The Truth about Vivisection

Every year, tens of millions of animals are dissected, infected, injected, gassed, burned and blinded in hidden laboratories on college campuses and research facilities throughout the U.S. Still more animals are used to test the safety of cosmetics, household cleansers and other consumer products. These innocent primates, dogs, cats, rabbits, rodents and other animals are used against their will as research subjects in experiments and procedures that would be considered sadistically cruel were they not conducted in the name of science.

Researchers claim that they must be allowed unfettered access to animals for experiments in order to find cures for human diseases, yet they refuse to address the serious ethical problems of torturing sentient creatures for research purposes. On top of that, over-reliance on animal experimentation has historically hindered scientific advancement and endangered human safety because results from animal research typically cannot be applied to humans. In fact, scientists could save more human lives by using humane non-animal research and testing methods that are more accurate and efficient.

For these reasons, IDA has been fighting to end the needless torture and death of animals and advance human medicine since 1983. Here are some of the major campaign victories we have achieved for animals in that time.

Eleven "CU-34" Monkeys Transferred to Sanctuary
For years, the Committee for Research Accountability, a project of IDA, fought to secure the release of 34 monkeys from the University of Colorado at Denver Health Sciences Center (UCDHSC). These monkeys, who had lived at UCDHSC their entire lives, were the subjects of cruel alcoholism and maternal separation studies conducted by researcher Mark Laudenslager. In September 2006, the University of Colorado Regents finally voted to relocate 11 of these monkeys from a 100 year old basement to a sanctuary in Texas where they will be able to experience freedom from abuse for the first time in their lives.

USDA Charges UCSF for Animal Welfare Act Violations
In 2005, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) charged the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with 89 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). The USDA's action followed years of protests by IDA and other Bay Area groups to expose the cruelty secretly taking place behind the walls of UCSF's laboratories. Instead of defending themselves in court and revealing their mistreatment of animals to public scrutiny, UCSF chose to pay a $92,500 fine, one of the largest ever levied against a research institution by the USDA.

In Defense of Animals has an active campaign against Stephen Lisberger's Monkey Experiments at the University of California - San Francisco. You can learn more about the campaign by visiting: http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/lisberger.html

You can learn more about resistance to the Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) at UC Santa Cruz by visiting http://www.lrdpresistance.org and downloading a pdf of the first issue of the Long Range Resistance newsletter.