Stanford Demonstration for Compassion

Demonstration for Compassion
Friday, Nov. 4 at 12:00 noon
Palo Alto
Intersection of El Camino and Quarryy
Map: http://tinyurl.com/b4lxt.


Animal Rights on the Farm (ARF!) commemorates the Dalai Lama’s visit to Stanford University by urging compassion for the tens of thousands of animals used in experiments on our campus. Join us for a demonstration against animal testing, this Friday, November 4 at 12:00 noon at the intersection of El Camino and Quarry Road (http://tinyurl.com/b4lxt). For more details, or to get involved in the campaign against vivisection, email arfstanford@yahoo.com. See below for more facts on animal experiments at Stanford.


“According to Buddhism the life of all beings—human, animal or otherwise—is precious, and all have the same right to happiness. For this reason, I find it disgraceful that animals are used without being shown the slightest compassion, and that they are used for scientific experiments.”
-The Dalai Lama, Beyond Dogma


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According to a report filed by Stanford in 2002 with the US Department of Agriculture (the agency charged with implementing the Animal Welfare Act), Stanford used the following animals for experiments: 32 dogs, 172 hamsters, 376 rabbits, 323 nonhuman primates, 110 sheep, 541 pigs, 2 goats, 9 ferrets and 471 gerbils (2,036 total animals). Because USDA does not require reporting on mice, rats, birds, and amphibians, the actual number of animals used at Stanford is much higher. Nationwide, rats and mice make up approximately 95% of animals used in research. Using this statistic, we estimate that Stanford’s RAF uses as many as 40,000 animals. The Research Animal Facility at Stanford University received over $146 million in federal funding in 2003 for animal experimentation, ranked 21st in the country.

Animal Rights on the Farm (ARF) has discovered other disturbing facts: one Stanford researcher systematically deprives mice, rats, and monkeys of sleep to determine the relationship between sleep deprivation, body weight, and energy expenditure (Role of Hypocretin in Metabolic Effects of Sleep Loss, NIH Grant #5R01MH073435-02); another separates infant primates from their mothers to test the resultant psychological effects (Maternal Availability and Postnatal Brain Development, NIH Grant #5F32MH066537-03); another induces anxiety and fear in parasite-infested rats (Parasite/Host Interactions and the Neurobiology of Fear, NIH Grant #1R21MH070903-01A1); another conducts gene-therapy research on the livers of rats, rabbits, and dogs (Transferring Integrase Technology to Animals, NIH Grant #5R01HL068112-05); another researcher has spent the last 15 years conducting invasive brain studies, maternal deprivation experiments, and stress studies in squirrel monkeys (Model of Hypercortisolism for Major Depressions, NIH Grant #5R01MH047573-14); another researcher induces stress in adolescent squirrel monkeys primates, then addicts them to cocaine (Early Chronic Stress and Prefrontal Development, NIH Grant #5R01DA016902-03); the list goes on and on.

ARF has also gleaned the following information from the research facility’s newsletters: the labs’ “animal caretakers” filed over 421 morbidity reports in 2001 (Comparative Medicine News, Jan. 2002); the University maintains a colony of inbred mice, “obtained after 20 or more consecutive generations of brother x sister mating” (Comparative Medicine News, Dec. 1999); RAF has been infested with mites, which cause self-mutilation and “blisters, crusts and warty lumps on the ears, eyes and nose” (Comparative Medicine News, Apr. 2002); the facility’s euthanasia procedures include CO2 gassing, followed in some cases by exsanguination (bleeding to death), cervical dislocation, or decapitation, and “[t]horacotomy (making an incision into the chest cavity) after apparent death from CO2 is widely used as a way to ensure the irreversibility of the procedure.” (Comparative Medicine News, Oct. 2003).