LettersLetter From Darlene Kaiser about UW Proposed Lab Expansion
Letters From All-Creatures.org and The Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman Family Foundation

Re: University of Washington proposed Lab Expansion

Dear Board of Regents:

The former Director of the National Institutes of Health, Elias Zerhouni, said in June, "We have moved away from studying human disease in humans," he lamented.  "We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included.  With the ability to knock in or knock out any gene in a mouse -- which can't sue us," Zerhouni quipped -- "researchers have over-relied on animal data.  The problem is that it hasn't worked, and it's time we stopped dancing around the problem... We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand diseaase biology in humans."  (from the NIH record June 21, 2013).  The link is:  http://nihrecord.od.nih.gov/newsletters/2013/06_21_2013/story1.htm

When the ex-Director of the NIH is saying this, how  can you consider spending $123 million to tear up a beautiful piece of land to torture more animals?

Re:  relying on animal experiments, Dr. Albert Sabin (creator of the oral polio vaccine) said this:  "Prevention of polio was long delayed by the erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of the disease in monkeys." 

Sabin also said that cancer research causes "pain in suffering to hundreds of thousands of animals every year by inducing in the animals, by chemicals or irradiation, large cancerous growths in their bodies and limbs.  Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it."

Dr. Charles Mayo also was against animal research.  I could go on and on with quotes from doctors against animal research. 

One of the points I want to make is that if you think animal labs are humane, go visit them unannounced.  Remember the horribly cruel eye coil experiments being done on monkeys, exposed in the media a few years ago?

Please find other, more humane, ways of getting grant monies.

Thank you.

Darlene Kaiser

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