Action Alert! NIH calls dogs in experiments Lucky Puppies in new coloring book for kids!

January 27, 2009

This is the "sickest" PR stunt ever! Please s at the end of the article (after you look at the coloring book - unreal - on the link in the first paragraph) and help PCRM get this piece of brainwashing crap off the presses and OUT of children's hands.

The NIH now offers for children a downloadable file called & quot;The Lucky Puppy & quot; (see http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/images/coloring/luckycolor.pdf). This is a coloring book that glorifies animal experimentation. It implies that researchers are trying to cure animals that are already sick, rather than purposely infecting them with diseases. Moreover, it ignores the fact that animals suffer and die in these treatments. It claims that nonhuman animals are sufficiently close to human animals that the results of nonhuman animal tests can be used for humans. According to some national statistics from the CCAC Animal Use Survey, nearly two-thirds of all animal research has little or nothing to do with curing human diseases or advancing human medicine. The reality is that

much of this research is little more than curiosity-driven cruelty. Diseases that are artificially induced in animals in a laboratory are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings. And because animal species differ from one another in many biologically significant ways, it becomes even more unlikely that animal research will yield results that will be correctly interpreted and applied to the human condition in a meaningful way. The fact that the species most often used in laboratory experiments are chosen largely for nonscientific reasons, such as cost and ease of handling, casts further doubt on the validity of this research. In addition, the results of animal experiments are often so variable and easily manipulated that researchers have used them to & quot;prove & quot;depending on the source of fundingthat cigarettes do cause cancer and that they do not! A careful scientific review of 10 randomly chosen

"animal models" of human disease found that they made little, if any, contribution toward the treatment of human patients.In the U.S., three of the most commonly used species in laboratory experiments (birds, mice, and rats) are specifically exempted from even the minimal protections of the federal Animal Welfare Act. Labs that use only these species are not required by law to provide animals with pain relief or veterinary care, to have an institutional committee to review proposed experiments, or to be inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) or any other entity.Human clinical, population, and in vitro studies are critical to the advancement of medicine; even animal experimenters need them--if only to confirm or reject the validity of their experiments.Human health and well-being can best be promoted by adopting nonviolent methods of scientific investigation and concentrating on

the prevention of disease before it occurs, through lifestyle modification and the prevention of further environmental pollution and degradation.Please don't let the NIH glorify animal experimentation when there is so much promising technology to replace the use of animals in research and education. Please go here: http://support.pcrm.org/site/R?i=9Yk1mF46qPDMvaRJ4Wp_ygand tell the NIH not to glorify such outdated and cruel practices to our children with our tax dollars.To take action on this issue, below:https://secure2.convio.net/pcrm/site/Advocacy?s_oo=gBZSPRFw9X_HYkguAKf2DA.. & id=208If the text above does not appear as a link or it wraps across multiple lines, then copy and paste it into the address

area of your browser.