GOOD NEWS SNIPPETS

BPRC Chimps retire to "World class facility"!

Janie is handed a ‘golden key’ to the new Chimpanzee Sanctuary

- Just too late for our last newsletter came the official opening of the new purpose-built sanctuary for the chimps from the BPRC laboratory in Holland after PACE succeeded in getting all chimp work stopped. On November 2nd last year Janie was invited to the opening and was publicly presented by David van Gennep, Director of Stichting Aap, with a golden key to the new facility in recognition of her decade of work, campaigning and lobbying to liberate the laboratory chimps which had been used repeatedly in HIV, Hep C and other biomedical research. The event was attended by the Dutch Minister for Education, Culture and Science and the Minister of Health as well as several academics and representatives of animal welfare organisations.

US Government ends breeding of lab chimpanzees

- The U.S. National Institutes of Health, which finances about half the chimpanzee-based experimental research in America, has announced a permanent ban on the breeding of chimps in their laboratories. This follows a breeding moratorium in the mid-nineties due to the 'surplus' of chimps bred in US labs for the HIV/AIDS research programme which was already being seen to be a waste of resources. The reasons behind the decision were mainly financial as NIH, under public pressure, contracted with a non-profit organisation called Chimp Haven, to operate a sanctuary to provide retirement care for all chimps no longer needed in research. Thus NIH was faced with a bill for up to $500,000 each over the lifetime of approximately 650 chimps. Biomedical research using chimps will continue in the US but it will be important to watch what happens as the available population gradually dwindles. International agreements (CITES) prevent the importing of wild apes so surely there will now be an incentive to phase out the use of chimps and start taking alternative methods seriously.

Of course the hard core chimp experimenters are up in arms but it seems like they are a declining faction. PETA, the US-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals believes that world wide, apart from in America, there now remains only Gabon, in Africa, with a research lab using chimps. PACE intends to find out more information on this location.

Good riddance to VILAB

- Vilab used to be a name which conjured up fearful images of chimps in ramshackle cages in the hot tropical sun of Liberia, all infected with hepatitis, some many times throughout their lives. Vilab was set up as an offshoot of the New York Blood Center, the suspicion being that none of the regulations that apply to primate welfare exist or would be enforced in Liberia (although the eccentric founder Alfred Prince claimed that it was in order to provide a more natural environment for the chimps).

A researcher at the now defunct VILABy

Quite what went wrong is unclear but by 1978 Vilab began to release groups of its chimps onto small islands among the estuaries south of Monrovia. By 1990 there were 44 released chimps and 30 still in the lab. Then civil war erupted and all the released chimps had to be brought back into the lab as it was impossible for staff to negotiate the rivers to reach the islands for feeding. Then in 2005 the operation began again and as of 2006 six islands had been repopulated. August 1st was set as a deadline for the laboratory itself to close. And now Vilab advertises for graduate students to come and do behavioural research on the island sanctuaries.

Sierra Leone enforces CITES

Sierra Leone has started to enforce the international CITES law (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) which makes it illegal to capture or kill chimpanzees. Sierra Leone used to be a major exporter of chimps for biomedical research but enforcement of CITES makes that entirely unlawful Threats still exist however to the dwindling population of about 2000 chimps, from the bushmeat trade and from habitat destruction through deforestation and agricultural pressures.

VERO

Vero (Voice for Ethical Research at Oxford) is a new organisation set up less than a year ago in direct response to the controversy surrounding the university's decision to build a huge new animal research laboratory which will house primates. You may recall that a similar one was proposed for Cambridge a few years back but it aroused such anger that the university backed down. Oxford however was more determined and in the face of enormous public outcry decided to go ahead by building the lab behind a fortress-like barricade. At the same time a new pressure group called Pro-Test was launched by a schoolboy which rallied support for testing on animals. If you live in the Oxford area you can find out more about VERO which is composed of academics and scientists who will provide facts and participate in debates at www.vero.org.uk.

Animal rights MPs elected to Dutch Parliament

- a first for Holland! In November 2006 two women standing as candidates for the Party for the Animals were the first MPs anywhere in the world to be elected based on such a programme. Could it be that the success of PACE's campaign against the BPRC laboratory in 2003 started the ball rolling? We hope that these Dutch MPs might inspire other countries in Europe and elsewhere.

