• NIH: National Institutes of Health
  • OSP: Office of Science Policy | National Institutes of Health
  • OBA: Office of Biotechnology Activities
  • Animals in Research Website | NIH: Office of Extramural Research
    The Nation’s source for the latest news, policies, education, training, and information on animals in research.
    • OLAW: Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare
  • Bioethics Resources on the Web - National Institutes of Health
    • Laboratory Animal Care and Use - Bioethics Resources on the Web - Directory
      • A listing of organizations with an interest in bioethics
      • Federal Register, Regulations, and Publications
        The following links provide access to bioethics regulations, agency resource sites and reports produced by federal government agencies other than the NIH.

• FDA: U.S. Food and Drug Administration
  • The FDA no longer requires all drugs to be tested on animals before human trials | January 12, 2023 - NPR

    

  • The Beginnings: Laboratory and Animal Testing
  • Animal Testing and Cosmetics
    • Cosmectics Testing FAQ - Humane Society of America
    • Animal Testing for Cosmetics | Impakter
    • World Day for Laboratory Animals 2022: animal testing is a reality for cosmetics
    • Cruelty in Animal Testing Laboratories | PETA
    • Does the law require animal testing for cosmetics and household products? | PETA
  • The FDA's Drug Review Process

• CDC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • CDC - Animal Resources Branch - Division of Scientific Resources
  • CDC - Animal Care and Use in CDC Laboratory Research
  • Animal Research at CDC | CDC in the News
    • Animal Research at CDC: Achieving a Delicate Balance
    • CDC's Animal Research Fact Sheet - November, 2006
  • Laboratory Animal Care and Use Policy | PDF File - Updated 10/18/06
  • Vertebrate Animal Biosafety Level Criteria for Vivarium Research Facilities | PDF File

• USDA: U.S. Department of Agriculture
  • Animal Welfare Information Center
    • Government and Professional Resources
      • Laboratory Animals
        • Animal Welfare Act of 1966
      • Research Animals
        Resources about laboratory animals used in biomedical research including legislation, publications, training, meetings, and organizations.
        • Laboratory Animal Species
      • Companion Animals
    
  • U.S. GAO - Animal Welfare - USDA's Oversight of Dealers of Random Source Dogs and Cats Would Benefit from Additional Management Information and Analysis
  • U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) | Sourcewatch
    • Animal Testing
  • U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) | PETA

• EPA: Environmental Protection Agency
  • The U.S. EPA's Strategic Plan for Evaluating the Toxicity of Chemicals
    "The traditional risk assessment approach relies heavily on data generated through the intentional dosing of experimental animals."
    • New EPA Report Recommends Moving Away from Animal Testing | Animal Liberation Front
  • PCRM: Strategies to Reduce Animal Testing in US EPA's HPV Program
    PCRM: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
    • PCRM | Frequently Asked Questions About Animal Experimentation Issues
  • EPA | PETA
    In fact, the EPA requires more animal-based chemical toxicity testing than any other federal agency.
    • U.S. Government Animal Testing Programs
  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | SourceWatch

• NIEHS: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
  • ICCVAM: Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods
    Alternatives to Animal Testing | Questions & Answers
  • Research: Animal Welfare & Testing
  • Safety Testing: Moving Toward Alternative Methods | PDF File
  • 5 Feb 2008: Plan Expedites Alternatives to Animal Testing
  • 27 Apr 2009: Countries Unite to Reduce Animal Use in Product Toxicity Testing Worldwide
    U.S., Canada, Japan and European Union Sign International Agreement

  End Inhumane Research on Animals

  "The United States Department of Agriculture has been secretly conducting inhumane animal testing and cruel breeding practices. At the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Meat Animal Research Center (USMARC), countless animals are tested on and put under unthinkably deplorable breeding conditions to provide meat producers with methods on how to make more money from their livestock.

  "According to an ongoing investigation by The New York Times, USMARC is responsible for scientifically altering the breeding capacity and output of pigs, which leads to unnaturally large litters and piglets being crushed to death by the weight of their hormone-injected mothers. They’ve genetically modified the natural breeding process of cows, forcing them to give birth to twins or even triplets when they usually bear one calf at a time, resulting in weakened and deformed calves. Plus, they’ve conducted inhumane tests on young lambs by leaving them in open fields during severe weather, and even in the presence of predators, just to see if they could survive without human help."
  -- Animal Petitions

  USMARC: U.S. Meat Animal Research Center - USDA

  U.S. Research Lab Lets Livestock Suffer in Quest for Profit
  January 19, 2015 - by Michael Moss - The New York Times
  USDA's Meat Animal Research Center: An American Horror Story
  January 23, 2015 - by Mathew Bershadker (ASPCA President and CEO) - Huffington Post

Their website is at: Global Captive Breeders.

