Animal Rights and Budget Disclosure
Oct 29th, 2008 by Take Back NYU!
In 2004, HSUS reported that there were more than a thousand animals being tested on at NYU. At least 91 of them were non-human primates.
When animal rights (as a reason for budget disclosure) were brought up at the Town Hall, President Sexton wrote off students’ concerns completely, mentioning all NYU animal spending is done with government grants and all the information can be found on the internet. However, he failed to mention that in 2004, 2005, and 2006, NYU’s 990 tax forms have all mentioned about $6 million or more being spent on “animal care.” Somehow I doubt that means a pet-sitter for Legs, Sexton’s dog. You know what? I’m mad. I’m really mad that $6 million - including my tuition dollars - is being spent on animal testing.
So, hold up. Is it definitely clear that this is $6 million of MY tuition dollars?
Well, here’s the deal: governments grant individual scientists and projects grants. The process is a lengthy and extensive one; the scientists have to submit very detailed proposals to be awarded a grant. All of that information is available online on the National Institute of Health’s website because of the Freedom of Information Law and similar litigation that is required so that tax-payers can learn where their money is going. You can find out about many of the experiments online. Assume the worst - there are few barometers for primate pain that are actually used in these situations.
Anyway, simultaneously, much animal testing/research occurs without federal grants. NYU has a large pool of resources for students to “learn” from (and to some extent, for faculty), including animals. The money required for this is indicated in their 990’s, which have to do with the endowment - NOT federal grants. Grants are not a part of the endowment, they go directly to the scientist and department. The fact that $6 million is being spent on “animal care” is offensive and scary.
Let me reiterate: that is your tuition money, folks. Not money from the government. So what exactly are we funding? I don’t know. And I don’t think we’ll find out even with budget disclosure. But I bet we’ll be one step closer to finding out.
Hello, I guess that I am one of the scientists using the aforementioned 6 million dollars.
For your information, federal funding or not, not a single experiment can be done without approval of the IACUC, http://www.iacuc.org/
I work on epilepsy, a disease that affects 1 to 2% of the world population (around 100 million people on this planet): 40% of epileptic patients are still refractory for medication. Besides disrupting someone’s life, epilepsy can lead to developmental and cognitive problems. My research is about the prediction of seizures, based on electrophysiological changes in the brain before the seizure onset. In one of the experimental setups, we are trying to stop an existing seizure using a drug locally delivered on the epileptogenic focus (as opposed to a drug taken orally). As you guessed, we are working on human neuroprosthetic devices. Animal activists or not, we would never, ever (and no scientist and no federal agency would ever authorize us to) test that drug on a human with epilepsy before being 100% sure that it works and it is not harmful on a monkey. It would be highly immoral. The animals involved in our experiments are a few rats and one rhesus macaque monkey. The monkey has been involved in other studies before, and all the care is being taken of him to reduce his pain and enhance his well-being (sterile surgery, painkillers, recovery time, large living area).
Experiments on animals in the US and other western countries are done with the philosophy of reducing (the number of animals and their pain), refining (the experiment) and reusing (i.e. sharing the animals between different scientists, and trying to conduct several experiments at once). You have the right to find testing on animals unpleasant. I however hope for your intellect that you are fully vegetalian and do not wear leather, otherwise there is a hypocritical contradiction in your reasoning: leather, meat, milk can all be substituted. Animal models, though no human, cannot, without risking lives of humans. Of course, if you prefer these few animals not to suffer, you are welcome to be brave enough substitute for them. I recommend you to have a conversation with somebody suffering from epilepsy or with her family.
Thanks for your response. I’d love to have a conversation with you about the pro’s and con’s of animal testing, but I think that’s completely besides the point. All I’m trying to get at is the fact that I have the right to know - as a vegan animal liberationist - if my money is going to something that I have deep moral issues with.
While I have as many people close to me with health issues as I’m sure you do, I just can’t wrap my head around testing on animals when it’s been proven not to work so many times.
