement stumbled upon the building in December 2022 when they discovered a garden hose running up into the building through a hole in the wall. In March, they obtained a warrant to inspect the property, and in April, the Fresno County Department of Public Health ordered an inspection of the facility.
Investigators inspected the building that contained the lab in July and found a room used to make COVID-19 tests and pregnancy tests. They also found over 35 freezers and refrigeration units that contained “thousands of bodily fluids, serums, tissues, and other medical items.”
According to a declaration from Humero Prado, Assistant Director of Fresno County Public Health, which was filed in superior court, investigators discovered that one room of the warehouse was used to produce COVID-19 and pregnancy tests. In other rooms, investigators found blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples. They also found thousands of vials that contained unlabeled fluids.
Over 900 mice were located at the facility. Court documents identify Wang Zhaolin as the Prestige representative onsite during the investigation. Zhaolin informed the investigators that “these mice were genetically engineered to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus.” Court documents describe the conditions under which the mice were housed as “inhumane.”
From May 2 through May 4, the CDC’s Division of Select Agents and Toxins inspected 850 I Street. Court documents confirm the CDC found potentially infectious agents at the location. These included both bacterial and viral agents, including chlamydia, E. Coli, streptococcus pneumonia, hepatitis B and C, herpes 1 and 5 and rubella. The CDC also found samples of malaria.
That phone call launched an investigation that would eventually involve the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the FBI, the State Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the State Department of Health, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and FCDPH, and would lead to the discovery of a lab that had been operating illegally in the city since October 2022. For FCDPH Director David Luchini and FCDPH Assistant Director Joe Prado, the amount of biological materials and chemicals – over 800 – found at the lab was a first.
The company alleged to be running the lab, Prestige BioTech, is based out of Nevada and is the successor to Universal Meditech, Inc (UMI). In Dec. 2022, the FDA announced a recall over 56,000 “Skippack Medical Lab” Rapid Anti-Gen COVID-19 tests distributed by UMI to California and Texas.
Another representative of Prestige BioTech, David He, dodged questions regarding accountability and ownership of the company and whether or not they were properly disposing of the hundreds of dead mice. Prestige would not confirm if the biologics contained in the lab were theirs.
Prestige BioTech was able to operate 35 freezers and refrigeration devices without anyone questioning the electrical draw that would be required for a building that “was supposed to be vacant,” according to City Manager Nicole Zieba. When investigators entered the building on July 5th, however, the power to the refrigerators and freezers “was lost” but the biological samples were still frozen.
Court documents show that “48 containers (appx. 44 gallons per container) full of biological material and medical waste” were removed on one day followed by another 31 the next day for a total of 75 containers full of biological material and medical waste.
According to court documents reported by NBC News, court documents claim “the other addresses provided for identified authorized agents were either empty offices or addresses in China that could not be verified.”
Tomorrow, March 11, 2023, marks the 10-year anniversary of a historic paradigm shift away from cosmetics animal testing. When the European Union and Israel became the world’s first markets to ban animal tests for cosmetics such as makeup, shampoo and cologne, the change jump-started our global campaign to extend this precedent. It’s incredible to see all that we’ve accomplished since then: Norway, India, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Switzerland, Guatemala, Australia and Mexico have all enacted national measures against cosmetics animal testing. Through sustained advocacy efforts made possible by our multinational presence, we’ve secured cosmetics animal testing and sales bans on nearly every continent. This progress not only spares animals from needless suffering but puts pressure on other nations to follow suit or risk losing the ability to export and sell their cosmetics to key markets. The number of country-level cosmetics animal testing sales bans or restrictions has risen from 28 to 43, and that’s not even counting 10 state-level bans in the U.S. and 13 more in Brazil.
And that’s just the legislative progress: On the corporate side, we’ve seen just as much enthusiasm for using non-animal testing methods that are more relevant to human safety than the painful chemical tests carried out on guinea pigs, rabbits, mice and rats. Many of the top beauty brands in the world—Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Avon, L’Oréal, Johnson & Johnson—have joined us, our longtime partner Lush Cosmetics and our local NGO partners to outlaw cosmetics testing on animals in many of the world’s most influential economies.
You have helped to make this more humane world a reality; consumer demand has spurred a cruelty-free products sector now valued in the billions. And even more people became active on this issue when Save Ralph, our short film that featured rabbit Ralph’s life as a laboratory “tester,” inspired nearly 800 million #SaveRalph posts and homages on TikTok, driving more than 5 million people to sign one of our petitions, and prompting Mexico to become the first country in North America to pass a ban and led to renewed campaign momentum in other countries.
As we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the EU and Israel bans, we’re looking forward to the fights ahead. Here’s where we’re working and how you can help:
In the U.S., we continue to push for the passage of the bipartisan Humane Cosmetics Act, which would prohibit the production and sale of animal-tested cosmetics. Last year, the bill garnered immense support, with 20 senators and 188 representatives co-sponsoring the legislation. The bill is also endorsed by the Personal Care Products Council, as well as hundreds of companies, including Whole Foods Market. We expect the measure to be reintroduced soon, and we’re determined to work toward its passage in the 118th Congress. You can urge your legislator to support an end to cosmetics testing on animals. In the meantime, we are active on the state level, pressing for additional laws to prohibit the sale of cosmetics newly tested on animals.
In Canada, bills backed by Humane Society International/Canada and our partners have fallen just shy of becoming law. In 2021, we helped secure an election pledge by the country’s ruling party to introduce legislation to end cosmetic testing on animals by 2023, and our team is working closely with the Canadian industry and other stakeholders to hold the government to its commitment. You can sign our petition to urge the Canadian government to include cosmetics animal testing ban language in its 2023 budget bill.
In Brazil earlier this month, we celebrated the introduction of a regulation that would restrict some animal testing for cosmetic purposes countrywide. The measure builds on the state-level testing bans we have previously secured there and provides further incentive for lawmakers to enact a federal law that HSI, our partners and the Brazilian industry association have been championing. (You can sign our petition to encourage Brazilian lawmakers to take action.)
In Chile, a federal bill backed by HSI, our NGO partner and the national industry association is only one step away from becoming law. Please sign our petition to help us push it across the finish line.
Even in the EU, the landmark 10-year-old ban on animal testing in the cosmetics regulation faces challenges from regulators who are demanding new animal testing for cosmetic ingredients under the EU’s chemicals regulation. This is unacceptable, and our team is spearheading a call for essential revisions to the law in order to advance the goal of safety innovation without animal suffering.
