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OSU President Cans Anthrax Vaccine Research On Primates
Wrath0fb0b writes "Oklahoma State University President Burns Hargis has abruptly canceled an NIH-funded study on an anthrax vaccine in primates. (The primates would have to be euthanized afterward.) There is suspicion that the decision was meant to appease large donor Madeleine Pickens, the wife of noted huntsman T. Boone Pickens, who had previously pressured the school over animal-rights issues. Scientists counter that the study was approved by the NIH peer-review process, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) and subject to the Federal Animal Welfare Act (by virtue of using NIH money) and that the decision by the President has short-circuited months of planning and deliberation on the matter. Hargis has denied being influenced by Pickens and cited 'confidential factors' that he couldn't discuss, telling the faculty council that 'to go through every lurid detail is simply not prudent.' A post on Pickens' blog, on the other hand, obliquely takes credit for the 'great decision,' noting a faculty member's hunch that the 'generous benefactor to OSU and her ties to the Humane Society of the United States may have played a role in the termination of the project.' Meanwhile, the NIH expressed displeasure at the decision, stating, 'NIH fully expects institutions to honor these assurances and commitment to complete NIH supported projects as requested, approved and funded.' Some OSU scientists speculated that the fiasco would make it harder for them to receive NIH funding in the future."
That phrase is used like "Genuine" (tm) or something.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Human life more valuable than animal life? Talk about a redundant statement. Newsflash, humans are animals. If you wanted to be intellectually honest you should just say humans are more important than other "lower" animals. It's not like we are part of the web of life or anything, humans are obviously gods amongst animals.
The real problem with testing on animals, and then putting them to death, is that monkeys are cute.
The real problem is that generations of scientists have been so casual about using animals for experimentation with no ethical concerns whatsoever that it has started to cause problems even when the cause, as it seems to be here, is good. There has for the most part not been any sort of balance approach -- "will this experiment's social utility in the long term justify the pain inflicted on this particular animal"?
Vaccines are a bunch of horseshit much of the time because they are backed not by a desire to cure, but by profit motive.
Which ultimately means that if a company CAN get away with cutting corners, it will. And quality being anything but the highest priority with something as vital as a vaccine...well call me skeptical but I don't trust them.
Look at Nutrasweet's aspartame scandal if you need an example of how unrestrained greed can gum up the works.
The only Americans I know who are dead from Anthrax were killed by a chemical warfare researcher working for the US Army, Bruce Edwards Ivans. So the US army's chemical warfare division developing these virii in order to "protect Americans" just in case the US ever needs to use chemical warfare (beyond napalm, Agent Orange etc.) has only wound up killing Americans.
Now they want to kill off monkeys in the course of this chemical warfare research as well. Great, two birds with one stone, we can torture and kill monkeys and boost the US in the field of chemical warfare.
One thing not mentioned much in the press is that guy at Yale who killed animal researcher Annie Le was the person who took care of the animals there. He was also known to have complained about how she mistreated the animals. PETA has complained for years how that lab mistreated animals, for very little constructive reason.
It is not animals versus humans, it is animals and those working people in the world who are still normal and human versus this OSU collaboration of chemical warfare and animal torture/killing and everything that is along with it. Abu Ghraib, the US support of Osama bin Laden, the US support of Hussein gassing the Kurds then the corporate media using that as a pretext decades later for invading Iraq, rabid right wing US Army chemical researchers killing Americans with the anthrax the army made, the US support of the coup in Honduras, the massive effort to keep working poor Americans from getting healthcare, SUVs causing global warming with their lobby preventing public transportation, US army bases spread all over the world with poor girls from rural villages in the whorehouses surrounding the bases, the Patriot Act, all of it is just one big thing, the big machine that is destroying life on this planet, people are either support it or don't, and from the comments it's obvious where most people on this board stand.