While one person’s viewpoint cannot be taken at face value, there are more than a few researchers who have worked on epilepsy who have found that research on monkeys is not so great. For instance, Dr. Bernhard Rambeck, M.D. is Director of the Biochemical Laboratory of the Institute for Research on Epilepsy in Bielefeld, Germany. In a 1989 speech he explains how vivisection experiments have prevented progress in the understanding and treatment of epilepsy: “Epilepsy artificially produced in an animal with mechanical and violent means is in no way comparable to human epilepsy, which arises from within, spontaneously, and has usually more than one cause, usually including psychic reasons, that can not be reproduced in an animal. This explains why the various substances with which we can sedate or diminish “epileptic attacks” in animals - of course, after provoking them artificially - not only don’t obtain similar results in man, but are on the contrary total failures.” [Rambeck, 1989]
Feel free to email me via scrc(dot)club(at)nyu(dot)edu with the subject line “ATTN: BEET” to get in touch.
[Sorry, I made a typo in my last post: here is the correction]
You are absolutely right, one person’s viewpoint cannot be taken at face value. After all, hundreds of scientists have been skeptical or tried to disprove global warming or even evolution theories
The viewpoint of Dr. Bernhard Rambeck is interesting. However, the scientists I work with are neither using mechanical, nor violent means to provoke epilepsy. Also, the substances that diminish or prevent epileptic seizures necessarily need to work both in animal models and humans, since they are ultimately going to be applied to humans. Don’t you think?
I appreciate your literature research and the fact that you quote an epilepsy researcher. Are you yourself a research scientist or are you using second-hand information? Forgive me for asking, but I once had a discussion with an undergrad student in business school, advocating for replacing all experiments on animals by computer simulations. I told him that, following a similarly naive reasoning, businessmen and economists should then give to each poor individual living on our planet a check for $100,000, in order to start a Keynes’ inspired virtuous circle of demand-fueled growth. Not that simple?
Anyway, scientists are fully conscious of the deep flaws of any “model”, be it computer-based or monkey-based. The main assumption is more or less the following: theory << computer simulation << experiment in vitro < experiment in vivo (on animals) << experiment on human patients.
That brings us to the issue of testing a drug or a therapy on complex living organisms (e.g. rats or even macaques, as they are somewhat “close” to humans, without having the intelligence of chimpanzees) before taking any risk with humans. Of course, the implicit assumption is that the human species is superior to the other animal species (including macaques), based on intelligence. You might disagree with that, and refuse to sacrify an animal to save a human. You are welcome to apply that reasoning to you and yourself only - but extending this philosophy to other humans is purely criminal. I wonder what your priorities would be anyway if members of your (human) family were at stake.
If you have deep moral issues with animal testing, then perhaps you ought not use any medicine and drugs (engineered using vivisection). That includes of course painkillers, antibiotics, anti-histamine, etc.. Actually, you should not resort to medicine at all, since all medical research since the antiquity has been based on vivisection. Again, such a decision can only be applied to yourself.
Or maybe, instead, you should focus your activist efforts against vivisection for cosmetics (personally, I would not buy cosmetics or non-vital products engineered using vivisection), lethal traps for mice (which I do not use) and other human activities where animals are killed without a compelling reason. It is a little easy to target “mad” scientists, don’t you think? Ah, those mad scientists, coming from all these foreign countries, and working in their secluded labs on strange projects with funny sounding names…
Researchers from the Huntingdon Life Sciences in England have been subject to terrorism (physical violence, bombing, death threats) from animal activists:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/how-threats-firebombs-and-assault-are-sending-an-animal-testing-lab-to-the-dogs-703741.html
The later response of the British civil society: pro-testing for science:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/4750516.stm
http://www.pro-test.org.uk/
So finally, the answer to your question is: yes, part of your NYU tuition money is going for experiments on animals, research that is closely monitored and conducted with ethics in mind, and that ultimately benefits the mankind. You can discover more about it by reading the research and publications of scientists working at NYU.
