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June/July
2005
The Ins and Outs
of Combating Vivisection The Satya Interview with Dr.
Theodora Capaldo
Theo
with Shima.
Photo courtesy of Theo Capaldo
The “Latest” Body
Count
The USDA’s mandate to enforce the
Animal Welfare Act (AWA) requires all facilities that conduct
research on covered animals to submit annual reports,
providing an inventory of the number and species of animals used, whether they
are given pain or distress relief and, if not, a description of the procedures
involved and an explanation of why relief was withheld. In addition, USDA performs
inspections and prepares reports addressing veterinary care, husbandry, record
keeping and research activities and noting non-compliant items.
The latest information available on the number and species used in research
is from 2002. According to those records, 1,137,718 animals covered under the
AWA were used in research, consisting of:
These numbers do not include mice, rats or birds—the majority of the
animals used in research—who are not covered under the AWA. —S.I.
Demanding
our Right to Know
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), passed in 1966, enables
the public to access virtually all records possessed by federal
agencies, unless the documents fall within nine specific exemptions.
The Electronic Freedom of Information Act, passed in 1996, requires
federal agencies to make documents most commonly requested from
the public available electronically.
Over the past few years, it has been difficult for the public and many animal
advocacy organizations to gain prompt access to animal research reporting documents.
In Early 2002, the USDA removed its inspection reports of research facilities
and the annual reports submitted by research facilities from the Animal Care
Division website as a result of pressure from pro-animal research organizations
that cited domestic terrorism reasons in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It is
still possible to make requests for these documents through the USDA FOIA office,
but these requests can take years to fulfill.
In January 2005, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) filed a lawsuit
against the USDA for failing to provide numerous documents that they have been
requesting since 2001 under FOIA. The suit also seeks to compel the USDA to
make animal research facility annual reports available online. In response,
the agency agreed to resume web posting as of May 10, 2005 of registered research
facilities’ annual reports, as required by FOIA. The decision to post
these reports does not, however, settle the HSUS’s lawsuit against the
USDA. There are still unresolved issues, notably the large number of redacted
pages in the annual reports provided so far. HSUS is also working to support
legislation aimed at strengthening FOIA. [Source: HSUS]
Countless millions of animals
are unnecessarily sacrificed each year nationwide in the name of
science. Located in
one of the nation’s
biggest hubs of vivisection, the New England Anti-Vivisection Society
(NEAVS) has been working for over a century to expose and replace
the use of animals in laboratories and classrooms with ethically
and scientifically
responsible modern research methods.
It was through a NEAVS publication that Theodora Capaldo was first exposed to
the issue of vivisection, when she was in the sixth grade. Now, as a licensed
psychologist with over 25 years of experience, Dr. Capaldo is the President and
Executive Director of NEAVS and its educational affiliate, the Ethical Science
and Education Coalition. She has also served on the boards of several national
animal advocacy organizations, including Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals.
In addition to her animal advocacy work, Dr. Capaldo is also the proud and loving
guardian of rescued felines Ming, Sophia, Bodhi, Tika and Cougar, and she manages
to find time to volunteer with local clean up initiatives on the Parker River.
Before flying out to Norway for the InterNiche Conference on Alternatives in
the Mainstream, Theo Capaldo spoke with Sangamithra
Iyer about the state of vivisection
and her vision to keep compassionate students in science and the NEAVS campaign
to get chimpanzees out of research.
I understand NEAVS is strategically based in Boston, could you tell us about
the vivisection industry in that area?
Even though NEAVS is located in Boston and its name is New England, it is still
a national organization. The significance of the name and location comes from
the fact that one of the first formalized labs using animals in the country was
at Harvard in Cambridge, MA. NEAVS was actually founded not too long after that
in 1895. That is historically why one of the first national anti-vivisection
organizations took root in Boston. That aside, Massachusetts is currently one
of the three highest recipients of National Institutes of Health (NIH) research
dollars in the country, along with New York and California. Senator Ted Kennedy
noted that Massachusetts is home to more biotech companies than 48 other states
in total. So Massachusetts is really one of the biomedical research hubs of the
country. It goes back over a hundred years and continues today. While we often
focus on issues of national significance, the importance of having a strong anti-vivisection
organization in their backyard is critical.
Could give us a snapshot of vivisection today in this country? How many animals
are used and what kinds?
The USDA’s mandate is to enforce the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) through
its inspections and annual reports. This is how we find out about licensed
facilities,
the numbers of animals they house, and the kinds of non-compliant items the
USDA may have found upon inspection.
