AR-News: LETTER/Terror And Pain Inside Columbia University Labs

Sat May 8 00:40:54 EDT 2004

Kinship Circle 

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Subject: LETTER/Terror And Pain Inside Columbia University Labs
From: Kinship Circle 
To: 1 Kinship Circle ,
2 Kinship Circle ,
3 Kinship Circle 

SAMPLE LETTER FROM KINSHIP CIRCLE
5/7/04--Terror And Pain Inside Columbia University Labs
http://www.kinshipcircle.org
1 letter

SOURCE OF INFORMATION:
www.PETA.org
www.ColumbiaCruelty.com/
Animal Advocacy: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AnimalAdvocacy/message/3827
Full text of Bill Maher's message to Columbia University: http://www.peta.org/feat/maher/email.html

*DISCLAIMER: The information in these letters is verified with the original source. I cannot assume responsibility for the accuracy of the information or for the consequences of its use.

*Kinship Circle cannot guarantee the validity of email addresses. During a campaign, recipients may change or disable their email addresses.

====================SAMPLE LETTER====================

Mr. David Stern, Commissioner of the NBA
Chair of the Board of Trustees
Columbia University, Olympic Tower
New York, NY 10022
ph: 212-407-8000; fax: 212-826-6197; email: dstern at nba.com  

Dear Mr. Stern,

As a taxpayer who supports viable medical research, I write to convey my shock over decades of animal abuse inside Columbia University laboratories. 

I strongly encourage you to guide Columbia University toward the use of cost-effective non-animal modalities, which are typically two to three times more accurate. At least 70% of medical schools now fulfill study criterion with in vitro analysis, cell imaging, epidemiology, computer simulators, videos and mathematical modeling, genetic and protein analysis, clinical research, human brain mapping technologies, advanced MRI imaging and other non-animal research tools.

Columbia University, on the other hand, receives millions of dollars in grants for researchers such as E. Sander Connolly to induce strokes in baboons by extracting their left eyeballs and leaving the sockets empty to expose a critical blood vessel to their brains. He secures a clamp to a major blood source until these perceptive, socially complex primates suffer an artificial stroke.

Robert Hoffman, M.D., a Stanford-educated neurologist called upon to review Connolly's study, called them "useless," citing 20 years of irrelevant data from after-stroke drug therapy in animals. Carol Van Petten, M.D., a neurologist at the University of Southern California Medical School, said, "There is very little probability that this study or others like it will produce results that will help in the prevention or treatment of stroke in humans."

This study was eventually suspended after a staff veterinarian contacted the IACUC to report violations of the Animal Welfare Act and NIH policy. Senseless cruelty appears to be routine protocol at Columbia. A USDA investigation cited the university for failure to administer basic post-surgical care, veterinary care, and humane euthanasia for animals suffering in experiments.

I encourage you to persuade the university to permanently end stroke experiments in baboons. Please influence Columbia to terminate another study in which metal tubes are surgically grafted into the skulls of female rhesus monkeys to analyze the link between "stress and the menstrual cycle." A third study is so outdated and inhumane, it surely undermines Columbia's credibility. To test the already well established effects of nicotine and morphine on fetuses, pregnant baboons outfitted with backpack devices are constrained in cages while the drugs flow through their bodies. Experimenters then dismember the animals' fetuses.

Animals have been observed with bloodstained faces, the inability to drink or chew, vomiting and severe weight loss, and untreated bone infection. These futile experiments must end if Columbia University hopes to preserve its integrity. Mr. Stern, please question the validity of animal-derived data--look into the eyes of these tormented creatures--and do the right thing.

Thank you, 

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