Open Letter:

Estimates vary, but it's probably not outrageous to state that around 100 million animals per year are used in experiments worldwide. That number doesn't include invertebates, rats, mice, birds, fish, and frogs. It's conducted inside universities, medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, farms, defense establishments, and commercial facilities that provide animal-testing services to industry. Animal shelters and pounds are required by law to hold dogs and cats for five days before selling them to a dealer. That's all, five days. 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. These animals are classified as "random source." Dealers obtain them any way they can, apparently, oftentimes under fraudulent circumstances, not only from shelters, but also from want ads and grabbed off the street. Stolen pets have been found in various university medical labs.

Besides subjecting chimpanzees to nerve-gas and blowing-up live pigs from the inside-out, just to see what happens to the internal organs, the military practices what they call "trauma training" for medics and special soldiers. This entails procedures like cutting off the legs of awake and non-anesthetized animals in order to toughen service personnel for possible combat.

I could go on, it's endless. After recently watching a documentary on chimpanzee experimentation, I did some research. Reading about how these animals are treated and looking at pictures, I felt like I was living in medieval times. Considering the degree to which this testing is defended, not only by the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries, but also by the Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health, I had to ask myself why I found it so objectionable. Don't I want drug companies to develop cures for diseases? Do I mind if they induce painful, debilitating illnesses in dogs in order to test experimental drugs, which may themselves cause serious illness? After they use them, they're euthanized anyway, so, what's the difference? Don't I want eyeliner and eyelash stuff tested for irritation by first placing it into the eyes of rabbits and cats? I've seen enough women applying eyelash stuff while driving their cars so many times that I can see where that could be a problem.

There must be other ways to do this kind of research and experimentation. It's way too ghoulish and twisted. Only sociopaths could do that kind of work, day in, day out. If you weren't to begin with, it could certainly push you in that direction.

I'm a retired commercial fisherman with zero political clout or powerful connections. So, there's nothing I can do about it. My hope is that someone reads this who can and is outraged enough to want to. If you're interested in finding out more, I have a section on my website at: http://www.adriandorn.com/networks.htm#trauma. However, if you're the squeamish type, please don't bother.

Sincerely,
Adrian Dorn