Treating Animals like Animals

Mahatma Gandhi said, "I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. I detest the unpardonable slaughter of innocent life in the name of science and of humanity so-called, and all the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence."

The Cutting Edge

Vivisection, the conducting of experiments on living animals, is an issue that concerns not only companion animals but animals caught or bred for the purpose of experiments.

Since 1958 the U.S. has passed or amended more than two dozen acts or resolutions to protect animals. One of these, the Laboratory Welfare Act, passed in 1966, set minimum standards of care and housing of dogs, cats, primates, rabbits, hamsters and guinea pigs on the premises of animal dealers and laboratories, and it stipulated that dogs and cats must be identified to prevent theft. Animal dealers had to be licensed and laboratories had to be registered.

In 1970, the Act was revised to include all warm-blooded animals. It was also expanded to apply to wholesale pet dealers and to exhibition. The bill was renamed the Animal Welfare Act. In 1976 it was further expanded to include just about everyone who handled an animal. Now an animal had to have a veterinary certificate before traveling; cock fights and dog fights became illegal; and all involved government agencies became responsible for proving that they were following this law. This was the first time that breaking such laws became punishable by a fine -- of up to $1,000.

In 1985, the laws became even stricter, to protect animals from pain and distress, and the fines were raised to $2,500.

Japan, where I spent half of the last two decades, had while I was there, and probably still has, one law, Law #105, the "Animal Protection Law," which ambiguously forbids animal abuse without adequately defining it. For instance, Article 2 says that no one should kill, injure or annoy animals without any cause, but fails to define what might be considered a good cause (or what might be considered annoyance). Policemen who are approached by concerned citizens with reports of animal abuse generally answer that they have never heard of Law #105 and that at any rate no animal abuse can be proved to be occurring.

Japan -- the Worst?

Mr. Brian Gunn, the general secretary of England's National Association for Veterinary Science, conducted a worldwide investigation into the conditions of laboratory animals. In Japanese labs he found that a large number of animals could be obtained at any time for research and practice surgery. Animals were operated on, then just set aside to be taken away. And where were they taken? To a clinic, perhaps, for recovery? No way. They were taken to a room and dumped onto the dirty floor, without so much as a blanket; sometimes a piece of paper to lie on was provided. They would awaken from their operations with no painkillers. Some of them took months to die.

In Japan, there are few controls. The Education Ministry did ask Japanese colleges and universities to set up guidelines for sparing animals unnecessary pain. But what good is asking torturers to set up their own guidelines for torture?

Mr. Gunn was assisted in his investigation by JAWS, the Japan Animal Welfare Society, which is the only organization of its kind in Japan.

JAWS reported in one of its newsletters that a Japanese junior high school teacher had his students hold down a live, conscious kitten while he dissected it. He used no anesthesia on it at all as he cut it apart. Many Japanese protested, and JAWS' London office encouraged English animal lovers to protest, too. However, Law #105 is not interpreted to apply to laboratory animals -- only to those animals who have "owners" or "proprietors." Lab animals, obviously, are not even considered to have proprietors. The teacher was reprimanded and that was the end of the matter. Another incident took place at Inabaji Primary School in Nagoya; on the school grounds, in full view of students, a teacher beat a dog unconscious. JAWS "immediately filed a request with the vice-principal of the school, the Nagoya Board of Education and the Nakamura Police Station [which served the ward of Nagoya in which the school was located] that this teacher be severely punished. The police professed complete ignorance of the incident, while the Board of Education came back with a very ambiguous reply." Evidence of how well children learn such "lessons" is all too available: elsewhere, youngsters poured gasoline over a dog and then set it on fire; others threw live dogs into an incinerator.

Dr. Chizuko Yamaguchi, a JAWS veterinarian, says: "Japan is backwards in this matter. Some people don't know how to contact or care for animals. We try hard to teach them," she sighs. "We go to kindergartens, elementary schools and junior high schools but it's hard to get an animal welfare curriculum in the school. We sometimes ask the education department of each prefecture but they usually say 'no.' I don't know why."

Useless Tests

The Japan Automobile Institute in Tsukuba, of Space Center fame, used live monkeys to test the results of car crashes. When the International League for the Protection of Primates complained, the researchers said that they'd felt sorry for the monkeys... but that hadn't stopped them from performing the tests.