In addition to our campaign efforts, HSI has been working with global industry partners via the Animal-Free Safety Assessment Collaboration to create a first-of-its-kind master class in animal-free cosmetic safety assessment. The AFSA Master Class will support smaller companies, government authorities and other stakeholders in a transition to state-of-the-art non-animal methods. This training and capacity-building effort is a vital complement to our policy efforts, to build understanding, confidence and acceptance of new non-animal approaches, assuring human safety is maintained and providing vital information on how to comply with animal testing bans.
There is so much to be proud of in this work, and we’re honored to have led the way this far. With your continued advocacy, we’re surely close to a world where cosmetics testing on animals is only a distant memory.
Sara Amundson is president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund.
PETITION TARGETS: University of Minnesota, National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), Minnesota Members of Congress
Kittens had their skulls drilled open and their brains jolted with electric currents and light rays by researchers at the University of Minnesota, who then killed the tiny animals at the end of the cruel tests.
The experiments’ protocols, obtained by Lady Freethinker through a public records request, said they aimed to better understand the human brain but used kittens as young as 10-weeks-old who were small enough to fit into the researchers’ brain scanners.
Several groups of anesthetized, temporarily paralyzed kittens underwent craniotomies, in which researchers drilled holes into their skulls and implanted electrodes or probes. Another group of paralyzed kittens had their brains scanned while researchers presented “visual stimuli” — including videos of mice — to the immobilized and defenseless animals, according to monitoring records.
While the studies were planned to be terminal — meaning no kittens would survive — records show that kittens also prematurely died from complications and suffered for days before researchers “euthanized” them.
Kittens suffered bruises, vomiting, muscle weakness, punctured veins, inflamed tracheas, and hypothermia. In 2021 alone, at least four kittens also died suddenly or suffered such severe complications from the experiments that researchers chose to kill them.
Casualties included April, a 3-month-old kitten who likely suffered organ damage after a researcher gave her a paralyzer at 4.5 times the approved dose — in alleged violation of the federal Animal Welfare Act — and Casey, an 11-week-old kitten whose tongue turned blue after repeated, failed attempts to intubate him and who had five veins blown during a single session.
Titan, an 11-week-old gray kitten, displayed muscle shakiness, low oxygen levels, a swollen face, and a seizure following a scan and suffered for at least 44 hours before researchers chose to kill him, according to his monitoring records.
Tammy — a 1-year-old kitten who had been anesthetized at least 15 times for experiments, starting when she was a 10-week-old kitten — died suddenly on a morning when researchers planned to drill into her skull. Zeus, a 10-week-old brown tabby kitten, also died on his own after suffering from an inflamed trachea and strained, raspy breathing for two days following a procedure.
The kitten experiments consumed at least $9 million of taxpayer-supported funding and years of precious research time without yielding any direct clinical applications for humans or cats.
The University of Minnesota also told Lady Freethinker the experiments had to be suspended and an “entirely new protocol” created that required researchers to “reexamine all procedures including anesthesia methods and to put in place enhanced monitoring.” That new protocol was approved, but thankfully researchers have not yet started their deadly experiments on kittens back up again — and it’s critical that they never do.
It’s time for the University of Minnesota to permanently end experiments that kill kittens and find a more compassionate way forward.
Sign our petition urging the University of Minnesota to officially shut down deadly kitten experimentsfor good and to allow any surviving kittens to be adopted into loving homes. We’re also asking for the National Institutes of Health to never again fund experiments on kittens at this university and for legislators to demand answers about why taxpayer dollars were used to fund these experiments.
Target: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
Victoria Paige
Goal: Prohibit the sale of animal-tested cosmetic products and help save hundreds of thousands of animals from unethical, unnecessary laboratory procedures.
Despite majority public opposition, the use of animals in cosmetic testing is still widely legal in parts of the U.S. Cosmetic tests typically involve exposing animals—mostly mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs—to irritation tests, where animals have potentially toxic chemicals rubbed on their shaven skin and dripped into their eyes. Other common procedures include force-feeding ingredients to animals to determine the long-term effects, or injecting them with chemicals to observe the bodily response. These sentient creatures suffer tremendously throughout the testing process, and once they are no longer of use are brutally killed by means of asphyxiation, neck-breaking or decapitation.
Not only is cosmetic testing cruel, but it is entirely unnecessary. We already know of thousands upon thousands of safe ingredients that can be mixed and morphed into millions of new and improved formulas. Plus, due to advancements in technology, tons of other viable alternatives to direct animal testing now exist. The Humane Cosmetics Act of 2021 was introduced to the House as a way of limiting cosmetic animal testing in the U.S. While many other countries, including Israel, India, and the European Union have all banned the sale of any cosmetics that have been tested on animals, these products and ingredients are still entirely available at mainstream stores and sites throughout America.
The U.S. is lagging behind so many other nations in our treatment of animals. Demand an end to the sale of animal-tested cosmetics.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Representative Pelosi,
The continued use of animals in cosmetic testing throughout the U.S. is rather appalling. Animals—including mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs—are force-fed substances, injected with toxins, and have potentially lethal chemicals dripped into their sensitive eyes. In the face of equally successful alternative methods of testing, cosmetic animal-testing is antiquated and unnecessary. Not to mention there are already hundreds of thousands of ingredients we know to be safe for human use.
The Humane Cosmetics Act of 2021 was recently introduced to the House in hopes that the U.S. would follow the lead of many other countries—such as Israel, India, and the European Union—in banning the sale and distribution of animal-tested cosmetic products. We are asking you, Speaker Pelosi, to support this act and help reduce the number of animals used in cosmetic testing. No being should suffer for our physical preferences.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has sounded the alarm after an American subsidiary of Chinese firm JOINN Laboratories purchased 1,400 acres of land in the Sunshine State.
According to Levy County, JOINN Laboratories, CA Inc. purchased the land from L&T Cattle & Timber, LLC in the summer and had expressed a desire to construct a “primate quarantine facility and/or primate research laboratory.”
The land is currently zoned as “Forestry/Rural Residential,” which means it would have to be rezoned if the proposed facility were to be built. The county revealed, however, that it had not yet received an application from JOINN Laboratories to initiate the process.
In a statement to the Epoch Timeson Thursday, DeSantis’ office explained that he “has been consistently opposed to the Chinese Communist Party’s growing influence in Florida,” adding that, “this proposed facility is a prime example of the type of activity that we are acting to prohibit.”
