French Views on Animal Testing

A recent survey commissioned by the French animal rights group OneVoice claims that as many as 64 percent of respondents oppose animal testing, with 34 percent rejecting any form of animal testing.

Eighty-six percent of the 1,000 people over the age of 15 surveyed by IPSOS-France said they were opposed to any animal testing procedure that caused suffering in animals.

The survey found that opposition to animal testing was highest prevalent among the young (70 percent of people under 35 told IPSOS they opposed animal testing) and women (again, 70 percent of women said they opposed animal testing).

Two-thirds of respondents said that they believed non-animal alternatives existed that could replace animal research.

The full survey and results is available here in French.

Source:

French citizens largely opposed to animal testing, suggests survey, Cordis RTD-News, March 11, 2003.

Les Français critiquent le manque de transparence de l’expérimentation animale. IPSOS-France, March 17, 2003.

New Meningitis Vaccine Could Save Lives in Developing World

The Meningitis Vaccine Project recently announced that it will soon begin clinical trials of a vaccine for Meningitis A that is designed to be commercially viable in the developing world where the disease has reached near-epidemic proportions in some countries.

A number of vaccine candidates for Meningitis A have been produced in the past but along with being too expensive for developing countries, they tended to offer only short term protection from the disease and did not work at all in the most vulnerable population — young children.

The newly developed vaccine candidate would likely cost under $1 per dose and researchers believe it will provide long term protection even when give to young children.

Dr. F. Marc LaForce of the Meningitis Vaccine Project told the BBC,

Clinical trials for the new vaccine could start as early as 2004 and the new vaccine could be ready for wide use in sub-Saharan Africa within the next four to five years . . . Our goal is to eliminate epidemic meningitis as a public health problem in sub-Saharan Africa, thereby alleviating the social, human and economic disasters these epidemics cost.

In sub-Sharan Africa, Meningitis A kills 5,000 people in non-epidemic years, and epidemic outbreaks have claimed upwards of 20,000 dead annually.

The development of this vaccine owes much to animal research. It is an offshoot of an effective Meningitis Hib vaccine introduced in Finland which effectively solved one of the major hurdles — providing long term effectiveness. Previous vaccines were based on a sugar, PRP, that is present on the surface of the meningitis bacteria. Because of the nature of PRP, however, the immune response to it was short lived.

Animal studies had shown, however, that if PRP was bonded to a protein that the immune response was much more powerful. This conjugation technique was applied to a vaccine for human beings which has reduced Meningitis Hib rates by 60 to 80 percent where it has been used.

The experimental meningitis A vaccine bonds a sugar present on the surface of the bacteria with a tetanus protein — which the immune systems of even very young children recognize — to elicit an immune response.

Sources:

Meningitis A vaccine hope. The BBC, March 18, 2003.

Milestone Reached in 100-Year War Against Meningitis. Press Release, Meningitis Vaccine Project, March 17, 2003.

Hib meningitis vaccine. Research Defence Society.

Vaccine to Fight Meningitis in Africa Ready To Be Tested. David McAlary, Voice of America, March 18, 2003.

Vaccine hope for meningitis A. Rebecca Oppenheim, HMG, March 20, 2003.

WWF Gets Grief Over its Seal Cull Support

The World Wildlife Fund has been getting a lot of grief from the usual suspects of late over its support over a Canadian plan to kill about a million seals over the next three years.

In 1970 there were only about 1.8 million harp seals in the North Atlantic, but today there are believed to be around 5.2 million. Saying that the seal population is now healthy, Canada authorized an expansion of seal hunting.

Hunters will be allowed to kill a total of 975,000 seals over the next three years, with a maximum in any given year of 350,000 seals. The Canadian government argues that the seal cull helps protect fish stocks as well as provide jobs.

But the announcement angered animal rights activists such as Brigitte Bardot (and when you’ve got a has-been actress opposing you, your options are really limited). Bardot wrote a letter to the World Wildlife Fund, which supports the plan, saying,

How can an organization that you preside over and that has no need to prove its reputation in the domain of the conservation of species anymore, defend such a scandalous position.

. . .

I have often supported WWF, given my image to some of its programmes, and I feel betrayed, it has attacked my most symbolic battle.

Similarly, the International Fund for Animal Welfare complained that the Canadian government planned to “devastate seal populations.” An IFAW press release quoted its president, Fred O’Regan, as saying,

The Canadian government has just returned to the 1800s in terms of animal welfare and conservation. Their decision raises a host of questions: Where is the scientific justification for killing so many seals? How will the government safeguard a much larger hunt against cruelty? Where are the markets for the pelts?

Meanwhile the World Wildlife Fund – Canada responded to criticism by saying that although it disagrees with the Canadian government’s position that seals are endangering fish stocks,

As long as the commercial hunt for harp seals off the coast of Canada is of no threat to the population of over 5 million harp seals, there is no biological reason for WWF-Canada to reconsider its current priorities and actively oppose the annual harvest of harp seals.

We were in contact with Canadian government officials before they set the new quota. Our ongoing conservation concern has been that the commercial hunt for harp seals should never endanger the population. We believe harp seals should thrive in the Atlantic Ocean around the Canadian coast, now and in the future.

Sources:

Bardot slams WWF over seal cull. AAP, March 18, 2003.

Canada expands seal cull as environmentalists fume. Reuters, February 4, 2003.

Canada to Unveil Massive Seal Cull Plan. Press Release, International Fund for Animal Welfare, January 28, 2003.

NPPC Says It Needs More Funds to Fight Activists

At its National Pork Forum held in Dallas, Texas, in March, the National Pork Producers Council complained that budget limitations are leaving it unable to meet challenges facing the pork industry, including that from animal rights activists.