Dr. Katsunori Miyoshi of Nagoya's Dobutsu Aigo Center ("animal love center" -- about which more later) says, "I don't think that Japan is the only nation to be blamed in the way of treating animals. We historically have the spirit of consideration, as a Buddhist nation. And I also don't think the Japanese are worse than the French or other people." Certainly Japan is not the world's sole animal abuser; in New Woman Magazine, Hans Ruesch reported a number of shocking abuses in the U.S., including the crucifixion of a dog -- ostensibly to study the "duration of the agony of Christ." An important point he made in his report was that "since animals react differently from humans, every new product or method tried our on animals must be tried out again on humans, through careful clinical tests. Therefore, tests on animals are not only dangerous because they may lead to wrong conclusions, but they also retard clinical investigation, which is the only valid kind."

A case in point is the AIDS research that is being carried out on chimpanzees. Chimps are injected with plasma or body fluids from human AIDS patients and sometimes with the virus itself. Despite the fact that the virus has been shown to stay alive inside some chimps and that it can often be found in blood taken from them, of all the chimps experimented on, not one single chimp has actually gotten AIDS. Needless to say, the injected chimps are kept in isolation for the rest of their lives.

One might also, separately, question the validity of experiments dealing with a sexually transmitted immunological deficiency on a) animals who are too young to have sex, and b) animals who are under an unusual amount of stress (such as the stress of being kidnapped and imprisoned), which in itself can help to destroy the immune system.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has reported that "of 102 dogs used in a set of cancer experiments from 1975-1981, 'Hope' [the "City of Hope," apparently the name of a laboratory] records the deaths of more than half (54) 'before risk of cancer,' i.e., before reaching the point of the experiment. Of these, seven died of 'anesthesia,' eight of 'miscellaneous causes,' 11 from succumbing to poisoning by poor calculation of introduced substances.' One disappeared, four died of complications within days of the start of Croton oil applications, probably as a result of 'leakage around catheter'... one died after bronchial pneumonia had been noted for three months. Only three dogs were left to be 'sacrificed.'"

Not only are animal tests worse than useless, they are duplicated thousands of times, so thousands of animals suffer and die for the same useless results. There is, of course, a logical reason for this duplication: continuation of funding. Scientists are no fonder of unemployment than are the rest of us.

Furthermore, not all animal experimentation is directed at curing diseases. The U.S. Federal Drug Administration requires all new substances to be tested before they are marketed. This is true of drugs and it is also true of cosmetics, weed killers, preservatives for food, food colorings, fly sprays, hair sprays, oven cleaners, paints and lipsticks: all must be tested before humans use them.

LD 50

The most popular method of testing these substances has traditionally been the Lethal Dose 50 percent test, known as LD 50, in which the scientist finds out how much of a toxic substance will, in a single dose, kill half of a group of test animals. (Notice that the purpose of the test is to kill the animals!) The substances are administered in various ways: sometimes they are forced into an animal's stomach by tube, sometimes through a hole cut into the throat, sometimes injected under the skin, into a vein or into the peritoneal lining of the stomach. They are applied to the eyes, rectum or vagina. They can even be inhaled in a gas mask. This is supposed to determine how much of a particular substance it would take to harm a human -- but what harms a rat might not harm a human at all (and vice versa).

Ruesch's observations notwithstanding, and although there are many more reliable ways (such as computer imaging and the use of human cells) to test substances and conduct research on diseases than to experiment on live animals, most companies still choose to poison animals with their products.

Inspecting the Labs

Yamaguchi says, "It's very difficult to get into the laboratories. The ancient facilities we could get into any time, at any entrance, but recently they have been closed to us. We must get permission. In Japan, as in other countries, doctors and researchers are very afraid of animal rights groups.

"There is no law [for lab animals] in Japan. There is no inspection system. It is very difficult to know where the cruelty occurs. But we have members working at laboratories as animal caretakers. Many years ago we got into the university laboratories to care for neglected animals." When asked whether the universities gave JAWS members any trouble over this, Dr. Yamaguchi insists, "The universities rely on us. Now we're working together. The university's animal technicians have started to learn how to care for animals. Before, they didn't know how. But we're afraid if we leave the facility, animals will be neglected again."

Volunteers

Methods of acquiring lab animals are often as murky as the motivations. Baby chimps are kidnapped from the jungles of Africa and transported to laboratories in which they will spend the rest of their lives. Adult chimps are also taken -- to be bred; many animals are held exclusively for breeding so that their offspring may be used in experiments. But some laboratory animals once were family pets. How do pets end up being tortured in laboratories?

About 90 million animals are used each year for research in the U.S. alone. Sources include breeding farms which raise animals specifically for research, zoos, and animal shelters; some research animals are stolen pets. In Japan, the situation is at least as bad and far less easily calculated.

