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Cruel and Useless Experiments on Monkeys, Dogs and Cats at UCSF

by Michelle Tsai
EXPERIMENTS ON MONKEYS, CATS AND DOGS AT
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO (UCSF) – 2003-2004 (FUNDED BY OUR TAX DOLLARS) – CRUEL AND UNSCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS DISGUISED AS BENEFICIAL – INSANE “RESEARCHERS" PROTECTED BY CORRUPT UNIVERSITY OFFICIALS CONTINUE TO HARM ANIMALS TO PRODUCE FLAWED/USELESS DATA FOR PERSONAL AND MONETARY GAIN:
Note: Unscrupulous officials at UCSF will dismissively say, "People can make experiments sound as horrible as they want to make it sound, but that's not really the way they are." This statement is an oxymoron. Either the below atrocities happen or they do not, and according to the protocols from the university, they do.


Project #10000094 (used 10 owl monkeys, 10 marmoset monkeys, 120 mice and 586 rats). Claimed Purpose: To study learning disabilities, schizophrenia, depression, repetitive strain injury, stroke injury, etc. Procedures: The monkeys are restrained around the neck and waste in a chair that prevents their hands from reaching their heads. They are restrained up to five hours each day, five days per week. They undergo several surgeries to implant electrodes to record brain activity. Fluid and food restriction/reward is used to make them perform repetitive tasks beyond the point of injury. The researchers also put microphone-headphones on the monkeys to see how they would react to a distorted play-back of their own vocalizations.


Project #96012538 (used 18 squirrel monkeys). Claimed Purpose: To study brain circuits in the auditory forebrain and other brain areas. Procedures: The monkeys are made to lose their hearing in various ways. They are bombarded with hours of painful loud noise to cause partial to serious deafness. The monkeys undergo open-skull brain recordings that last continuously for days on end until they are killed. (Please visit http://www.ippl.org/deafen.html for more information.)


Project #89005007 (used 15 squirrel monkeys, 5 cats and 30 rats). Claimed Purpose: To study lazy eye and imbalance of eye muscles. Procedures: One eyelid is sutured shut soon after birth. Eye muscles are severed. Animals are restrained and paralyzed in brain-mapping experiments that last 24 hours a day for up to five days non-stop.


Project #01018525 (used 30 rhesus monkeys). Claimed Purpose: To "compare vector mediated gene delivery to the dopamine perikarya in the substantia nigra versus to the dopamine terminals in the striatum." Procedures: To cause Parkinson-like symptoms, monkeys are injected with a neurotoxin to destroy their dopamine neurons. Their behavior is then tested by observing how much trouble they have using their arms to reach for rewards from a covered plate that has a right opening and a left opening.


Project #01019759 (used 8 rhesus monkeys). Claimed Purpose: To "determine the relationship between neuronal activity in the cortex and symptom relief in response to Deep Brain Stimulation for each of the four motor areas," and to determine if "different symptoms have different neuroanatomic or physiologic substrates in the cortex." Procedures: Two capture poles are used to force the monkeys from the cage to the restraint chair. Food restriction/reward is used to make the monkey grasp a joystick to control a visible cursor on a computer monitor. The monkey is made to use this cursor to capture a succession of visual targets on the screen. Successful capture will be rewarded with a drop of food through a tube. On weekdays, the monkeys will receive food only during and immediately following a behavioral session. Only on weekends do the monkeys have free access to food. Holes are made in their skulls to insert recording chambers, connectors and bolts. Wires are inserted to wind under the skin all the way from their head to the 12 muscles of their right or left arm. They will undergo single-cell brain recording sessions for one year. During the sessions, the monkey’s head is locked in place with the head bolt and the non-working arm restrained while the monkey is made to perform the computer task continuously for up to four hours each weekday. After collecting pre-lesion data, the monkeys will be injected with a neurotoxin to cause Parkinson-like symptoms, and more recordings will be taken. Then deep brain stimulations will be administered to see if the monkeys will improve.


Project #10000538. (used 4 macaque monkeys and 5 rats). Claimed Purpose: To "study the somatosensory thalamus of the monkey and how thalamic neural circuitry is changed following partial deafferentation, such as occurs with spinal cord injury." Procedures: Experimenters surgically damage parts of the monkeys' spinal cord to see what happens to their brains as a result.


