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News Archive
Historic Breakthrough for Animal Rights
New Zealand's Parliament has created a world first by enshrining
in law specific protection for "non-human hominids," more commonly
known as great apes.
At 5.45 pm local time, October 12 1999 the Animal Welfare Act was
given its 3rd reading and will be law from January 1st 2000. There are
five great ape species: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and
humans, and are all in the same genetic family.
From the beginning of the next millennium the use of great apes will
be prohibited in research, testing, or teaching. The NZ Minister for Food
and Fibre, John Luxton, who was responsible for the passage of the bill
through Parliament, stated, "This requirement recognizes the advanced
cognitive and emotional capacity of great apes. New Zealand is the first
country in the world to legislate in this way."
Such recognition is based on scientific evidence that the nonhuman great
apes share not only our genes but also our basic human mental traits,
such as self-awareness, intelligence and other forms of mental insight,
the ability to fashion rudimentary tools, complex communications and social
systems, even the ability to master some human language.
The Great Ape Project (GAP) -International has been at the forefront
of campaigning on this issue. The organisation's vice-president, Paul
Waldau, stated:
"Ultimately GAP would like to see the non-human great apes
accorded standing in legal systems throughout the world. This would
permit them to be protected by rights to life, liberty, and freedom
from torture. Additionally we'd like to have the United Nations provide
realistic recognition and protections." Paul Waldau hailed the
groundbreaking legislation as, "part of the trend toward recognising
the complex mental, social and individual realities of other animals'
lives."
This trend has also manifested itself in the explosion of interest shown
by US law schools in the status of other animals, recently confirmed by
Harvard University's decision to offer an animal law course in the Spring
of 2000. This course, to be taught by Stephen Wise, author of a forthcoming
book Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals,
"will discuss the sources and characteristics of fundamental
rights, why humans are entitled to them, why non-human animals have
been denied them, whether legal rights should be limited to humans,
and if not what non-human animals should be entitled to them under the
common law."
We believe it is self-evident that all non-human animals have the the
right to life, liberty, and freedom from torture and distress (see Universal
Declaration of Animal Rights). All animals of different species feel
both physical and mental pain (one only has to watch videos of beagles
cowering at the back of their cells at Huntingdon Life Sciences or Harlan
UK to observe mental pain and anguish). That intelligence and mental insight
are not solely the domain of great apes is clear to most ordinary people
and animal behaviorists. Anybody who has developed affective relationships
with animals or observed them (particularly in their natural habitat)
will testify to that. Only the absurd musings of philosophers like
Descartes have sought to deny the obvious. If there is any difference
in intelligence and mental insight between species it is only in degree.
This view is given further scientific backing by the evolutionary theories
of Charles Darwin. The ethical implication of evolutionary theory is that
as humans have descended from other animals, morally speaking, differences
between humans and other animals - if they exist at all - are only in
degree not in kind. We humans have a kinship not just with other human
and non-human great apes, but with all non-human animals.
Max Newton, Uncaged Campaigns
[Source: Times HES 1/9; Worldanimal.net 12/10; GAPNews@aol.com
12/10]
Lifestyle-Drug Addict Animals & Useless Research
The consequences of research into the development of ‘lifestyle’
drugs are: baboons addicted to cocaine, rats tortured with electric shocks,
and beagles vivisected in horrific and useless experiments - as revealed
by documents obtained by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
(BUAV) and the Observer (31.10.99). The tests for the development of an
new drug to combat severe anxiety in humans by Danish company H Lundbeck,
are estimated to have killed more than 3,000 animals.
In addiction tests at John Hopkins University, Washington, USA, three
baboons were kept in isolation cages and had a needle and tube fixed into
their veins, through which the scientists pumped cocaine. The baboons
learnt to flick a switch to deliver injections at any time of day or night.
As soon as these primates had been turned into hardened addicts, the cocaine
was replaced with the test drug to see if it would satisfy their intense
physical and mental addictive cravings. The theory scientists were trying
to test was that their unfortunate subjects would use less of the new
drug if it was not addictive.
Dr Gill Langley, scientific advisor to the BUAV, said the purpose of
getting the baboons hooked on cocaine was just to make sure they are prone
to addiction. She said: "This is one of the worst experiments in
this whole catalogue of suffering. The baboons would have suffered cocaine-withdrawal
symptoms, which may include fatigue, craving, mental disturbance and depression."
The documents also underline the irrelevance to humans of data derived
from animal tests and how confusing they can be. The observer reported:
"H Lundbeck say that earlier tests on rats, tempted to stay in an
unnatural environment with the drug as the ‘reward,’ was positive
so, 'international guidelines meant we had to proceed to the baboon test,
which was negative.' The company added that the rat test is recognised
by the authorities as providing a false positive results but negative
results are accepted." [my italics]
Tests, in which stress, pain and anxiety are deliberately induced in
animals are crude and simplistic in that they attempt to artificially
recreate the complexities of the human mind in a human social environment.
Rats were deprived of water for 48 hours, and during a six minute test
electrocuted every 20 times they licked a metal drinking tube. If they
tolerated more shocks after being given the drug, it was supposed to have
reduced their anxiety. However, another interpretation of the results
could be that the mice simply became more desperate for food, and therefore
willing to tolerate more shocks in order to get it.
Mice were made to swim in a container of water from which there was no
escape. After a while of furious swimming, they stopped and trod water.
The drug prolonged the frantic swimming and was considered to have deferred
despair. Once again an alternative, but just as likely interpretation
of the results is that the mice could have been simply conserving energy
to prevent themselves from drowning.
Marmosets were forced to stay in human company, which frightens them
(understandably given their past experience of humans). The drug did not
appear to make them less stressed.
Several British commercial laboratories and academics have conducted
experiments for H Lundbeck. Quintiles Scotland, Edinburgh, carried out
tests to study how the drug impacted on the heart and blood activity of
beagles. Two dogs were killed because of errors during the experiments.
Quintiles used 18 beagles, acquired from Harlan UK in Belton, Loughborough.
The dogs were artificially ventilated while their chests were cut open,
catheters inserted into their blood vessels and electrodes sewn onto their
hearts. Heart activity and blood circulation were recorded for an hour
without, then with the drug. It appeared to have no effect, and the animals
were killed.
Huntingdon Life Sciences at Eye, Suffolk, tested 100 mice by giving them
daily doses of the drug. The results showed anaemia and appeared to change
heart and liver weights.
Quintiles in Ledbury, Herefordshire, gave 120 rats the drug for 13 weeks.
It resulted in hair loss, salivation, and damage to their blood, kidneys,
adrenal glands and livers.
The University of Bradford is among other British laboratories to have
submitted reports to H Lundbeck. Here mice and rats were injected with
the drug and subjected to pointless anxiety tests.
The drug is undergoing clinical trials in humans, and the company intends
to launch it in 2004. These documents reveal clues about the secretive
pharmaceutical industry. A BUAV spokesperson said: "It is alarming
that these are the sorts of tests being carried out prior to going into
human volunteers." Alarm stems from the fact that these experiments
are incredibly crude and simplistic attempts to artificially recreate
complex human-like conditions in animals; and they produced a blizzard
of confusing and conflicting results that were open to several interpretations.
These tests will be dangerously misleading in the development of drugs
or treatments for human use.
Max Newton, Uncaged Campaigns
[Source: Observer 31/10]
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