In the U.S., the Pet Protection Act, number H.R. 4871, was introduced in Committee during the 99th Congress on May 21, 1986, but so far, no action has been taken. (If some new action has been taken of which I am unaware I would love to hear about it.) It would have prohibited the use of government funds to purchase animals from shelters or pounds for research purposes. After all, the purpose of an animal shelter is to protect animals.

Shelter

The Dobutsu Aigo Center, run by the city of Nagoya and located near its famous Higashiyama Zoo, has two purposes. One is to receive lost or unwanted dogs and cats; to try to find the original (or new) owner(s); and failing that, after four days, to destroy the animals with carbonic acid gas. The center's other purpose is to educate people about animal care. Dr. Miyoshi admits that he sometimes gives unwanted animals to such establishments as Nagoya University, Gifu University, Aichi Gakuin University and the Cancer Center Hospital, for research purposes.

"We don't give them to private institutions or doctors: only to public institutions, and only if their purposes are something to which we can agree. We ask them what kind of experiments will be done on the animals, and we sometimes reject their request for animals. I consider it cruel if the experiments allow the animals to suffer for a long time." Dr. Miyoshi doubts that researchers would lie about their intentions in order to acquire animals. "They are all reliable public institutions," he insists. "They must show us documentation." Dr. Miyoshi personally visits laboratories, warns researchers to stop experiments that seem too cruel (alerting them to the existence of Law #105), and refuses to provide any more animals to such institutions. "I don't want to give [researchers] animals, but if it's for mankind and for the improvement of science, I have to. And if an animal can't recover after an experiment, it should be led to death immediately. And I believe that the institutions we provide with animals are not cruel." The Center never receives animals back from researchers; can we assume, then, that there have been no survivors?

Abandoned

How do pets become so very available for experimentation? To a certain extent in the U.S. but much, much more so in Japan, pets are abandoned like used toys. Dr. Tetsuo Mizuno of Nagoya's Kamiyashiro Pet Clinic says, "not all pet-owners keep animals for life, from a feeling of affection. Some keep them as workers, and when the animals become useless, the owners don't feed them or give them water. I think there are such cases abroad too,." Often, people buy puppies, tie them up outside (ostensibly as watchdogs) and never again let them off their leashes, so that as they grow bigger their collars grow tighter and become embedded into their flesh.

The Dobutsu Aigo Center sometimes gets phone calls reporting animal abuses, and, says Dr. Miyoshi, "we visit these owners to teach them the right way to keep animals." The biggest problems are "the lack of exercise and where the animal is kept. Sometimes dogs are tied up in the sunshine during the hot summer, and some owners don't know that the dog should always have water available." If the owner resents the intrusion, Dr. Miyoshi explains, "Your animal can't talk, so I must speak for him!"

Dr. Mizuno adds, "Japanese people sometimes take care of animals from a sense of fashion, not from the heart. If a pet is resistant to its owner, or if the pet becomes sick and its style changes, the owner doesn't continue to take care of it." Some take their pets to the Dobutsu Aigo Center to be killed. Dr. Miyoshi says, "Our hope is to decrease the number of animals abandoned by people and treated in cruel ways for experiments. So part of our facility is for teaching people and their children the importance of animals' lives, and their loveliness. They can hold animals here; we teach them the way to hold them. We have lectures here; anyone can come here any time." Owners who don't take their pets to the Center take them to highways, temples, schoolyards, anywhere far enough from home, and abandon them. (Law #105 stipulates a fine of no more than 30,000 yen -- approximately $300 -- for abandonment of animals; I have never heard of an instance in which this fine was actually applied.)

Dr. Yamaguchi recalls that in 1987 "thirteen pedigreed dogs, including Chihuahuas, Maltese and Pugs, were abandoned in the mountains in Hyogo Prefecture without food and water, and when our members found them, half of them had already died. Some had serious skin diseases. We suspected that these animals were abandoned by pet shops or breeders." The surviving dogs were rescued and kept at the Hanshin Animal Rescue center in Nishinomiya City. "They are still there [in 1989]. Homes are difficult to find for them, because some still have skin diseases. We
She adds, "We need to set up strict animal protection laws; otherwise, we can't go to court. People say, 'animals are animals, and humans can do anything they want.'"

Dr. Mizuno concludes, "Now humans live on the earth, but if there were a fourth world war and all the humans died, other animals or insects would live on the earth. Now only humans have big power, but the earth is not only for humans, but for all animals and living things."