Expanding the gulf between image and reality is what the cosmetics industry is all about LONDON, U.K.––Cosmetics and personal care industry media are abuzz with the June 1, 2021 announcement by The Body Shop that every product it offers will be 100% vegan by the end of 2023. Many consumers, on the other hand, […]
Animal labs get free pass on inspections; AV groups mostly don’t notice
Harvard law student discovers animal lab inspections have been cut short since 2019 CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts––The silence from a cage of dead monkeys could scarcely be more deafening. Three business days plus a weekend of apparent near-complete non-response from the animal advocacy community have elapsed since the Harvard Law School Animal Law & Policy Clinic […]
Anti-vivisectionism goes to the dogs
Or, “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy, except in their capacity to raise funds.” WASHINGTON D.C.––Lest there be any doubt that antivivisection advocacy in the 21st century has gone to the dogs, the White Coat Waste Project, the Humane Society of the U.S., and Stop Animal Exploitation Now in recent […]
Rabbit sperm donors may be retired from service, but not rats, mice, & birds
And not most rabbits in laboratory use, either WASHINGTON D.C.––Former Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler, in one of his last actions before leaving office with the Donald Trump presidential administration, “issued a January 20, 2021 directive instructing the agency to plan for the retirement of the last remaining rabbits in the EPA’s taxpayer-funded […]
How does anyone run a monkey through a washing machine by accident?
Technicians at Oregon Health Sciences University, Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories, Harvard, & Bristol-Myers Squibb have managed to do it HILLSBORO, Oregon––An Oregon Health Sciences University internal investigation into the deaths of two rhesus macaques who were killed on August 13, 2020 when their cage was run through a cage-washing machine with the monkeys still inside […]
COVID-19: seldom has animal testing offered so little to so many
Still no animal models, three months into global crisis BEIJING, WASHINGTON D.C.––A hint of the desperation of practitioners of traditional animal-based biomedical research to contribute something of relevance to the global fight against COVID-19 was posted late on March 18, 2019 by the online periodical Live Science. “When exposed to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 […]
Why is Trump EPA chief cutting animal testing while the NRDC defends it?
Natural Resources Defense Council has fought for 50 years to make EPA enforce chemical safety standards WASHINGTON D.C.––How has the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose emblem is a polar bear, become the front line of public defense of the animal testing industry? Why is Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler leading the most aggressive effort […]
Top GMO mouse lab closing; sponsor turns toward non-animal research
13-year-old, $38 million facility was British leader HINXTON, U.K. —The Sanger Institute, a global leader since 2006 in producing genetically modified mice for biomedical research use, on May 16, 2019 announced to staff that it will close by 2022, if not sooner. The impending closure is among the first […]
Mouse studies often don’t work, NIH admits after landmark 10-year study
National Institutes of Health finding in 2013 presaged Wellcome Foundation decision to close the Sanger Institute genetically modified mouse lab by 2022 WASHINGTON D.C. (March 2013)–– Bluntly stated the headline in the February 11, 2013 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Genomic responses in mouse models poorly mimic human inflammatory diseases.” Echoing […]
Four lionesses: women who made a difference for animals
Remembering Lynette Shanley, Tammy Sue Kirkpatrick, Coby Siegenthaler, and Lorraine Blake Roth Lynette Shanley, Tammy Sue Kirkpatrick, Coby Siegenthaler, and Lorraine Blake Roth, widely separated in geography, ages, life experience, and focus in activism, likely never met, nor even heard of each other, yet––like tens of thousands of other relatively anonymous women––lent strength to the ever-growing […]