Stanford Protest This Friday!

[Guest guest]

Dear animal-libbers,

 

I'm really excited to announce our inaugural protest against the Research

Animal Facility at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA. The RAF conducts

experiments on primates, dogs, mice, and other animals. It uses tens of

thousands of animals each year in painful and unnecessary animal

experimentation. Please see below for detailed information from our

investigation of RAF.

 

The protest, organized by the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund and Animal

Rights on the Farm, will take place this Friday, October 21 from 4:15 until

we get tired (no later than 6). We will be at the intersection of El Camino

and Quarry (the south end of Stanford Mall), letting thousands of rush hour

commuters know what happens behind Stanford's closed doors. For a map of

the protest location, see http://tinyurl.com/b4lxt.

 

We need as many bodies out there as possible. We all know how impressive a

good turnout looks, so please do everything you can to be there. This is

the first of what we hope to be a series of protests, and we know the

university administration, the Stanford community, and observers will take

us much more seriously if we show our numbers.

 

If you have any questions about the protest or the campaign, please email me

back at mliebman.

 

We will have some signs, but if you have your own, please bring them.

 

For the animals,

Matthew

________________________

 

According to a report filed by Stanford in 2002 with the US Department of

Agriculture (the agency charged with implementing the Animal Welfare Act),

Stanford used the following animals for experiments: 32 dogs, 172 hamsters,

376 rabbits, 323 nonhuman primates, 110 sheep, 541 pigs, 2 goats, 9 ferrets

and 471 gerbils (2,036 total animals). Because USDA does not require

reporting on mice, rats, birds, and amphibians, the actual number of

animals used at Stanford is much higher. Nationwide, rats and mice make up

approximately 95% of animals used in research. Using this statistic, we

estimate that Stanford’s RAF uses as many as 40,000 animals. The Research

Animal Facility at Stanford University received over $146 million in

federal funding in 2003 for animal experimentation, ranked 21st in the

country.

 

Animal Rights on the Farm (ARF) has discovered other disturbing facts: one

Stanford researcher systematically deprives mice, rats, and monkeys of

sleep to determine the relationship between sleep deprivation, body weight,

and energy expenditure (Role of Hypocretin in Metabolic Effects of Sleep

Loss, NIH Grant #5R01MH073435-02); another separates infant primates from

their mothers to test the resultant psychological effects (Maternal

Availability and Postnatal Brain Development, NIH Grant #5F32MH066537-03);

another induces anxiety and fear in parasite-infested rats (Parasite/Host

Interactions and the Neurobiology of Fear, NIH Grant #1R21MH070903-01A1);

another conducts gene-therapy research on the livers of rats, rabbits, and

dogs (Transferring Integrase Technology to Animals, NIH Grant

#5R01HL068112-05); another researcher has spent the last 15 years

conducting invasive brain-imaging studies, maternal deprivation

experiments, and stress studies in squirrel monkeys (Model of

Hypercortisolism for Major Depressions, NIH Grant #5R01MH047573-14); the

list goes on and on.

 

ARF has also gleaned the following information from the research facility’s

newsletters: the labs’ “animal caretakers” filed over 421 morbidity reports

in 2001 (Comparative Medicine News, Jan. 2002); the University maintains a

colony of inbred mice, “obtained after 20 or more consecutive generations

of brother x sister mating” (Comparative Medicine News, Dec. 1999); RAF has

been infested with mites, which cause self-mutilation and “blisters, crusts

and warty lumps on the ears, eyes and nose” (Comparative Medicine News,

Apr. 2002); the facility’s euthanasia procedures include CO2 gassing,

followed in some cases by exsanguination (bleeding to death), cervical

dislocation, or decapitation, and “[t]horacotomy (making an incision into

the chest cavity) after apparent death from CO2 is widely used as a way to

ensure the irreversibility of the procedure.” (Comparative Medicine News,

Oct. 2003).