On Sept. 22, DeSantis signed Executive Order 22-216, which banned government entities from “procuring technology products and services from companies owned by, controlled by, or domiciled in foreign countries of concern,” including China, Cuba, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela.
That same day, he proposed legislation aimed at preventing companies from the aforementioned countries from purchasing land near US military bases.
“There have already been instances of Chinese Communist Party-affiliated companies purchasing land near military bases in other states,” a press release stated, “including Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. Florida is home to 21 military bases from every branch of the armed forces, and while the state has allocated money to purchase land nearest to some of these bases to increase security perimeters, more needs to be done to protect our domestic national security assets.”
Florida is fifth in the nation when it comes to foreigners holding interest in private agricultural land, at 5.8 percent, however DeSantis made it very clear he hopes to ensure none of that land falls into the wrong hands.
“From server farms to farmland, the Communist Party of China has been worming its way into our nation’s data storage systems and buying up tracts of land near sensitive national security sites,” he said.
“By prohibiting the purchase of lands, state contracts with Chinese technology firms, and the infiltration of CCP-affiliated groups such as Confucius Institutes, Florida is leading the way to protect our nation from international foes.”
PETITION TARGETS: U.S. President Joe Biden and NIAID Leadership
A compassionate, cutting-edge medical advisor who recognizes the gruesome reality for animals brutally abused in laboratory testing could be in the United States’ future – if government leaders heed the well established and growing scientific evidence that animal testing is inhumane, unreliable, and unsafe.
Anthony Fauci, who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the last 38 years and also served as U.S. President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, recently announced he’ll be retiring at the end of the year.
That leaves an opening for NIAID and the President to usher in a new era of what’s truly in the best interest of humans – as well as that of the millions of defenseless animals exploited and killed in laboratories every year.
During his leadership, Fauci approved and oversaw a number of cruel and costly experiments on innocent animals that have not resulted in any treatments for suffering humans to date.
One of those experiments involved a $1.68 million study that force-fed poisons to 44 beagle puppies, aged 6-8 months old, until they died or were killed and dissected, according to an exposé by White Coat Waste.
In another study, scientists cruelly severed dogs’ vocal cords — with no apparent purpose beyond keeping the animals quiet in labs while they endured painful procedures, at a cost of thousands of dollars to taxpayers.
News also reported on experiments involving infesting dogs with ticks or caging dogs with infectious sandflies that ate them alive, while a new $1.8 million study approved earlier this year noted 6-month-old puppies likely would suffer similar invasive, painful, and likely deadly procedures.
Leading scientists are increasingly condemning animal testing, pointing to undeniable differences in genetics between humans and other species that make translating results unreliable and unsafe, products that passed safety tests on animals but led to human harm and death, and products that may have helped humans but failed tests on animals.
Ethical, human biology-based alternatives are the way of the future — and NIAID and the U.S. Government now have a chance to install a replacement who will listen to scientific evidence and clear a path for compassionate alternatives to animal testing.
Sign our petition urging President Biden and NIAID to choose a new director and medical advisor who will do what’s truly in the best interest of both people and defenseless, sentient animals by prioritizing human biology-based alternatives to cruel tests on animals.
Animals used to test ingredients for cosmetics undergo brutal and painful procedures, including having shampoos dripped into their eyes, chemicals rubbed into open wounds in their skin, or toxic substances forced into their bodies until they die.
The suffering and deaths of the thousands of animals used in these grotesque procedures — most commonly mice, rabbits, and guinea pigs — is completely unnecessary, because the United States doesn’t mandate testing on animals for cosmetics and compassionate alternatives already exist, such as computer models and human cell-based tests.
New York is the latest state to recognize the cruelty and nonsense of continuing to force defenseless animals to severely suffer to create “beauty” products for people. Senate Bill S4839B, the state’s Cruelty Free Cosmetics Act, would end the sale within the state of new animal-tested cosmetics.
“No animal should ever face abuse or unsafe conditions, and we have made it clear that New York will not tolerate their mistreatment,” said Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, the bill’s sponsor.
The bill has passed the Assembly and Senate and is on its way to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul — and it’s critical that this life-saving legislation pass.
Nine states — California, Nevada, Illinois, Louisiana, Hawaii, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Maine — already have banned testing on animals for cosmetics, showing it’s entirely possible to have safe products for humans that don’t entail animal suffering.
It’s high time that New York follow suit.
Sign our petition urging Gov. Hochul to quickly review and whole-heartedly support the NY Cruelty Free Cosmetics Act. It’s the right thing to do — for both people and the estimated half a million animals who suffer and die in cruel cosmetic tests each year.
A pig virus may have contributed to the death of a man who was the first person to have received a heart transplant from a pig, though the evidence is inconclusive, researchers say.
David Bennett Sr., 57, of Maryland, died in March, just two months after the groundbreaking experimental transplant. University of Maryland doctors said Thursday they found viral DNA inside the pig heart. They did not find signs that this bug, called “porcine cytomegalovirus,” was causing an active infection.
In this photo provided by the University of Maryland School of Medicine, members of the surgical team show the pig heart for transplant into patient David Bennett in Baltimore on Friday, Jan. 7, 2022. (Mark Teske/University of Maryland School of Medicine via AP, File)
The animal virus was first reported by MIT Technology Review, citing a scientific presentation from Dr. Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who performed Bennett’s transplant.
A major worry about animal-to-human transplants is the risk that it could introduce new kinds of infections to people. Griffith told The Associated Press that some viruses can be a “hitchhiker” because they lurk without causing diseases. Now, researchers are pursuing more tests to ensure they don’t miss these kinds of viruses.
Doctors have for decades tried using animal organs to save human lives without success. Bennett, who was dying and ineligible for a human heart transplant, underwent the last-ditch operation using a heart from a pig genetically modified to lower the risk that his immune system would rapidly reject such a foreign organ.
The Maryland team said the donor pig was healthy, had passed testing required by the Food and Drug Administration to check for infections, and was raised in a facility designed to prevent animals from spreading infections.
FILE: David Bennett Jr., right, stands next to his father’s hospital bed in Baltimore, Md., on Jan. 12, 2022, five days after doctors transplanted a pig heart into Bennett Sr., in a last-ditch effort to save his life. (University of Maryland School of Medicine via AP)
Griffith said his patient, while very ill, had been recovering fairly well from the transplant when one morning he woke up worse, with symptoms similar to an infection. Doctors ran tests to try to understand the cause, and gave Bennett a variety of antibiotics, antiviral medication and an immune-boosting treatment. But the pig heart became swollen, filled with fluid and eventually quit functioning.