Essay

Open Letter

I'm trying to help bring awareness of cruelty to and unnecessary experimentation on animals to the minds of everyone everywhere. Correcting the problem of their treatment isn't simply one of perceiving animals as having intrinsic worth as living beings, as individuals of some other species. In general, that's probably how most people feel; nonetheless, that appreciation is of little consequence when compared to their serviceability to humanity. Given that as the case, in the name of research--for the good of humanity--an animal's worth can be, and usually is, relegated to the level of inanimate object with but a single purpose: What can be learned of practical significance by using it as a test subject?

No, the current problem with regard to using animals as experimental fodder, to be euthanized and cast away afterwards, is that it's become an ingrained habit, a custom, part of the methodology of science and what passes for science, like testing cosmetics and household goods on living things. There are alternatives, especially now in the golden age of computer simulations and live tissue fabrication, to that tradition which, I believe, would be implemented if enough people knew about the situation and cared about animals. Knowledge and understanding and empathy and action. Laws need to be passed. In China, for example, it's required by law to test cosmetics on animals. I think we're better than that.

Baldly stated, after 20 years of commercial fishing, mostly in Alaska, I've become somewhat inured to harsh conditions. That lifestyle not only toughens a person physically and mentally, naturally enough, but can also be emotionally desensitizing. That being said, however, I find the procedures performed on animals in the name of research and the mistreatment of farm animals, especially on corporate farms, deeply disturbing. And I find it simply incredulous that such practices are perfectly legal in our country and through most of the rest of the civilized world.

"Worldwide it is estimated that the number of vertebrate animals—from zebrafish to non-human primates—ranges from the tens of millions to more than 100 million used annually. Invertebrates, mice, rats, birds, fish, frogs, and animals not yet weaned are not included in the figures in the United States; one estimate of mice and rats used in the US alone in 2001 was 80 million." [Wikipedia]

In order to test the efficacy and side-effects of some experimental drug, including determination as to what constitutes a lethal overdose--usually accompanied by excrutiating pain--they first give the animal--a dog, cat, chimpanzee--the disease in question, then, at various stages of drug development and degree of disease, watch what transpires. If they've gone off on a tangent and the effects are detrimental, they backtrack and start again, euthanizing the animal, or animals, tested upon and grabbing a fresh batch, as though they were merely inanimate expendable things.

Testing of household products on animals--will this particular bleach or solvent cause blindness, skin blisters? What happens when this or that pesticide or toxic ingredient is ingested?--goes unnoticed. And even though it's completely unnecessary--given today's alternatives--the cosmetics industry continues to test products using animals.

Here's what I see. This practice of using animals to experiment on, either for behavioral and physiological research or to test products, medicinal or otherwise, began during World War II. At that time, the Germans had no compunction about using human beings, against their will, of course, as experimental fodder. People knew this. The stinging shock of it desensitized researchers and people at large into accepting, without much conscience, experimentation on lower animals.

Ancient Rome was the most sophisticated of societies, it represented the gold standard for civilization per se--we are taught--yet the Roman populace enjoyed watching gladiators fight to the death and people torn to pieces by lions. During the period of the Inquisition, the Church's authority was absolute and unrivaled. Suffusing all political systems in Europe, its rule was the ultimate expression of western civilization. As such, it realized new heights in imaginative ways to torture and kill people. And, without objection, before or after, Thomas Edison publically electrocuted an elephant, who suffered horribly, as one might expect, in order to demonstrate the power and efficiency of his DC current. Nowadays, none of the above would be allowed, at least not in any healthy society; our collective moral consciousness has evolved, grudgingly and in fits and starts perhaps, but evolved nonetheless.

However, experimenting on animals has not only continued, but has spread throughout the world, increasing exponentially. Is it because it's done behind closed doors? Out of sight? I think so. The cries and squeals and suffering of so many animals kept muffled and hidden can't possibly play on our conscience or our heartstrings. How would civilization progress? If we bother to contemplate lab animals at all, their plight is justified by an occasional breakthrough in a pharmaceutical product or genetic discovery, by the determination of something detrimental to our health at the cost of some animal's life.