Project #02021902. (4 macaque monkeys used.) Claimed Purpose: To "map out the flow of information from vision to the act of reaching in the primate cortex, and to obtain a unique view of the network dynamics underlying the planning and control of reaching." Procedures: The monkeys are restricted from food or liquid and then made to reach to visual targets in a Virtual Reality environment for liquid or semi-solid food rewards administered through a tube. A bolt, used to immobilize the head during single-brain-cell electrical recordings, is implanted onto the skull. If an implant does not remain secure due to bone erosion, more bolts are placed and dental acrylic applied. A recording chamber is also implanted. Wires are inserted to wind under the skin from the head down to the muscles of the arms to record muscle activity. Experiments last up to five hours a day, four days a week, for three or more years. As the activity of single brain cells are recorded one at a time, electrodes are poked through various sites of the brain numerous times while the monkeys are awake. Various sites of the brain are also shocked to see how the monkeys would respond.


Project #00018211 (used 3 rhesus monkeys). Claimed Purpose: "To determine the roles of the basal ganglia in the development of dystonia, a condition in which muscles are overactive, producing abnormal postures and/or twisting, writhing movements." Procedures: The monkeys are made to develop hand dystonia by a repetitive motion task. They are forced from the cage to the restraint chair using two capture poles. Two recording chambers and three head fixation bolts are surgically screwed to the skull. Wires are inserted to wind under the skin from the head to the muscles of the left and right arm. Recording sessions last up to 4 hours every weekday for 18 months. The monkeys are forced to repetitively open and close their hands to receive a semi-solid food reward through a tube by squeezing a computer-controlled hand grip. They will also be timed on a fruit-picking task. After 12-25 weeks of this, with 200-400 trials per day, the monkeys will develop hand dystonia characterized by posturing of the hand, and reduced ability to perform motor tasks. The experimenters then surgically destroy a part of the monkeys' brains (their basal ganglia) to see if the monkeys would improve.


THE GRUESOME EXPERIMENTS OF STEPHEN LISBERGER CONTINUES TO THIS DAY:
Project #01018790 Title: Neural Control of Eye Movement; Cortical Plasticity System (14 rhesus monkeys used.) Claimed Purpose: To "discover the mechanisms of basic brain functions such as learning, memory, and the generation of motor activity" of the eye.
Please visit: http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/ucsf/lisbergerindex.html
On his web site, http://keck.ucsf.edu/~sgl/, UCSF animal researcher Stephen Lisberger boasts of "the good life" - lunchtime workouts at the local gym, surfing the web to keep up with the stock market and his favorite sports teams, dining at chic Bay Area restaurants, and spending weekend afternoons at wine-tastings and softball games.
If only "his" monkeys were so lucky.
Chained on leashes inside their cages, "his" monkeys sit totally alone, metal coils in their eyes, bolts, metal plates, steel cylinders and electrodes drilled and cemented in their skulls. Eyeglasses that distort their vision are cemented to their faces for up to 12 weeks at a time. They are denied free access to fluids in order to keep them thirsty and motivate them to "perform" for juice rewards.
Prolonged Suffering & Death
Clinical records from Lisberger's lab reveal a gruesome cycle of sedations, invasive surgical procedures, infections, and medical interventions.Swollen eyes, seeping pus, bleeding surgical wounds, infected brains and depressed behavior are the norm.
To prepare monkeys for his experiments, Lisberger starts by slicing their eyes open with scalpels so that wire coils can be placed inside.
Screws are then drilled into their skulls, and a metal plate is placed under the scalp. Bolts that protrude from the plate through the scalp will later be used to screw monkeys by the head into restraining chairs.
Next, Lisberger drills holes into the monkeys' skulls and inserts stainless steel recording cylinders. Electrodes are driven through the cylinders directly into their brains.
After a series of surgical procedures, a neurosurgeon drills into the skull, exposes the brain and removes a part of it with suction. After this, the monkeys cannot sit or stand for several days, and must be handfed food and drink.
Some of these surgical procedures are carried out many times, as bone erodes around the various bolts and implants and the eye coils cause such irritation that they must be removed and placed in the other eye. In addition, scar tissue must be peeled from the lining of the brain "dozens of times" for each monkey.
In experiments Lisberger calls "running the monkeys," the primates are strapped into restraining chairs, heads bolted into place so they are unable to move, and placed inside a plastic box. The chair is placed on a turntable that rotates them periodically.
The monkeys are forced to sit in these chairs for up to 8 hours a day, while electrodes implanted in their brains record neurological activity as they move their eyes in a certain pattern for juice rewards. If a monkey doesn't perform, he or she is denied fluids entirely until the next day when the animal is placed on the experiment again.
For some of these unfortunate animals, the daily horror can last three years or longer.
Science from the Dark Ages
Lisberger has been conducting virtually the same experiments for over 21 years. In that time, tremendous progress in research technology has rendered Lisberger's gruesome and archaic methods obsolete. Functional scanning technology, for example, now provides scientists to study the brain non-invasively, and new methods now allow scientists to record cellular brain activity in real human patients, making monkey data unnecessary and irrelevant. Of one such technology, fast MRI, a brain researcher from the University of Pittsburgh told the New York Times, "We have, in a single afternoon, been able to replicate in humans what took 20 years to do in nonhuman primates.'
Gruesome Experiments Violate Federal Law
In recent years, Lisberger has run afoul of federal law and has been found by the USDA to: a) not be following the experimental procedure approved by UCSF’s animal research oversight committee; b) not searching for alternatives to his archaic training techniques using water deprivation; c) not giving monkeys enough fluids; d) not ensuring that monkeys are getting enough food; e) not providing monkeys with adequate veterinary care; and e) using sick animals in experiments.
In addition the Animal Welfare Act violations, Lisberger’s experiments violate other federal guidelines including those calling for social housing of primates (Lisberger keeps his monkeys housed alone) and against multiple surgical procedures (Lisberger subjects the monkeys to as many as nine survival brain surgeries.)
Despite all of these problems, UCSF’s Committee on Animal Research continues to rubberstamp Lisberger’s experiments, making only slight modifications to his water deprivation procedures following the USDA findings. Appallingly, even those modifications continue to violate the Animal Welfare Act, according to the most recent USDA inspection report dated January 2002.