“What was the virus doing, if anything, that might have caused the swelling in his heart?” Griffith asked. “Honestly we don’t know.”
Meanwhile, doctors at other medical centers around the country have been experimenting with animal organs in donated human bodies and are anxious to attempt formal studies in living patients soon.
Animals in the U.S. continue to suffer and die in experiments to test cosmetics like lipstick, deodorant, and shampoo. The Humane Cosmetics Act will end this unnecessary cruelty by prohibiting animal testing for all cosmetic products manufactured or sold in the U.S.
Alternatives to animal testing already exist: Humane, safe cosmetics can be created using thousands of existing ingredients, and several non-animal methods are already available to test new ingredients. These advanced scientific technologies are often cheaper, faster and more relevant to humans making them more reliable predictors of safety than archaic animal tests.
Help end cosmetics testing on animals in the U.S. — just like in the 41 countries where laws have passed to end or limit this outdated practice, including Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Israel, India and every country in the European Union.
TAKE ACTION
Please contact your legislators and urge them to support the Humane Cosmetics Act (H.R. 6207/S. 3357), legislation that would prohibit animal testing for cosmetics manufactured or sold in the U.S. Look up your legislator’s phone numbers.
After making your phone calls (please do not skip that crucial step!), fill in and submit the form below to automatically send a follow-up message. We encourage you to add your own thoughts or comments in the editable portion so your legislators know how important this issue is to you.
Vienna, February 8th, 2022- Report from the “Association against animal factories”
Update: Dogs Still At Risk From Animal Experimentation Death!
The University of Barcelona is sticking to the killing of the beagle puppies, animal rights activists protested on site – at least 6 dogs are said to have been rescued.
The “Association against animal factories” (VGT) reported on the local and international outrage after the discovery of a case of animal testing on behalf of the University of Barcelona.
A total of 38 beagle puppies were to be used and given varying doses of a drug over 28 days.
Animal rights activists have been working for weeks with strong support from the population to ensure that the dogs are placed in a loving home after the experiment. Even high-ranking politicians in Spain have already spoken out.
However, these demands continue to be ignored by the university and the contract…
CHESTER COUNTY, PA. (THECOUNT) — Michele Fallon, of Danville, Pennsylvania, the woman who came into close contact with an escaped lab monkey on the side of a Chester County interstate, is now saying she has developed pink eye-like symptoms and is now on preventative medication.
A truck hauling 100 macaque monkeys from Africa was headed to a lab in Missouri when it collided with a dump truck Friday at Route 54 and Interstate 80 in Valley Township.
Michele Fallon, of Danville, said she pulled over to help the driver when the animal hissed in her face.
“I thought I was just doing the right thing by helping — I had no idea it would turn out this way,” said Fallon. “He just asked if his trailer was okay. He never said, ‘if you do come near a crate do not touch it,’ if he would have told me that, I would have been more careful,” reports Fox8.
That’s when she came face-to-face with an agitated monkey.
Three monkeys in all escaped during the ordeal. During the search, officials warned the public not to come near the monkeys because they could transmit disease.
“I was close to the monkeys, I touched the crates, I walked through their feces so I was very close. So I called to inquire, you know, was I safe?” said Fallon.
Since the monkeys, which have since been accounted for, were not quarantined and monitored, the CDC told Fallon she needed to take precautions because she was in close contact.
According to the CDC, the species commonly spreads herpes virus B through saliva, feces or urine.
Fallon says she grew concerned because she has an open cut on her hand and developed pink eye-like symptoms, so she went to the emergency room.
She just received her first dose of rabies vaccine and a round of antiviral medication.
“Because the monkey did hiss at me and there were feces around, and I did have an open cut, they just want to be precautious,” said Fallon.
Fallon will be on preventative medicine for about two weeks.
The USDA is now investigating the incident after PETA filed a complaint. The animal rights organization put out a statement today urging the United States to stop importing monkeys for experiments.
Disappearing Monkeys, CDC tells one women who was near a monkey to report if she has cold symptoms😳 All hands on deck Including state troopers look for monkeys…..They find and destroy them 🙈🙉🙊WHY? pic.twitter.com/3Yt5fR91ha
Geo quick facts: Chester County, colloquially known as Chesco, is a county in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the population was 498,886, increasing by 5.2% to a census-estimated 524,989 residents as of 2019. The county seat is West Chester – Wikipedia.
A 57-year-old man with serious heart disease was given a heart from a genetically modified pig in a new, unprecedented transplant operation.
The New York Times reported on the “first successful transplant of a pig’s heart into a human being,” a procedure that lasted eight hours and took place in Baltimore, Maryland, on Friday. The man, David Bennett Sr., received the heart and was in good condition on Monday, per surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
“It creates the pulse, it creates the pressure, it is his heart,” said Dr. Bartley Griffith, who carried out the operation. He is the director of the cardiac transplant program at the center.
Griffith added, “It’s working and it looks normal. We are thrilled, but we don’t know what tomorrow will bring us. This has never been done before.”
“This is a watershed event,” said Dr. David Klassen, the chief medical officer of the United Network for Organ Sharing and a transplant doctor. “Doors are starting to open that will lead, I believe, to major changes in how we treat organ failure.”
“Events like these can be dramatized in the press, and it’s important to maintain perspective,” Klassen added. “It takes a long time to mature a therapy like this.” He noted that there are lots of challenges to surpass before an operation like this one could be widely done.
Bennett chose to go forward with the procedure because he would not have survived without getting a new heart, had already gone through with other treatments, and was not healthy enough to meet the qualifications for a heart from a human donor, per members of his family and physicians, according to the Times.
Bennett is still on a heart-lung bypass machine, as he was before the procedure took place, but that is not uncommon for someone who has newly received a heart transplant, according to medical experts.
His physicians stated that he could be brought off the machine on Tuesday. He is also being carefully watched for evidence that his body is fighting the new organ transplant, but he got through the first 48 hours without problems, which is reportedly an important time period.
“It was either die or do this transplant,” Bennett said before the surgery, according to authorities at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice.”
The outlet reported that the heart which was put into Bennett’s body “came from a genetically altered pig provided by Revivicor, a regenerative medicine company based in Blacksburg, Va.”
The animal “had 10 genetic modifications. Four genes were knocked out, or inactivated, including one that encodes a molecule that causes an aggressive human rejection response,” the outlet noted, adding that a growth gene was also deactivated to not allow the pig’s heart to keep growing after implantation.
