Here’s a roundup of this week’s biggest news stories related to animal research—all the recent media coverage you need to know right now to be the most effective activist for animals in labs.
FDA Modernization Act 3.0 Introduced to Reform Animal Testing
Trinity Spark, 2/9/2024
“A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House introduced the FDA Modernization Act 3.0” which “aims to push the [FDA] to implement the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, a law passed in the 117th Congress.”
“The FDA Modernization Act 2.0 . . . eliminat[ed] a long-standing animal testing mandate . . . The proposed legislation, FDA Modernization Act 3.0, mandates the FDA to finalize rules for implementing FDAMA 2.0.” 📰 Full Story →
Endangered Species Act Protections Sought for American Horseshoe Crabs
Center for Biological Diversity, 2/12/2024
“The Center for Biological Diversity and 22 partner organizations petitioned NOAA Fisheries today to list the American horseshoe crab as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. Horseshoe crab populations have crashed in recent decades because of overharvesting and habitat loss.”
“Biomedical companies [] harvest horseshoe crabs and drain their blue blood, which is used to detect toxins in drugs and medical devices. Horseshoe crab blood harvests have virtually doubled since 2017, with nearly 1 million horseshoe crabs harvested for their blood in 2022. Synthetic alternatives to horseshoe crab blood tests are already being used in Europe, but companies in the U.S. have been slow to adopt the alternatives.” 📰 Full Story →
Animal Activists File Federal Complaint Against Dana-Farber
Veronica H. Paulus & Akshaya Ravi, 2/13/2024
“Activists against animal experimentation filed a federal complaint Sunday alleging that researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute had committed data falsification. The complaint targeted research from one particular study on breast cancer using mouse models. Published in March 2023 by Nature Communications, the paper was later retracted….”
“The federal complaint comes after a data investigation blogger alleged last month that four senior researchers at DFCI falsified data across dozens of papers. DFCI later initiated retractions to six papers and corrections to 31 more.” 📰 Full Story →
200+ Research Dogs, Cats Freed as Beagle Group Shuts Down Facility. How You Can Help.
Ginger Gadsden, 2/13/2024
The Beagle Freedom Project (BFP) was “‘able to secure the closure of a laboratory in Oklahoma that does animal testing . . . Over 200 dogs and cats have been used for toxicity testing and [BFP] finally w[as] able to negotiate the closure of this facility and ha[s] taken custody of all of these animals now.’”
“The 30-acre property will now be transformed into a rehab center.”
“The dogs have to get from Oklahoma to Florida, so if you can help drive them here, then [BFP] want[s] to hear from you. [BFP] also want[s] to hear from you if you can foster these special pups . . . these beagles have to learn how to be dogs.” 🎥📰 Full Story →
Scientific Article with Insane AI-Generated Images Somehow Passes Peer Review
Frank Landymore, 2/15/24
“[A] new study published this week in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology — which is supposedly peer-reviewed, mind you — heavily features figures and diagrams that are obviously AI-generated. And, how should we put this? They’re insane-looking nonsense.
“Take a look, for example, at this diagram of an extremely well endowed mouse. The morphology is so grotesque and comical it defies any explanation, flaunting what appears to be a dissected view of testicles as nearly as large as the mouse itself. They’re also protruding from its stomach and just sort of hanging out there in the open, tethered to some unknown upper anatomy out of the frame.
“Note the emphasis on ‘appears to be,’ because the labels on the diagram are made up gobbledygook like ‘testtomcels,’ ‘retat,’ and ‘dck.’ But it did get a few things right though, like this helpful line pointing to the middle of the creature labeled ‘Rat.’” 📰 Full Story →
Beagles Are Bred by the Thousands on Factory Farms, and It’s Perfectly Legal
Jessica Scott-Reid, 2/14/2024
“When you think of a factory farm, the animals that come to mind are probably pigs, cows and chickens. But in the U.S. and elsewhere, a number of these massive operations also breed dogs — packing them into small cages to be sold for profit and eventually killed.”
“Dogs, mostly beagles, are bred for use in animal testing, both here in the U.S. and abroad. Now, three animal advocates who entered one of these facilities back in 2017 and rescued three dogs, are about to stand trial for felony burglary and theft charges, and face possible prison time, up to nine years each.”
“Ridglan Farms is one of the three largest facilities in the U.S. breeding beagles for research labs . . . At Ridglan, Hamer recalls, beagles were found confined not unlike chickens in the egg industry.” 📰 Full Story →
All Cunning, No Candor
Rise for Animals, 2/15/2024
Last week, two state bills seeking to increase transparency into the animal research industry were shut down by the animal research industry.
The animal research industry continues declining to share with us basic facts about the research it conducts, while simultaneously seeking to manipulate us into accepting its fabricated, and fundamentally inconsistent, fictions: That it cares about each of its animals, yet can’t be bothered to count them… and that it voluntarily shares information about the research it conducts, yet provides only the information that is mandated by law. 📰 Full Story →