"Generating" Rats, "Recycling" Animals, and Taking a (Concrete) Stand

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-08-24 14:44:00 UTC
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A few brief snippets from and comments on recent news related to research on animals:

"Create rat models with a focus in toxicology, neuroscience, cardiovascular and inflammatory disease"

"Generate rats with permanent, heritable gene mutations"

"Rats are ideal subjects for research into human diseases"

"Using this new methodology, rats and mice can be generated in as little as four months"

Take your pick as to which of the above, from an article on "creating" rats with genetic mutations to sell for top dollar ($300-500 each) to labs that will then perform cruel research on them, makes you grit your teeth the most. But the first line of the article really says it all: "Hoping to grab a slice of the $1 billion lab animal industry..."

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On the other hand, an editor for the magazine Laboratory Equipment published the following piece, not quite as giddy about the billion-dollar industry: "Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Swim, Scientists Gotta...Test?" She concludes,

An NIH publication states that the use of animals in tests is okay because “nature is extremely economical. Throughout vast evolutionary time—from bacteria, to plants, to people—the same biological processes are recycled over and over.”

If the animals died of natural causes, this statement might be accurate. But the truth is, lab animals are generally “recycled” for no honorable cause. Being there are other options available, these words are just an excuse for treating living things as if they are disposable.

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And in still other animal-experimentation news, German activists, for weeks, have been protesting a pharmaceutical company's construction of a lab in Hannover that will experiment on pigs, by occupying the site off and on. And they're not going easily when the police come for them. This appeared near the start of the first article I read about this a couple weeks ago: "Two women had to be dug out of the ground after entombing their feet in concrete at the site." That's dedication.

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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