“In addition, six human genes were inserted into the genome of the donor pig — modifications designed to make the porcine organs more tolerable to the human immune system,” the Times noted.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the transplant doctors an emergency authorization for the procedure on New Year’s Eve.
Dr. Christine Lau is the chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and was in the operating room during the procedure.
“He’s at more of a risk because we require more immunosuppression, slightly different than we would normally do in a human-to-human transplant. How well the patient does from now is, you know, it’s never been done before so we really don’t know,” she told the BBC.
“People die all the time on the waiting list, waiting for organs. If we could use genetically engineered pig organs they’d never have to wait, they could basically get an organ as they needed it. …Plus, we wouldn’t have to fly all over the country at night-time to recover organs to put them into recipients,” she added.
The Times noted that there is an organ shortage and around twelve people on the transplant waiting lists die every day.
The pandemic has impacted the low number of organ donations and transplant operations, as well.
A May 2020 report from Penn Medicine News noted that by early April 2020 transplant centers in France and the United States were carrying out fewer deceased donor transplants than they had been one month prior.
The findings, published in The Lancet in May of 2020, noted, “The overall reduction in deceased donor transplantations since the COVID-19 outbreak was 90·6% in France and 51·1% in the USA, respectively.”
The HSUS Tell the EPA: End chemical and pesticide testing on animals NOW
In September of 2019 the Environmental Protection Agency made a groundbreaking announcement that they will end all animal testing on dogs, mice, rabbits, and other mammals for new chemicals and pesticides by 2035. While we were thrilled with the announcement and worked closely with the EPA to get to this moment, we are urging them to speed up their timeline.
Although the EPA is moving towards eliminating the need for animal testing, the slow timeline means hundreds of thousands of dogs, mice, rabbits, and other mammals will continue to have chemicals rubbed into their skin, dropped in their eyes, or forced down their throats. The chemical industry does most of this testing and we need to expedite the deadline for both the agency and industry. There are already many non-animal methods available that are more scientifically accurate and do not cause animal suffering. We are urging the EPA to transition to these technologies sooner to avoid even more animal suffering.
The EPA needs to hear from you as animal lovers and consumers. Tell them you do not want new chemicals and pesticides tested on mammals like dogs and rabbits, and that you want them to speed up their timeline to end all new mammalian testing.
TAKE ACTION Please use the form provided to send a letter to EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan urging him to speed up the timeline for the EPA to end chemical and pesticide testing on animals to avoid further animal suffering.
Last spring, just as COVID-19 hit our shores, a White Coat Waste Project investigation revealed that taxpayer funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) was secretively funneled to the notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology for wasteful and dangerous experiments on coronavirus-infected bats and other animals… including experiments that the State Department warned posed a pandemic risk.
Just one week after we released our international exposé, the White House cut funding for these animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
But now, despite being actively investigated for its role in the origins of COVID-19, the NIH says the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and 26 other labs in China, are still eligible to spend U.S. taxpayer money for wasteful, cruel, and hazardous animal experiments until 2024!
We need your help telling the U.S. government to permanently end taxpayer funding for the Wuhan Animal Lab and all other animal testing in China and other foreign countries!Want to know how else your money has been squandered?
Let’s just say the NIH is addicted to spending tens of millions of your tax money at foreign labs where animals are made to get hooked on drugs.
In recent years, Uncle Sam sent $11.6 million of your money to the U.K. to addict “junkie monkeys” to cocaine, morphine, and heroin, over $700,000 to hook zebrafish on nicotine, and $4.9 million to force pregnant mice to consume alcohol to cause birth defects.
It’s time to just say no to this cruel and wasteful spending. Please join me and White Coat Waste Project in urging the U.S. government to cut funding for ALL animal experiments in foreign labs.
Apparently, Google doesn’t want us criticizing “America’s Doctor” for funding the abuse of beagles with our tax dollars in experiments opposed by most Americans.
Photo of parasite experiments on beagles funded with a $375,800 grant from Dr. Fauci’s division at the NIH. The dogs were drugged and had their heads confined in these mesh cages full of biting sand flies. https://www.youtube.com/embed/D_On5SH67Ec
It’s not even #Fauci’s first rodeo w/the beagle labs $ either. What’s scary is that this is actually the FOURTH time we’ve exposed Fauci for it — including doing it in-house at NIAID:https://t.co/WHgnZTTnOg
— White Coat Waste Project 🥼🗑️ (@WhiteCoatWaste) October 23, 2021
As the global COVID-19 pandemic continues, safe and effective vaccines are playing a pivotal role in preventing severe disease and death and limiting the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated rapid vaccine development and testing. Fortunately, NIAID’s decades-long support and conduct of coronavirus and vaccine research laid the groundwork for helping to develop a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine in record speed.
COVID-19 Animal Models
Animal research plays a key role in developing successful vaccines for humans. Before promising vaccine candidates can be tested in humans, they must first be tested for safety and effectiveness in animals as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. To do this, scientists first determine whether a vaccine candidate can stimulate an adequate and safe immune response. This important step is often conducted using small and then, potentially, larger animal models of disease. Mice are frequently used because they reproduce rapidly, have a well-characterized immune system and a defined genome. Some labs turned to mouse models of infection early in the COVID-19 pandemic only to find that mice don’t get infected with SARS-CoV-2. In order to infect cells, SARS-CoV-2 must bind to a human protein called ACE2. The human and mouse ACE2 proteins are different, and SARS-CoV-2 does not bind to mouse cells. Scientists overcame this problem by generating mice that can express the human version of ACE2 and can therefore be infected with SARS-CoV-2. When these genetically modified mice are infected by the virus, they lose weight and become sick in ways that are similar to what happens when people are infected with the virus. Mouse models provided vital information about COVID-19 symptoms and its disease course and continues to be used by researchers to understand COVID-19 disease.
Syrian hamsters are another important animal model for COVID-19 because disease in those animals closely resembles the disease in humans. Additionally, older male hamsters develop more severe disease than young female hamsters, which reflects some of the differences seen in humans infected by SARS-CoV-2. Hamster models have contributed to the evaluation of investigational COVID-19 vaccine candidates, immunotherapies, and antiviral drugs.
Vaccine development for COVID-19 also benefitted from nonhuman primate studies. In assessing immunogenicity and protection of vaccines in pre-clinical animal models, nonhuman primates provide several advantages for clinical translation. They are outbred, have greater similarity to humans than rodents in innate immune responses and B- and T-cell repertoires, and allow use of clinically-relevant vaccine doses. Recent studies in nonhuman primates show that SARS-CoV-2 targets similar replication sites and recapitulates some aspects of COVID-19 disease. Nonhuman primates are used during the later stages of vaccine development and typically build upon the knowledge accumulated in earlier small animal studies.
