Karen Dawn's post provides an excellent summary of and links to a five part series published this month in the respected online newsmagazine Slate. Written by research scientist turned science writer Daniel Engber.
* Where's Pepper? In the summer of 1965, a female Dalmatian was stolen from a farm in Pennsylvania. Her story changed America. (Also, interesting refererence to the original "101 Dalmatians.") Click http://www.slate.com/id/2219224/pagenum/all
* Man Cuts Dog. Pepper arrives at a laboratory in the Bronx. Click http://www.slate.com/id/2219225/pagenum/all
* Pepper Goes to Washington. The federal-level animal-welfare law is passed. It excludes exclusion of rats, mice and birds ... leaving 95 percent of animals tested with no protection against pain, suffering and inhumane conditions. Click http://www.slate.com/id/2219226/pagenum/all
* Brown Dogs and Red Herrings. Animal testing evolves. Click http://www.slate.com/id/2219227/pagenum/all
* Me and My Monkey. Confessions of a reluctant vivisector.
Click http://www.slate.com/id/2219228/pagenum/all
Reporters and undercover welfare advocates, and the public, have been blocked from seeing testing facilities. However, once in awhile, undercover video has been obtained, including fall 2001 footage showing "researchers marking newborn mice by amputating their toes and cutting the brains from baby rats without anesthesia. Rodents were trampled to death in overcrowded cages, left to die in garbage bins, or allowed to suffer with swollen tumors and open sores."
Reports Engber: "We regularly subject rodents to pain, starvation, solitary confinement, and grotesque disfigurement. Whatever misery they endure is multiplied across the hundreds of millions of rats and mice used in labs every year."
Don't want to think about? Understood. But better if people would stop such cruelty. Non-animal testing models not only exist; they are better. And time and time again, the lack of efficacy of animal testing has been shown.