DOG EXPERIMENTS:


Project #03022783 (550 dogs to be used in a three-year study.)
Claimed Purpose: “To develop new therapies that may prevent cardiac arrhythmias from leading to irreversible heart damage and chronic disease." Procedures: 150 dogs would be surgically implanted with one pacemaker. Another 150 dogs would be implanted with two pacemakers. Yet another 150 dogs would be subjected to “mitral valve avulsion," a surgical procedure that tears a portion of the mitral valve of the dog's heart in order to cause “mitral regurgitation," or the blood to flow backwards. Another 100 dogs will be used as controls. The 450 dogs who undergo surgery are expected to survive 4 weeks to 6 months. However, “the only animals that would survive for up to 6 months are the RAP (rapid atrial pacing) dogs, and this is very rare." The dogs “will be monitored weekly, and daily if problems arise." Problems may be “infection in pacemaker pocket, signs of heart failure (i.e., ascites, lethargy), appearance of continued pain such as crying, flinching from touch, limping or in any way favoring incision area, or weight loss." Some dogs will be given “experimental drugs"; i.e., Ace inhibitor, PAI-1 inhibitor, TFG-B antagonist, and Pirfenidone. Thirty percent of the surgically impaired dogs are expected to die before the project ends. All 550 dogs, if they survive, will eventually undergo a terminal 8-hour-long electrophysiological study. While the dogs are under general anesthesia, their chests are cut open. “To support the heart, a pericardial cradle is made by suturing each corner of the cut pericardium to the skin. Recordings of the heart's internal blood pressure, EKG, PQRST intervals, and heart rates are taken for later analysis. Finally, the dogs will be euthanized and their hearts removed for optical mapping, cellular electrophysiology and histology analysis."


Project #03022715 (200 dogs to be used.)
Claimed Purpose: “To understand the mechanism by which heart failure causes atrial fibrillation [arrhythmia]." Procedures: Experimenters plan to implant pacemakers in 160 dogs. 40 dogs will be used as controls. Three to five days after surgery, the pacemakers will be programmed to rapidly pace at 200 to 250 beats per minute for 2-6 weeks and/or until the dogs show symptoms of heart failure. There is the potential for severe pain as "adverse effects" include "abdominal bloating from heart failure, pulmonary edema and coughing" and infection from the implantation of the pacemakers. The dogs will receive analgesics “on an as needed basis." Pain will be assessed by “whether the dog flinches when touched, cries out when touched or in any way favors the incision [from the surgery], or fails to eat and drink." It is planned for the dogs to live from 2-7 weeks after surgery. Five percent of dogs are expected to die due to heart failure during the course of the experiment. The dogs will undergo weekly EKG's “to assess the degree of heart failure and/or mitral regurgitation." All dogs, including those in the control group, will be euthanized in the end and their hearts cut out for “optical mapping, cellular electrophysiology and histology analysis" or autoradiography.