A New Type of Vaccine
The biopharmaceutical companies Moderna, Inc., based in Cambridge, Mass., and Pfizer, Inc., based in New York City, developed a new type of nucleic acid vaccine called an mRNA vaccine that when tested in clinical trials, proved to be more than 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19. Animal studies contributed to the scientific understanding of how these new types of mRNA vaccines work. For example, when the 2016 Zika virus outbreak occurred, researchers developed a nucleic acid vaccine that protected against Zika virus infection in mice and nonhuman primates. The Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines use the nucleic acid, messenger RNA (mRNA) to produce the viral spike protein found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2. Because mRNA is unstable, it is enclosed in lipid nanoparticles to prevent it from degrading following injection. Cells then produce the viral spike protein and display it on their surfaces. In this form, the viral spike protein is recognized by the body and triggers an immune response. This response includes the production of antiviral antibodies and T- cell responses that allow the body to remember how to fight off SARS-CoV-2 if infected in the future.
Preclinical data with Moderna’s mRNA vaccine produced promising results in animal models. Mouse experiments demonstrated that a low dose of the vaccine induced a robust neutralizing antibody response and a high-level protection against SARS-CoV-2. Moreover, vaccination of nonhuman primates with the mRNA vaccine induced robust SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing activity and notably, rapid protection in the upper and lower airways, similar to safety and immunogenicity results subsequently observed in a phase I human clinical study.
Looking to the Future
Biomedical studies involving animal models have greatly contributed to the public health response to SARS-CoV-2 by assisting in the development of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Animal studies will continue to provide vital information as new SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge and new questions arise as to the transmissibility of these variants, whether they are more harmful to people, and if they remain sensitive to available vaccines. Animal models play a critical role in pandemic response efforts as they are necessary for evaluating the safety and effectiveness of new vaccines and therapeutics. Scientists will continue building on the lessons learned from COVID to develop animal models as part of our pandemic preparedness efforts to target other emerging or re-emerging infectious diseases.
In 1999, the Home Secretary Jack Straw pledged to close down cruel vivisection puppy farms in the UK. Over twenty years later, we are still waiting for Government action.
In June 2021, undercover footage exposed hundreds of whimpering beagle puppies being loaded onto trucks at MBR Acres in Wyton, Cambridgeshire, UK. These frightened dogs, and thousands of others were destined to be poisoned to death, dissected whilst still alive, or otherwise painfully experimented on in laboratories across the world.
We are calling for an immediate end to the breeding of dogs for research.
We are also calling on the Government to mandate a rigorous public scientific hearing on the efficacy of animal research, judged by independent experts from the relevant science fields, as per Early Day Motion 175.
Fauci just spent $424,000 to commission a study in which healthy beagles are given an experimental drug and then intentionally infested with flies that carry a disease-causing parasite that affects humans. At the end of the ongoing experiment, the dogs will all be killed. To shut this lab down and adopt out the survivors, add your name to our urgent new taxpayer petition!
Paid for by the White Coat Waste Project, Inc., EIN 46-0856543. White Coat Waste Project is a 501(c)(3) bipartisan coalition of 3 million taxpayers opposed to the government’s wasteful spending on animal experiments. Our mission? To stop $20 billion in taxpayer-funded animal experiments. Contributions are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by U.S. law. By providing your cell phone or mobile phone number you are consenting to receive calls and texts, including autodialed and automated calls and texts, to that number with updates and notifications from White Coat Waste Project, and any like-minded organizations. White Coat Waste Project is happy to help at (202) 656-9044. Reply HELP for help, STOP to end. Message frequency may vary. Message and data rates apply. Terms and Conditions here.
To contribute by mail, please send a personal check or money order made payable to WCW to:
In yet another segment of the Fauci horror show, new documents emerged that show how the NIAID spent almost half a million in taxpayer dollars to fund abusive experiments on dogs even though the research had already been conducted.
The White Coat Waste Project used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover disturbing documents that detailed how Fauci and the NIAID, in an effort to test the effectiveness of drug treatment, intentionally infested healthy beagles with flies that were carrying disease-causing parasites.
JUST IN: #Fauci & NIAID spent almost half a million in taxpayer funds to infect dogs w/ parasites
The research had already been conducted on other animals – Scientists called it completely unnessecary
Once the dogs were no longer needed, they were killed
The records detail how the once-healthy dogs ‘vocalized in pain’ throughout the abuse and suffered for months before being euthanized, some were even bitten to death by the parasites. 360p 720p 1080p Auto (360p) About Connatix
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If they endured the cruel tests, and once the researchers had no use for them anymore, the poor dogs were killed.
Multiple other scientists have admitted that the experiment was completely unnecessary, pointing to the fact that this research had been extensively performed on other animals.
“Experimenters admit this investigational drug, ‘has been extensively tested and confirmed…in different animal models such as mice…Mongolian gerbils…and rhesus macaques….’”
Basically, Fauci wasted over $400,000 in taxpayer dollars to fund his psychopathic hobbies that include abusing animals.
White Coat Waste Project went on Fox News to talk about their recent revelations from their FIOA request:
“Justin Goodman, a WCW Project vice president, told Domenech that the testing was likely a case of “not following the science”, adding that the FDA reportedly has said testing on canines isn’t always compatible to human-drug interactions.
“The EPA and the VA have ended dog testing,” he added.
Fox Nation host Lara Logan also joined the discussion, as well as her own pet dog, Honey, seated on her lap.
“We know these things happen, but should they be happening with taxpayer money? Dr. Fauci is increasingly becoming Dr. Evil. Over and over again, the decisions that he made that have just destroyed millions of lives all over the world are becoming more apparent by day,” Logan added.
“We still don’t know so much about what he’s doing. We don’t know what they’re doing at the NIH with animals. We don’t know what research they’re funding with gain of function,” she continued.”
This is not the first time documents have shown unethical and abusive experiments conducted under Fauci. In 2016, WCW exposed how the NIH was funding similar experiments to buy beagle puppies and strap capsules of infected flies to their skin.
The group also exposed how Fauci’s 2021 taxpayer-funded budget for conducting his ‘research’ is $6 billion, and that “roughly half,” and likely more, will be used for experimenting on animals.