But, 90 to 95 percent of the species used—rats, birds and mice—are
not covered by AWA. To actually get an accurate count is virtually impossible
because there are really countless numbers of those species used. One estimate
puts it close to 100 million rats and mice specifically.
It has become increasingly difficult to get the kind of information the public
deserves and is entitled to, since in fact our taxpayer dollars pay for this
research. We have requested inspection reports from the USDA that are well over
a year and half old. The latest available information on the number of animals
comes from 2002 (see Sidebar). Mice and rats are not included in these statistics.
Many public opinion polls show that the public is not supportive of animal
research and that when they do support it, they do so with reluctance, believing
it is
the only way. Certain species are not considered acceptable to the public,
and we are seeing the vivisection world trying to appease them. So you will
see a
definite trend away from the ‘popular species’—dogs, cats,
and chimpanzees. You’ll typically hear researchers say, “Well I only
do research on rats and mice.” As if that makes it okay. And sadly, in
some of the public’s mind, it does.
There are two laboratories in the New England area—Charles River Laboratory
with corporate headquarters in Massachusetts and Jackson Labs up in Maine. Both
are in the business of breeding and supplying animals for national and international
research. From our perspective, animal research is not a health driven industry.
It is an economic driven industry. When you look at the kind of money that is
spent on animal research versus other areas of research, which are far less dangerous
to human health and far more useful in understanding disease, it doesn’t
make sense. But the illogic of it disappears when you look at the companies who
are profiting from it. Charles River Laboratory, for example, has a total capitalization
of $2.1 billion. Their profits come from providing “research tools,” living
animals: rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, guinea pigs, and primates to
drug and medical companies. In 2004, their net income was expected to top $100
million. In 2000, Jackson Labs was reported to have sold 1.7 million mice, with
revenues of $59 million in 1999. Demand for Jackson’s “mutant mice” alone
is expected to grow 20 percent a year.
When we look at the statistics on the number of animals used, we have to
factor in the increase in the number of mice. Specifically, transgenic mice
are huge
money makers. There is no financial index that doesn’t project a very secure
financial future for companies like Jackson Labs and Charles River. In fact,
when we want to get information, we’ll typically go to resources like
the Boston Business Journal and Fortune 500 Magazine. There you can get a
sense of
what is going on with the animals, who, because of their species, are not
accounted for by the AWA. There is no other way to really get a handle on
how many are
being used every year.
Could you comment on the protection provided for the animals who are covered
by the AWA?
The AWA, one of the few laws that apply to animal research, is extremely
limited. Its name is somewhat deceiving in that it does not affect what can
or cannot
be done to an animal in a research protocol. Research institutions have what
is called an IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee), composed
mainly of animal researchers themselves with an obvious bias. Once a committee
approves
a protocol, the USDA has no say over what is being done. So there could be
an exemption to the minimal laws that protect research animals under the
AWA—withholding
analgesics and anesthesia, for example—because the committee decided
it was in the best interest of the science. That concerns us deeply.
Basically, the lobbyists for animal research use the AWA to assure people
that all is well in laboratories. But in fact, they’re all aware that
researchers basically have a carte blanc to do whatever they want if they
can get their
IACUC to approve it.
Could you give us a breakdown of the various areas of vivisection and what the
different categories of animal research are?
There is biomedical research, which includes disease models, “basic” research
and also medical product testing. We could include pharmaceutical under that
but I like to keep it in a separate category because that industry eats up
hundreds of millions of animals a year easily. And we have agricultural research,
cosmetic
research, product testing and military research.
Military research is almost impossible to get information on because the
Department of Defense doesn’t have to tell us anything.
Agricultural research is often underrepresented in the animal community because
a lot of it is privately funded—by companies who are in the business of
selling animals for meat, milk and other products—and virtually impossible
to find out about. We found out about one study, however, when a researcher finally
left the study because he had a “moral twinge,” seeing baby chicks
not able to get up because they had cut their wings off to see if they could
get a better breast meat product to market faster.
How is the vivisection industry also linked to other industries that abuse animals,
like factory farms and entertainment?
You know the old expression “all roads leads to Rome”? Well, sadly
all areas of animal abuse probably have some road leading to vivisection. Farmed
animals are a major area of horrible agricultural research. Industries like greyhound
racing—historically when greyhounds didn’t win they were sent to
dissection or research labs. Chimpanzees in the entertainment industry are another
example. Historically, many chimps who were purchased as ‘pets’ or
used in entertainment ended up being sent into biomedical research when they
were no longer manageable. Now since there are too many in the labs, the
opposite can happen. Like little Arthur and Phoenix, who we rescued from
a roadside
zoo in New Hampshire. They were sold from the former Coulston Foundation
to a private
person, through an animal trainer dealer.