“Chimp Enemy Number One” leaves Medical Research Council

Insert pic of ‘Blakemore’ somewhere in this text

Professor Colin Blakemore, the controversial head of the powerful Medical Research Council has left his top post, after a four year term.

Chimp enemy No. 1

Blakemore, known to all at PACE as “Chimp Enemy Number One”, last year attempted to persuade the powers that be to lift the current U.K. Home Office agreement NOT to use great apes for research. He argued this so that, if necessary, chimps could be used in the future.

Originally, Blakemore made his fame in the ‘70s, by sewing up kittens eyes at birth in unprecedentedly Frankensteinian sight experiments. Since then he has forged a career from a catalogue of monstrous animal experiments which, to this day, he will still defend (it is amazing how some people do not realize the error of their ways until after they are dead.)

It appears that Blakemore was not offered a second term of office, though this had been expected. Readers may also recall that the press reported last year that he was angry at not receiving a knighthood (!). It seems Blakemore may have made other enemies in addition to all those organisations and individuals who dare to question the need to squander the lives of and cause suffering to thousands of monkeys (and millions of other smaller animals) every year on experiments which are mostly ineffective, inappropriate and could be accomplished in many other ways or by tapping into the vast unused pool of human volunteers.

Disappointingly, this is not the last we will hear from Blakemore, as he plans to return to Oxford University (where he was based for most of his career) as Professor of Neuroscience. Most likely, with the building of the huge new animal research laboratory in Oxford (the site of which is heavily barricaded and has to have 24-hour security presence) which will house primates, he will naturally graduate towards a continued and fulfilling career humiliating, torturing and maiming defenceless animals.

Unlike many other eminent medical researchers, Blakemore does not even pay lip service to the need to invest in non-animal alternatives, despite the top-level reports indicating that this is a priority. Rather, he prefers to actively lobby for the importing of more and more monkeys for research and, as stated above, lobbied last year for the lifting of the current policy commitment in the UK to not ever using apes in experiments.

Talk about Old School! What is Oxford University doing popping him back at the head of its Neuroscience department? Surely, this prestigious institution wants to appear progressive not barbaric? Evidently and sadly not.

BUAV Sues Home Office

It is often claimed by British vivisectors that the UK has the best laboratory animal protection regulations that exist. The recent, highly funded and regarded Weatherall Report (see article on page X) itself stated confidently: "the UK Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act of 1986 is the most comprehensive and rigorous system of regulating animal experimentation in the world". Ha! We always thought that claim to be rubbish, and thankfully, our colleagues at the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) have now finally proved it so.

It is true that in theory the would-be experimenter on animals appears to have a difficult job getting approval in the UK. Home Office inspectors, with medical or veterinary qualifications, assess all applications. For a licence to be approved the researcher has to show that the same results could not be achieved with non-verterbrate subjects, that the smallest number of animals practical to give results will be used, that the minimum of suffering will be inflicted, and that the likely benefits of the work to be done outweighs the suffering of the animals. If the researcher wishes to use primates, the proposal has to pass an ethical review panel. And if the application involves procedures of "substantial severity" (as opposed to "mild" or "moderate") it has to be reviewed by the Animal Procedures Committee.

However, in reality it appears that the Home Office has not been taking its responsibilities seriously - in fact it seems to have been colluding with influential animal laboratories such as one at Cambridge University!

A marmoset at Cambridge. Photo: BUAV

This year, BUAV managed to get secret video footage from Cambridge, of marmosets who had had the top of their skulls sawn off, so that damage could be inflicted to specific sections of the brain in order to induce artificial strokes and mobility disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. (You can watch some of the footage on the BUAV website.) BUAV found that the licences for these experiments had been categorised as involving only "moderate" suffering. So, they took the Home Office to court in summer 2006 and won their case! The judge ruled that the Home Office was acting unlawfully in licensing these horrifying invasive experiments on monkeys on the basis of "moderate" suffering, and further cast doubt on the quality of the "expert advice" which had clearly understated the pain, suffering, distress and lasting harm that would be caused to the monkeys.

In a separate case, the Dr Hadwen Trust recently publicised the fact that in June 2006, new European-wide guidelines for the housing and care of laboratory animals were adopted by the Council of Europe Convention to which Britain is a party. But, it seems, the Home Office has done nothing to revise British codes of practice in compliance. Yet the minimum cage sizes for primates in UK labs is seven times smaller for monkeys than the new European standards now set.

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