Back in May, the Gateway Pundit reported on what’s probably the most horrifying example of Fauci’s sick ‘research’ – the barbaric experiment of grafting human fetus scalps onto living mice.
I need your help urgently to persuade the Norwegian government to stop plans to experiment on live minke whales. Bad weather has delayed the tests but they could start any day – we don’t have much time.
Funded by the US and Norwegian navies, as well as the oil and gas industry, the Norwegian government has approved plans to capture young minke whales to test their reaction to noise from naval sonar and seismic testing for oil and gas. The whales will be caught and forced, one by one, into a modified salmon-farming pen. Once there, each whale will be clamped between two rafts and electrodes attached under his or her skin.
The whale will be bombarded by noise at various frequencies while their brain signals are measured. They could be held like this for up to six hours.
The people carrying out these experiments claim they want to know how much noise the whales can withstand and at which frequencies. They plan to run these tests in May and June, and again next year.
It could literally scare them to death.
Whale and Dolphin Conservation have sent a letter to Norway’s prime minister signed by more than 50 leading scientists and vets. These experts say the stress could kill the whales. Even if it doesn’t, the ordeal will be dangerous and terrifying for these intelligent and highly sensitive individuals.
This appalling experiment is utterly inhumane and unnecessary. Existing research already tells us what we need to know about the effects of underwater noise on whales. We know that noise created by oil and gas exploration and military sonar scares whales and can cause them to strand and can even cause internal bleeding, organ failure and brain damage.
The charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation is supporting me with this petition and they are fighting hard behind the scenes with the Norwegian NGO, NOAH – for animal rights.
An immense body of empirical evidence has supported the position that animal models offer no predictive value for human response to drugs and disease. But perhaps more importantly, recent developments in evolutionary and developmental biology, genetics, gene regulation, gene expression, and gene networks gained in large part as a result of the Human Genome Project, in addition to advances in understanding complex systems, have significantly increased our understanding of why animals have no predictive value for human response to drugs or the pathophysiology of human diseases.
Applying Complexity Theory and the Theory of Evolution to the problem of using one evolved, complex adaptive system (CAS) as a model in order to predict responses of a second, has resulted in what Dr. Ray Greek has called Trans-Species Modeling Theory (TSMT)1: While trans-species extrapolation is possible when perturbations concern lower levels of organization or when studying morphology and function on the gross level, one evolved, complex system will not be of predictive value for another when the perturbation affects higher levels of organization.
TSMT allows scientists to place the empirical evidence regarding the failure of animal models in context. TSMT is a theory (although not universally accepted at present). In order to understand theory in science, note the following statements from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences.
In detective novels, a “theory” is little more than an educated guess, often based on a few circumstantial facts. In science, the word “theory” means much more. A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not “guesses” but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than “just a theory.” It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.
The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence.
Many scientific theories are so well-established that no new evidence is likely to alter them substantially. For example, no new evidence will demonstrate that the Earth does not orbit around the sun (heliocentric theory), or that living things are not made of cells (cell theory), that matter is not composed of atoms, or that the surface of the Earth is not divided into solid plates that have moved over geological timescales (the theory of plate tectonics). Like these other foundational scientific theories, the theory of evolution is supported by so many observations and confirming experiments that scientists are confident that the basic components of the theory will not be overturned by new evidence. However, like all scientific theories, the theory of evolution is subject to continuing refinement as new areas of science emerge or as new technologies enable observations and experiments that were not possible previously.
One of the most useful properties of scientific theories is that they can be used to make predictions about natural events or phenomena that have not yet been observed. For example, the theory of gravitation predicted the behavior of objects on the moon and other planets long before the activities of spacecraft and astronauts confirmed them. The evolutionary biologists who discovered Tiktaalik predicted that they would find fossils intermediate between fish and limbed terrestrial animals in sediments that were about 375 million years old. Their discovery confirmed the prediction made on the basis of evolutionary theory. In turn, confirmation of a prediction increases confidence in that theory.
In science, a “fact” typically refers to an observation, measurement, or other form of evidence that can be expected to occur the same way under similar circumstances. However, scientists also use the term “fact” to refer to a scientific explanation that has been tested and confirmed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing it or looking for additional examples. In that respect, the past and continuing occurrence of evolution is a scientific fact. Because the evidence supporting it is so strong, scientists no longer question whether biological evolution has occurred and is continuing to occur. Instead, they investigate the mechanisms of evolution, how rapidly evolution can take place, and related questions.
TSMT is supported by vast amounts of empirical evidence, is consistent with science outside of the specific areas of biology it addresses, and both explains current scientific facts as well as predicting the answers to future questions.
Why is TSMT important?
When AFMA was formed in 1999, the case against the predictive value of animal models for human drug and disease response was of the empirical or clinical variety. A wide variety of clinical studies and case reports had shown that, when compared with how drugs ultimately affected humans or how diseases affected humans, animal models had reacted the same way a small percentage of the time. That meant that animal models had failed to meet the scientific standard for burden of proof in terms of offering predictive value.
From the perspective of the physician practicing medicine in the real world, this evidence would be sufficient to abandon the use of animal models in hopes of learning about drug and disease response in humans. For the clinician engaged in the world of cancer patients and auto accident victims, human response is the final arbitrator of truth—not what happens to animals in a laboratory. So when physicians observe a drug kill or maim even a small number of patients, that is enough proof for them to stop administering that drug, regardless of how much the drug was studied in the laboratory and what was learned from those studies. They don’t need to know—and are not necessarily even interested in—the pharmacology of the drug in eight different animal species.
Far from the often messy and chaotic world of clinical medicine, some medical researchers believe, and have stated, that the laboratory (meaning the laboratory where animals are used) is the “true sanctuary” of medicine, as opposed to the clinic or hospital where clinical research is performed. Indeed, clinical medicine is fraught with variables that cannot be controlled, thus leaving any clinical study or observation open to criticism and second-guessing. In this respect, the animal-based researchers are correct in their assertion that laboratory-based research is much more controlled and thus, from their perspective, better than clinical medicine. But patients suffer from disease in the real world, not the artificial world of the laboratory, and hence must be studied in the real world. This is not intended to undermine the importance of in vitro or in silico research, provided such research is human-based. But the final arbiter of truth is how patients respond, not what happens in an animal or other non-human system.