It became accepted and tacitly approved by the public sixty to seventy years ago and since then has been routinely ingrained in our mind, part of the socialization process. But I believe unneccesarily treating animals with such cold-hearted contempt does our humanity no service, and its utility needs to be revisited. In truth, given today's computer capabilities compared to the Turing machines of World War II vintage, experimenting on animals is an anachronism, and may very well be holding back research and beneficial breakthroughs.

"Four states in the U.S. — Minnesota, Utah, Oklahoma, and Iowa — require their shelters to provide animals to research facilities. Fourteen states explicitly prohibit the practice, while the remainder either allow it or have no relevant legislation." [Wikipedia] Of the fourteen states prohibiting such practice, I find it curious that, except for Hawaii, no state is farther west than Pennsylvania. Do you know the policy of your local animal shelter with regard to selling dogs and cats to research facilities?

When I read the material and look at the pictures, I'm pushed back, stunned by disbelief. There's this whole other world going on, outside of normal, where such practices are not only legitimized and justified, but also publically and governmentally supported and sanctioned. Just looking at the home page of a major "biomedical resource supplier" like Marshall BioResources sends a chill down the spine. On the left side is a looping slideshow of a beagle, a mongrel, and a ferret. Focusing on that alone--apart from the context--one gets the impression of an animal rescue operation or shelter trying to find loving homes for its residents, not an international breeding company with global facilities displaying its merchandise to prospective customers to be used for experimentation purposes.

No one's supposed to raise an eyebrow; it's all quite ordinary and conventionally accepted; morality and empathy have no place--it's how things are done! How else are we supposed to test pharmaceuticals? Don't you want vaccines and drugs developed to help people? Of course I want chronic ailments and conditions controlled and, where possible, diseases eradicated; nonetheless, there are alternatives to torturing animals. Unfortunately, there's little will or incentive to employ them or to discover new ones. And as far as non-biomedical research using animals goes, it's completely unjustifiable. Surely there must be a way to determine a particular cosmetic, shampoo, or soap's irritability without sticking it into the eyes of some hapless animal (rabbit, cat, dog) to see what happens. Jesus.

See:

• Beagle Freedom Project
  "Beagles are routinely blinded in the testing of shampoo and soap."

Say What!
During my research I ran across statements that were mind numbing. For instance, an experimenter openly admitted that the reason beagles are preferred to other dog breeds is because their docility and trusting natures (exact words) make them easy to work with.

• Product Testing: Toxic and Tragic -- The Draize Test

• Draize Eye Irritancy Test Fact Sheet -- What it is and alternatives
  • Beauty Without Bunnies | PETA.org
    Welcome to the searchable database of companies that do and that don't test their products on animals!
    In that article: In China, tests on animals are required for cosmetics and other products.

• People for Animals, CHENNAI, India
  Log on to this site and read the introduction by co-founder Shiranee Pereira
  • Animal Alternatives - People for Animals, CHENNAI, India

Marc Bekoff
• Marc Bekoff Official Site
• The Hearts and Minds of Animals: A Discussion with Doctor Marc Bekoff | Forbes Magazine
• The Emotional Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff | YES! Magazine
• Emotional Lives of Animals, by Dr. Marc Bekoff
• Insight Into the Emotional Lives of Animals with Dr. Marc Bekoff - Part 1 | YouTube
• VIDEO: Studying the Emotional Lives of Animals | PBS - Watch Nature Online
• VIDEO: Watch the Full PBS Nature Film: Animal Odd Couples - 53 minutes

Temple Grandin

• Temple Grandin's Webpage
  Livestock Behaviour, Design of Facilities, and Humane Slaughter
• Animals Are Not Things - A View on Animal Welfare Based on Neurological Complexity
• Animal Welfare
• Temple Grandin | STOP ANIMAL ABUSE
• American Radio Works: Fast Food and Animal Rights
• Charlotte Uhlenbroek | Wikipedia

  Uhlenbroek supports Animal Aid: Latest News & Campaigns and their campaign against primate experiments, stating: "I have yet to hear a sufficiently compelling scientific argument that justifies the suffering inflicted on primates in medical research."