For 2003, the NPPC will have an estimated budget of $4.6 million, but NPPC chief executive officer Neil Dierks claims the organization needs at least $11 million. Dierks said of the successful passage in Florida of a ban on gestation crates for pigs — and for which animal rights activists raised an estimated $3 million to push for,

It was my biggest disappointment in my tenure on your behalf at NPPC. It was a situation of either using our funding, which could have very well closed the doors at NPPC on the one issue, or we live to fight again.

[By failing to stop the measure] we’ve given the opposition a tremendous amount of oxygen.

The funding for Dierks’ organization is up in the air after U.S. District Court Judge Richard Enslen ruled that the USDA program under which the NPCC was unconstitutional.

Groups and individuals representing small and family farmers have for years complained that they are forced by the government to give a small portion of their income the NPCC, despite what they see as the NPPC’s bias in favor of large, factory farms.

Enslen agreed with these farmers that being forced to subsidize an organization which they disagreed with was a violation of their First Amendment rights. That ruling is consistent with a Supreme Court decision in which the court invalidated a similar program that applied to the mushroom industry (U.S. v. United Foods).

Dierks’ comments about the Florida initiative is a perfect example of the problem with such mandatory checkoff programs. Some of the small farmers who are assessed this fee by the government likely oppose gestation crates as well. Why should they have to fund any NPPC ad campaign against the Florida initiative?

Source:

Pork producers seek additional funds to combat activist challenges. Teresa Halvorsen, Iowa Farm Bureau, March 17, 2003.

Alaska Board of Game Approves Wolf Kill

In March, the Alaska Board of Game voted unanimously to approve a plan to kill wolves and move black bears in 520-square mile area in interior Alaska, in order to boost the moose population in the area. The proposal requires the additional approval of the state Fish and Game Department and Alaska’s governor, Frank Murkowski.

The plan also calls for a temporary moratorium on moose hunting in the McGrath area.

Friends of Animals’ Priscilla Feral has threatened a consumer boycott of Alaska if it approves the wolf kill. She was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that she was “horrified but not surprised” by the board’s decision.

In testimony before the Alaska Board of Game on March 6, Feral told the board,

If the Board of Game convinces Gov. Murkowski to approve this proposal, and appease the predator control minority, as opposed to most Alaskans and wildlife-watching tourists who denounce shot-gunning wolves from helicopters, FoA will initiate demonstrations and protests all over the country ? and internationally –matching every dollar you devote to killing wolves in launching an offensive.

Murkowski is himself a hunter who has said before that he is unafraid of a consumer boycott of his state and will almost certainly approve the plan.

Source:

Game Board backs predator control near McGrath. Associated Press, March 12, 2003.

Los Angeles Times on John Hopkins 'Forgetful' Mouse

The Los Angeles Times ran a bizarre editorial in response to news in March that researchers at John Hopkins University had developed a method to create a strain of forgetful mice.

More specifically, as the United Press International summed up the story,

. . . [researchers] prevented a molecular event in brain cells required for storing spatial memories. The mice quickly forgot where to find a resting place in a pool of water, showing that subtly altering the chemistry of a certain protein can affect a brain cell’s ability to external stimulation or neuronal plasticity.

Researchers did this by genetically altering a receptor that binds glutamate which, in turn, prevented a process called phosphorylation. The upshot is that the mice with the altered receptors had more difficulty in forming short term memories than normal mice.

Why is this important? UPI quotes from Hopkins professor of neuroscience Richard Huganir,

Since 1986, phosphorylation has been recognized as a key to modulating receptor responses to neurotransmitters like glutamate, but this is the first demonstration that phosphorylation of a particular target protein mediates the processes we believe are behind learning and memory.

In its March 16 editorial on the finding, the Los Angeles Times settles for rather bizarre needling of the researchers at John Hopkins,

Well, they’ve finally done it. Scientists at world-renowned Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have invented a forgetful mouse. Now if only the humans could remember why they did that. What these well-educated people did was manipulate a gene to prevent a certain molecular event from occurring in a mouse’s brain cells required for storing spatial memory. As everyone watched, the tiny rodent, whose pals quickly learned and remembered precisely how to exit a pool of water, seemed befuddled.

Talk about abuse. Little guy spends a life getting good at mazes in a laboratory with bright lights, just hoping for a few crumbs of (non-French) cheese, maybe a little positive reinforcement. Large creatures in white coats fool his brain so he stands, lost and alone, in a puddle of water right next to a dry platform crowded with long-tailed cousins with functioning memories. The pestilential humiliation of it all.

This resembles a pilot for reality TV. Prize-seeking participants lose their memories and minds before rollicking audiences with genetically altered senses of humor. There is science behind this laboratory tomfoolery. If we can better understand fundamental aspects of learning and memory formation in the brain of a mouse, then perhaps someday we can understand human memory malfunctions, or maybe even teenage thinking and other mental distortions.

. . .

Another possibility is that this whole brain study is really a mouse trap. These little creatures are actually studying humans to see what prompts them to push the Feed button, turn off the lab radio and go away to write a scientific paper or something. At this very moment, while humans think we’re unlocking the complexities of a mouse brain, some erudite rodents on the second floor could be peer-reviewing a paper by their ground-floor understudies, “Inter-Spatial Motivational Studies of Reward Stimulation Strategies Among Homo Sapiens.”

Although the mice’s research would no doubt be couched in familiarly unfamiliar scientific terms and buried among bewildering charts and graphs, the main thrust would be the surprising outcome that merely by standing in a puddle of water and looking lost, a lone mouse can create great excitement among nearby humans, causing them to chatter actively, then scurry away and extinguish those fluorescent lights, finally.

What was the Times thinking?

Source:

Stories of modern science . . . from UPI. Ellen Beck, United Press International, March 10, 2003.

A Less-Mighty Mouse Mind. Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2003.