In the anti-vivisection movement, what do you feel have been some of the more
notable recent achievements?
One of the areas that has had a great deal of success is in cosmetic testing.
The public has a greater awareness of the cruelty and suffering animals endure
for product testing, and has drawn a clear line saying that we don’t
want you to test on animals. The problem now is with companies claiming to
be cruelty-free
to meet this public demand when in fact by strict definition they are not.
The Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics was formed to address
this.
An area that has gone in the opposite direction is pharmaceutical testing.
Pharmaceutical companies’ main goal is to get the drug to market as
soon as possible. So more animals are being used because they try to get
their results
out and
push the drugs forward based on the animal trials. People want quick-fix
drugs. The industry is looking to make a whole lot of money on these people.
It becomes
an urgent cycle and millions of animals a year get caught in it.
It seems this rapid approach in getting the drug to market has sort of backfired
on pharmaceutical companies with all the recent recalls of drugs like Vioxx and
Celebrex. What does this mean for animals and for the anti-vivisection movement?
Pharmaceutical companies use the data both ways. If people develop liver or kidney
failure as a result of a drug or some other side-effect, they will say that there
was no indication of this from any of the animal studies. So they use it as their
defense against legal challenges with the negative side-effects in human beings.
With all of the highly visible cases, from Fen Phen, the miracle drug for
obesity that caused heart disease, to Vioxx to some of the more recent drugs,
it certainly
has backfired. The industry is losing the faith of the public who used to
believe the industry was intent on making a drug safe before it got to market.
I think
their rush to profit has been a great disservice to them and a great service
to us because it has exposed the process of testing as the fallible profit
driven one that it is. Animal tests which don’t have any real predictive
validity have been used as the basis and people are seeing the consequences
of it.
The public’s sympathy for animals in laboratories, which has always been
there, is now being boosted by a sophisticated understanding from first-hand
experience about how limited and dangerous animal testing is to their health.
So the ethical arguments are starting to be reinforced by the scientific arguments—that
it is not good science. And the public is starting to get it and say, ‘Wow,
they tested that on animals and it still killed people!’
The visibility of all these failures is tragic in terms of human and animal lives,
but it is a necessary step in the evolution of the ethical foundation against
animal research being buoyed up by the scientific reality that it is neither
the best way nor the only way, but in fact it is a limited and dangerous way
to understand human health and disease.
In addition to the public’s change in perception regarding
the validity of animal tests, do you also see pharmaceutical companies looking
to develop
more reliable testing models that do not use animals?
James Foster, who is the son of the founder of Charles River Laboratory and the
current CEO, was quoted in Fortune Magazine as promising his shareholders greater
profit by going into the development of alternative testing in an effort to bring
drugs to market quicker.
As an anti-vivisectionist since the sixth grade, that was some of the sweetest
music I’ve ever heard. As a society and a culture based on capitalism,
a big impetus for change will come when companies like Charles River begin
to realize that they can be just as rich not hurting and killing animals.
What do you think are some of the larger challenges ahead?
In addition to continuing to maintain an economic pressure on the industry,
there has to be moral pressure on the institution of vivisection. There are
individuals
right now who continue to do animal research because they truly believe it
is the best way, but who have “moral twinges” about what they
are doing. They would rather not be doing it, yet they have become conditioned
to a way
and method of doing science. Those are the people within the industry we
are
going to need to affect the most.
Can you tell us about your campaign to get chimpanzees out of research?
Our campaign to get chimpanzees out of labs, to have the U.S. join other
countries who won’t experiment on this species, would create a new moral standard
of allowing a species other than humans the protection from science and all of
its brutal and unethical harm. They are too smart, too social, and too like us.
To change the ethical face of science, we have to find a moral platform upon
which to do that. We’ve got to break the species barrier, and the only
way we know how to do it is to get the chimps out.
When NEAVS was founded 110 years ago, our mission statement read, “to expose
and end harmful and secretive experiments upon paupers, criminals, imbeciles,
and animals.” Back then, the founders could only imagine those categories
of human beings protected from the horrors of this newfound science of experimentation.
Think back to the Tuskegee experiments on African American men that had been
going on for decades. We allowed human beings because of their race to die of
a disease that we could have treated for the sake of science. It only ended in
the early 1970s—in recent history. Science has been slow to move away
from its own narcissistic fantasy that anything and everything should be
sacrificed to the noble goal of scientific truth.