Accordingly, empirical evidence in the form of clinical observations, controlled studies, and case reports refuted the claims for predictive value by the animal model community. But the animal model community, as well as some that do not rely on animals, demanded more before abandoning animal models. Such people believe that what one aims for in science is an overarching theory that can predict outcomes without having to perform experiments every time a question is raised. Therefore, they asserted that the empirical evidence previously put forth had not been scientific enough, for it has failed in their view to adequately answer the “big” question: why do animal models fail?
The reason animals sometimes—but more often do not—react as humans is being illuminated by our knowledge concerning genes, gene regulation, gene expression, and gene networks. This knowledge has come in large part from the results of the Human Genome Project and other similar genome projects. In addition to advances in genomics, application of Complexity Theory to biomedical research has informed scientists on the subject of animal models. This combination of scientific advances allows us to formulate an overarching theory to explain what we have observed empirically for decades. In short, all animals are examples of robust, complex systems (on many levels) and hence demonstrate emergence, are modular, are dependent upon initial conditions, and are nonlinear, in addition to exhibiting other relevant properties. This means that a perturbation to complex system S1 that led to effect A will not necessarily lead to effect A in complex system S2, regardless of how similar the two complex systems are currently or were at one time.
Living complex systems manifest different responses to the same perturbation due to:
1. differences with respect to genes present; 2. differences with respect to mutations in the same gene (where one species has an ortholog of a gene found in another); 3. differences with respect to proteins and protein activity; 4. differences with respect to gene regulation; 5. differences in gene expression; 6. differences in protein-protein interactions; 7. differences in genetic networks; 8. differences with respect to organismal organizations (humans and rats may be intact systems, but may be differently intact); 9. differences in environmental exposures; and, 10. differences with respect to evolutionary histories.
These are some of the important reasons why even two nearly identical living complex systems (e.g., a chimpanzee and a human, or even monozygotic twins) may respond differently to drugs and experience different diseases, and hence why one evolved complex system/species cannot reliably predict responses for a different evolved complex system/species. Current biomedical research is studying disease and drug response at the level where the differences between complex systems (be they two different species or two different humans) are critical, hence using animals (e.g., vertebrates) as predictive or causal analogical models (CAMs) for human diseases and drug testing is a scientifically invalid paradigm. Because we have scientific theories, we don’t have to evaluate examples covered in the theory on a case-by-case basis, we just apply the theory. Theories and laws in science prohibit certain hypotheses. For example, the Germ Theory of Disease prohibited, and indeed replaced miasma—the notion that rotting organic matter caused disease. The Germ Theory does not prohibit other causes of disease, such as cancer, vascular abnormalities, and endocrine disorders, but it does mandate the clinician consider bacteria and viruses instead of rotting matter for certain clinical presentations. Likewise, Atomic Theory prohibits an infinite division of matter into smaller and smaller units, and the Theory of Relativity prohibits faster than light velocities. Suggesting that animal models must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis is like asking that each flora or fauna that fills an ecological niche be evaluated for achieving its position through an act of special creation or evolution. There is no logical reason to assume the trait in question was not the result of a special creation. But in light of theory—the Theory of Evolution—and empirical evidence, there is no reason to seriously consider such a hypothesis. Despite the development of an all-encompassing theory as to why animals offer very low predictive value, there remains—much to the detriment of human health and medical progress—extraordinary resistance to abandoning the use of animals as predictive models (see Why All the Opposition to AFMA?). The goal of AFMA, therefore, is to educate the scientific community, as well as society in general, about the urgent need to move away from the ineffective animal model and to move toward research methods that truly reflect the enormous strides science has made in knowledge of living systems.
For more on TSMT, please read the books and article listed in the Resources section.
Something we can all get behind. Dogs have gone from utilitarian, in the beginning of the last century, to being part of the family—like your kids (Sometimes better! I’ve seen some of your kids). We’ve advanced in so many areas; surely we can advance here. https://t.co/JyjxOGRzXF
— Judge Alex Ferrer (@judgealexferrer) May 5, 2021
PETITION TARGET: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
Helpless puppies are force-fed and injected with toxic chemicals during excruciating tests, where animals are typically gassed, decapitated, shot, or electrocuted after the testing is over.
This outdated practice of using animals in research is required for many pharmaceutical products to be approved in the United States. But that could soon change.
More than 90 percent of drugs that pass in animal testing procedures don’t work for humans. Yet, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still requires it. And at a critical point in its development, researchers fast-tracked a COVID-19 vaccine without first testing it on animals, begging the question: is it really necessary at all?
Modern technology has given us viable alternatives to animal testing that are more accurate, effective, and humane.
Let’s stop government-sponsored animal abuse.
Sign this petition urging House leaders to pass the Alternatives to Animals for Regulatory Fairness bill, helping to save millions of animals from cruel, archaic, and deadly experiments.
In a major victory for animals, Virginia just became the fourth U.S. state to ban animal-tested cosmetics by signing the Virginia Humane Cosmetics Act into law last Friday.
Introduced by Sen. Jennifer Boysko and Delegate Kaye Kory, the new law prohibits the sale of cosmetics tested on animals after Jan. 1, 2022.
Virginia joins California, Nevada, and Illinois, while a larger effort to ban these products federally continues to gain bipartisan support. Animal testing involves cruel and inhumane procedures, such as dripping shampoo into rabbits’ eyes although the animals don’t have tear ducts to wash out the irritating product, and feeding mice enough of a cosmetic until they die to determine a “lethal dose.”
Cosmetic animal testing started during the 1940s as the only “realistic” technology for testing makeup on human skin, but experts now consider it ineffective and outdated, CBS 19 reported. Some research bodies– including the Center for Contemporary Sciences (CCS) — are shifting completely away from animal testing due to both the cruelty involved and the problematic differences between animal and human genetic makeups.
“Greater than 90 percent of drugs and vaccines fail in human clinical trials, despite showing signs of safety and efficacy in animal and traditional laboratory tests,” said CCS’s Director of Science and Technology Jarrod Bailey. “We, therefore, need, urgently, to shift the focus of biomedical research and testing away from animals and towards hi-tech, cutting-edge human-based methods.”
Unfortunately, there are exceptions to the ban, including pharmaceutical products that are cosmetic in nature but are officially classified as drugs — serving as a reminder that there is a lot more work to do to end animal testing.
Nevertheless, this new law marks a tremendous step forward in the fight against animal cruelty.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "...truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity--it is simply true and that is the end of it" - Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” - Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Following in the spirit of Britain's Queen Boudica, Queen of the Iceni. A boudica.us site. I am an opinionator, do your own research, verification. Reposts, reblogs do not neccessarily reflect our views.
However, these demands continue to be ignored by the university and the contract…
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