Project #10000961 (used 64 dogs/puppies, 75 mice, 64 pigs, 218 rabbits and 80 rats). Claimed Purpose: “To better understand the mechanisms leading to sudden [cardiac] death, to detect patients at increased risk, and to develop improved therapy." Procedures: German shepherd/mongrel puppies, one to three days old, undergo surgical removal of the right or left stellate ganglion (a mass of nerve cells located in the region between the neck and upper chest). Two weeks later, the puppies undergo general anesthesia to have their hearts cut out and "processed for autoradiography and in vitro studies." Other puppies will be injected with drugs to cause their nerves to malfunction. The puppies used as controls will also be killed and have their hearts taken out. Aside from the 64 German shepherd/mongrel pups, 64 pigs, 218 rabbits and 75 mice and 80 rats meet similar fates in related experiments.


CAT EXPERIMENTS:


Project #10000833 (used 47 cats). Claimed Purpose: To “improve our understanding of…normal development of the auditory system and will help to define the critical and sensitive periods of postnatal maturation in mammals."
Procedures: Kittens removed via Caesarian sections from their mothers at 58 days of gestation are injected with tracers immediately or 1-3 days later. Kittens removed via C-sections at 60 days of gestation have part of their hearing nerves destroyed using laser or micropipette, and then are killed at 12 weeks in terminal procedures described below. The mothers will be “retired" as breeders and/or used in subsequent terminal experiments.

One-day to one-month-old kittens are deafened by 16-25 daily injections of the antibiotic neomycin sulfate. The deafened kittens will be studied at various ages up to 12 months to “evaluate the effect on the central projections of the auditory nerve." They will undergo terminal surgery when both ears will be cut open and tracers injected into the inner ears. They are maintained under “light anesthesia” with sodium pentobarbital for another 4-10 hours to allow the tracer to work through the nerves. After another round of injections into the inner ears, they are euthanized.

Another group of deafened kittens, 6-7 weeks old, will receive a cochlear prosthetic device implant for chronic electrical stimulation administered 4 hours per day, 5 days per week for 12-45 weeks. They will then undergo terminal surgery. The outer part of their brains will be suctioned away to expose the inside. Electrical responses to stimulation are then recorded within the brain continuously for a period of 2-3 days, with a team of experimenters working in shifts around the clock. Finally, a tracer is injected and they are euthanized.


Project #96013273 (26 cats and 24 rats used.)
Claimed Purpose: “To understand the functional organization of the visual cortex and more generally of the cerebral cortex…Simultaneous observation of multiple cells allows inference of intracellular relationships and circuitry not possible through observations of single cells.”
Procedures: The cats are anesthetized, placed in a restraining device and hung by the lower spine with a wire. Muscles around the lower spine are cut away where the wire enters the body. This is to minimize breathing movements while recording brain activity. The scalp is cut open, an opening made on the skull and recording devices inserted. Then the cat is paralyzed with a neuromuscular blocking drug, which makes it essentially impossible to determine whether the cat is in pain or not. Furthermore, the lower the anesthetics used, the better the brain electrical recordings will be. To ensure absolutely no eye movement, the eyeballs are glued to metal pads that are attached to posts. For the glue to work, the outermost layer of the eyeball is removed. The cat’s brain is further cut open to expose the “visual cortex and subcortical structures (including lateral geniculate nucleus, superior colliculus, and optic nerves, tracts, and radiations)” into which electrodes would be inserted.


Project # 97014043 (used 8 cats, 8 kittens, and 18 guinea pigs).
Claimed Purpose: To “examine physiological and anatomical consequences” of destroying parts of the cats’ spiral ganglion (hearing nerves). Procedures: In a nutshell, the cats’ (and guinea pigs’) heads are cut open and their brains mapped invasively by removing parts of the brain and by destroying nerves. All subjects are eventually euthanized.


Project #97014344 (36 kittens, 64 ferrets, and 20 mice used.)
And
Project #10000395 (116 cats and 152 ferrets used.)
Principal Investigator: Michael P. Stryker

(Stryker has been torturing animals for more than 27 years. No useful information has ever been obtained that would help humans by depriving animals of sight and sleep, then cutting their brains open to look at so-called “re-wiring." The experimenters were only able to brag of one conclusion from their work: sleep and sight deprivation affects brain development – which anyone with common sense should already know. The following news article from UCSF shows how the criminals bragged about their "accomplishments":
http://pub.ucsf.edu/newsservices/releases/2003123026 )

To learn about the real details of Stryker's barbaric experiments, please visit:
http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/vivcampaigns/stryker.html


Note:

"Vivisection is the blackest of all black crimes." – Mohandas Gandhi (1869- 1948)

"Whoever doesn't hesitate to vivisect will hardly hesitate to lie about it." – George Bernard Shaw (1856- 1950)

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