links between animal exploitation and women's health

[BrklynLiberal]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=231x13054

[Warpy]

1. I find a kneejerk reaction to testing meds on animals odd

since every useful veterinary medicine was discovered in routine animal testing prior to human trials to be useful for them, too. My cat is grateful for Amoxacillin, Pepcid and prednisolone. They saved his life 10 years ago, thanks to testing on other cats that found them useful for overwhelming infections. We're not the only species that benefits from animal testing.

I would like to see stronger ethical controls on a lot of it. Making pregnant bunnies hop on a treadmill to test exercise in pregnancy isn't likely to tell researchers anything beyond what increased hopping does to pregnant bunnies. I doubt there's a critter out there who ever benefited from oven cleaner being tested on its eyes or skin, we know what lye is going to do.

One has to wonder whether or not these research proposals are ever read and fully evaluated before the funding gets approved.

[dropkickpa]

2. At my institution proposals ARE fully evaluated..

...many times along the way. I am a veterinary technician who works in research. All institutions where research is conducted has an ACUC (animal care and use committee). These people are responsible for evaluating the protocols submitted to them. And the protocol and use is scrutinized many steps along the way. As a vet tech, I perform daily health checks on my colonies of animals. ANY time I notice an animal in pain/distress or an unusually high death rate, or anything really, I take steps to remedy the situation (contacting the investigator and ordering measures to be taken, if ignored bring the vet in, and if still ignored, bringing down the wrath of our compliance officer).

One big hint to whether an institution takes the steps necessary to maintain the welfare of their animals is to see if they are AAALAC accredited. To obtain and maintain AAALAC accredidation, an institution must have effective monitoring of health status, a program for monitoring, recommending, have recordkeeping, and enforcing pain control measures, and many other things that prevent cruelty.

Any institution that has Act animals (those covered under the animal welfare act, which is basically everything except mice, rats, and fish) is also subject to USDA inspections, which of course may vary on intensity depending on the inspecting officer (ours is a dragon-lady, a real big stickler, which is actually good thing).

The following are the groups that inspect my institution on a regular basis (these are regular inspections, not complaint or concern inspections)

AAALAC
USDA
OLAW
and our IACUC and EH&S does twice yearly inspections, with periodic in between inspections throughout the year

I think I might be missing one or two, but you see where I'm going.

I have, myself, seen amazing advances from animal research, most especially in cancer (I'm in biomedical, not products) go on to help people. What some people don't understand is that a lot of disease research isn't cure/treat oriented, it more geared towards figuring out what the heck causes the condition and how it behaves, as there is still so very much that we don't know about these diseases.

Always take anything Peta says with a large grain of salt. Some of their favorite propaganda photos are more than 20 years old, and some even predate the animal welfare act, though they try to pass them off as recent (also, they use the same ones over and over no matter what the research they are talking about is, making people think that what is happening in the photo is what happens in that particular field). Also, the vast majority of the information they give for animal experimentation and it's alternatives is just plain false and misleading. Not to mention that in all of their testing literature, they imply that if you get cancer/have a baby with a birth defect/etc it's your fault, because you didn't live a cruelty-free life, and they imply that a cruelty free life will prevent "x" condition.

That said, institutions where violations occur should most definitely be subject to repurcussions. I work in a huge institution and we manage to follow both the letter and spirit of the law and regulations. I once had a friend ask me "If you love animals so much, how can you work there?" My answer was "Wouldn't you rather have someone who cares doing this? Because I certainly would". I've gained a reputation as a real hard-ass, but, funnily enough, the PI's at my site all say that it has benefitted their research, as they are getting better results, using less animals.

Also, I have not seen anything approaching the level of horror that a clinic or shelter tech sees daily. At least in research we can take their animals away, force them to comply, or, worst case scenario, hit them where it hurts-their pocket (by halting their research, causing them to lose their funding).

As for veterinary advances, whoever heard of treating a dog for cancer 20 years ago? Now there are actually pet cancer treatment centers! Because of the advances made in orthopedics (through diagnostics, devices, drugs etc) a horse with a broken leg is not always sentenced to death. Veterinary standards of treatment are growing by leaps and bounds, because of the influence of the growth in human medical advances, many of which are due to animal testing.

PS - anytime anyone/any product proudly states "No animal testing of this product" the REASON there was no testing is that all of the ingredients had been tested prior to the creation of that product.