You Paid For It by Brenda Shoss To subscribe to Kinship Circle Letters for Animals, email: subscribe@kinshipcircle.org At the University of California, Davis, Dr. Kenneth Britten annually receives $220,000 to anchor restraining devices to the heads of rhesus monkeys and graft coils into their eyes. In 2001, Emory University acquired about $118,185,010 for researchers such as Garret Alexander to route electrodes into the brains of macaque monkeys. Locked in restraint chairs, the fluid-deprived monkeys execute behavioral drills to earn juice rewards and are later embalmed alive. Dr. Madeleine Schlag-Rey of UCLA and Dr. Richard Andersen of the California Institute of Technology also install devices into primates' brains. Since 1985 Dr. William Newsome has steadily replicated Dr. Britten's primate tests, in one of many ongoing studies that earned Stanford University around $107,272,736 in 2001 alone. At Yale University Charles Bruce has collected a near $3.4 million in endowments, to perform remarkably similar primate tests. Guess who pays for these duplicative projects? Your tax dollars are funneled into the federal agencies that subsidize vivisection. During fiscal 2001 you helped the National Institutes of Health (NIH) bankroll roughly 29,441 separate tests on primates, dogs, cats, rats, mice, hamsters, and guinea pigs for an estimated $8.5 billion. Animal research is an extravagantly unregulated business more often in search of a profit than a cure. As the nation's major funding apparatus, NIH awards each university or private lab over $100,000,000 in any given year, asserts Michael Budkie, founder of the Ohio-based Stop Animal Exploitation NOW! (SAEN). Budkie obsessively tracks federal databases to expose an industry "shrouded in secrecy. We cannot just walk into most laboratories and start asking questions." The list of carbon-copy experiments is endless. Presently, over 60 NIH grants repeat drug addiction studies in primates; 70 grants finance eyesight tests in macaque monkeys; 170 projects examine neural data in macaque monkeys and 90 others rehash the same study in cats. In 2000 the USDA's Animal Welfare Enforcement Report listed 1,416,643 animals as research subjects. This tally doesn't include rats, mice, birds and other non-mammals currently omitted from the Animal Welfare Act. It also doesn't itemize animals confined for breeding or offset under-reported facilities. Budkie compares CRISP (Computer Retrieved Information on Scientific Projects) numbers with other records and undeclared-animal estimates to up the yearly toll to 20,000,000 animals in laboratories. The animals caught in this thicket of bureaucratic apathy are invariably dosed with toxic substances, radiation, and addictive drugs. They endure electric shock, food/water deprivation, bone destruction, invasive surgeries, and intensive confinement for often immaterial studies. For example, Arizona State University cut funds for Michael Berens' brain cancer experiments after 470 dog deaths and a 95% failure rate. Berens relocated to new environs, where he continues to inject cancer cells into beagle fetuses and replant the tumors into the brains of puppies. Blind and collapsing dogs suffer unremitting cycles of radiation and chemotherapy. "When it can't take it anymore," Berens' has claimed, one puppy is killed to move on to the next. Pain is warranted as long as animals fulfill the intent of the research grant. "The goal is to insure that the experiment proceeds--at any cost," Budkie says. Humans lose more than cash when they pay for futile science. Behaviorist psychologist Dr. Roger E. Ulrich attests to the long history long history of animal-to-human error: "We create false data which, combined with the differences among species, make our efforts to apply the results to man, useless." Animals cannot predict how we will react to a disease, drug or surgery. Every species is so anatomically, physiologically, immunologically, genetically and even psychologically different from another, it is impossible to reliably extrapolate animal data to humans. Mice produce about 100 times more cancer-fighting vitamin C than humans, an oversight which led Dr. Richard Klausner of the National Institute of Cancer to conclude: "We have cured mice of cancer for decades--and it simply didn't work in humans." For every animal who dies in a laboratory, there is a humane alternative to use in his or her place. But until in vitro cell/tissue cultures; cloned human cells; virtual and manufactured organs; computer and three-dimensional models; diagnostic scans and many more non-animal options receive ample funding--they will languish on paper. So the next time you find yourself in a rant over wasteful government spending, write a letter to your federal legislators. Ask them to increase funds for non-animal research that directly impacts human health. Who knows? With enough money for studies that apply to the human species, somebody might cure cancer in humans--instead of mice. WHAT YOU CAN DO: 1. Ask your federal Senators and Representatives to: Extend the minimum protections established under the Animal Welfare Act to include rats, mice, birds and all species. Request that Animal Welfare Act regulations ban the use of electric shock, food/water deprivation, and extreme confinement and restraint devices. Conduct a General Accounting Office (GAO) audit of the NIH for duplication and waste within the animal experimentation system. Propose funding for the development and validation of non-animal research alternatives. The Honorable _________________ U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515 202-224-3121 www.house.gov Senator ________________________ U.S. Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 202-224-3121 www.senate.gov 2. Contact Stop Animal Exploitation NOW! (SAEN) for more information. SAEN: PMB 280, 1081 B Street, Route 28, Milford, OH 45150, 513-575-5517 saen@worldnet.att.net