What needs to be done to get this ban on chimpanzee research in this country?
We have to help people understand the history of chimpanzees in research,
what they have suffered, and how as a model they have failed science again
and again
in understanding human health and disease. The biggest and best example of
that, although there are many, was their use in AIDS research. They could
be infected
with HIV, but that had little bearing on whether they proved a good model
for human HIV and AIDS. As a result, we ended up with surplus chimps—chimpanzees
are languishing in laboratories and aren’t being used for any particular
protocol. Thus the creation of the Chimpanzee Health Improvement Maintenance
and Protection (CHIMP) Act which was an attempt to deal with the financial and
logistical burden of having so many unused “resources.”
Our campaign focuses on a few areas of legislation. In addition to calling for
a ban on chimpanzee research, we are also going to take a very practical approach
and call for a reversal of the Bliley amendment to the CHIMP Act, so that chimpanzees
who have been retired through the federal system remain in sanctuary. We have
to provide them with permanent protection from future research. Only then can
the federal government truly and honestly use the word sanctuary.
The good news is that there are only about 1,300 chimpanzees left in laboratories.
The bad news is facilities like Southwest and New Iberia are receiving grant
money to continue breeding chimps and actively promote chimp research.
Animal advocacy is hard work with many battlefronts. What is your strategy and
vision for NEAVS for combating vivisection?
I think all animal protectionists are in a state of crisis. We see atrocity day
in and day out. We see the numbers of horrible things happening to animals increasing.
We see our efforts often failing. Within that kind of system, it is hard to sit
back and think about a strategic plan. Mostly, we are busy trying to put out
major fires all the time. In a sense we end up chasing our tails. The immediate
problem is not one that we can always change, and we must ask how can we get
behind a strategy to get us from point A to point B?
I think one of the most important campaigns for any organization to be running
right now is for student choice at all levels of education. We have to allow
students unwilling to hurt, harm, and kill animals as part of their science
education to remain in science. From that high school biology class where
students are
forced to use a dead animal or kill an animal, we are creating a system of
future vivisectors. Individuals unwilling to be vivisectors are leaving science
and
going into other fields. We have to keep them in science. If we don’t,
we are not planting the future growth of a generation of anti-vivisection
scientists who will do science well and without harming or killing anyone.
I think that
has to be looked at as an extremely important arm of any anti-vivisection
campaign.
Where we put our first foot forward is getting compassionate students in
science, getting chimps out of science and then mandating that in all areas
of science,
humane and scientifically better alternatives be used. That is the three–pronged “in
and out” strategy that NEAVS is focused on.
Most animal activists are sensitive to vivisection issues, buy cruelty-free products,
and donate to humane charities. What are some blind spots we may be missing?
What else can we do to help?
There are many things you can do. Certainly support students, or if you are a
student, find a way to pay attention to what is happening at your school regarding
the use of animals in classes and research. Get as much information as you can,
legally, and make that available to anti-vivisection and animal protection organizations
that may be able to help you see what can be done. Chances are that students
can find out things that organizations like mine are never going to find out
about. At the very least, the atrocity will be exposed, and exposure really is
an important weapon in this war.
In addition to cosmetic products, there are other products you want to be careful
about. With any product, find out whether they are using animals in safety testing.
Support and thank car companies that do not use animals in crash tests.
Become an organ donor.
When your doctor tries to give you new medication, talk to them. I, for example,
always ask how long the drug has been on the market. My own particular standard
is that if it hasn’t been on the market for 20-25 years, don’t prescribe
it to me. Once we have the longitudinal data about the drugs in humans, then
I’ll trust the drug. Otherwise don’t talk to me about it because
it is unsafe, unproven and it has cruelly been brought to the market. It’s
an opportunity to raise the issue with your physician and take care of your
own health.
Activists can also join our campaign to get chimpanzees out of laboratories.
Focus on one chimp—find out who they are and where they are and commit
to getting one person out of the lab. Consult our website and find a lab near
you that is still conducting chimp research. Write to your local paper against
this research. Write to NIH. Contact your legislators. Show our CD-Rom on chimpanzee
research to schools and community groups. FOIA the USDA for inspection reports
on the lab. Focus everyone’s attention on the plight of chimpanzees
held in research labs. Remind people that the U.S. is, shamefully, the single
largest
exploiter of chimpanzees in the world. Let everyone know this must and will
end.
For more information about NEAVS and ESEC visit www.neavs.org. To learn more
about how you can get involved in the Chimp Campaign, see www.releasechimps.org.