I think you fail to see what I’m trying to get at here. I’m for animal liberation and am quite uninterested in your defenses of the practice. Regardless of the situation, I don’t think it is morally right to infringe on the freedom of beings, regardless of what species they are. Please stop being petty and trying to call me a hypocrite. No, I do not use any animal products in my life.
You said: “yes, part of your NYU tuition money is going for experiments on animals, research that is closely monitored and conducted with ethics in mind, and that ultimately benefits the mankind.”
What you fail to understand is that this research is not conducted with my ethics in mind. My ethics are the only ones pertinent to myself and to money I give to NYU.
If you were a racist or a misogynist living a hundred years ago, you could say the same thing - killing people of color or oppressing women would be in line with the mass ethics of the day. As such, would you declare that I should sit tight and not worry about it? Or would you say that I have the right to know exactly what kind of oppression in which I am complicit?
Side note: I think SHAC is a necessary campaign, one with which I am in absolute solidarity. Clearly, you know very little about Huntingdon Life Science’s practices: they kill 500 animals every day - kittens, puppies, bunnies, mice, rats, fish, birds, monkeys, and farm animals - for the testing of products like bleach and splenda. These technicians have been proved, in SIX investigations, to abuse and torture these animals in their care. Huntingdon not only has been known to kill animals, but has let unsafe products go onto the market that have hospitalized and killed people as well.
Last caveat: These are not beliefs held by all members of the Take Back NYU! coalition and I am not trying to portray my beliefs as indicative of the entire campaigns’.
“What you fail to understand is that this research is not conducted with my ethics in mind. My ethics are the only ones pertinent to myself and to money I give to NYU.”
Well put. Of course, if the budget being undisclosed and not knowing where your tuition is going is such an issue, you would be more than free to not pay tuition. No one is forcing you to attend this school. The budget was not disclosed before you matriculated here, and tuition has risen steadily above the rate of inflation for over a decade. If this is such an issue for you, attend a public university with full disclosure of it’s budget.
In addition, there are better means of achieving budget disclosure than some of those being exploited by members of Take Back NYU!. Sitting in on town hall meetings, giggling and being rude to President Sexton, interrupting him and students with other questions, and being generally disruptive is ineffective. Tonight I had the good fortune of sitting in on one of those town hall meetings and was horrified by the behavior of members of your coalition. It was embarrassing to see educated young people speaking audibly while others were speaking, laughing at the responses Sexton gave, and interrupting other students who may have had questions that they felt were equally as important to them as yours are to you. Also, interrupting tour groups telling prospective students that John Sexton doesn’t think people who cannot afford NYU tuition deserve to attend is outrageous, audacious and completely uncalled for. Instead, why not join IRHC, Student Senate, present your petition to faculty and deans, and organize yourself as a respectful, passionate, tenacious group of individuals. You would have far more support from the student body on your initiatives (programs, petitions, etc) if you worked with us instead of embarrassed us.
“If this is such an issue for you, attend a public university with full disclosure of it’s budget.” So, if I have qualms with something, I should just let it go. For instance, if I saw someone beating a little kid on the subway - I should just leave that car because when I got on, that was already happening. Gotcha.
I’m being slightly facetious because your logic makes no sense. I love NYU - I’ve had amazing professors, awesome peers, sweet opportunities, and so on, but honestly, I worry that I am complicit in things I fervently disagree with - ranging from genocide to sexism to vivisection.
Anyway, this isn’t Take Back NYU!’s first town hall. This isn’t the first time that we’ve had to deal with Sexton refusing to adequately answer questions. This isn’t the first time he’s spent hours using rhetorical devices to go in circles. This isn’t the first time he’s been a condescending prick to us.
After this kind of thing happening multiple times, I think you can see why we became so frustrated. Regarding last night, I’m not aware of any student being interrupted by a Take Back NYU! member. Nevertheless, you’re right, we were not exemplifying respect for Sexton. But honestly, respect is a two way street and if he’s going to treat us like children, we’re not going to kiss his ass.
Regarding tactics: we actually have a member on the Student Senate, have a petition, have approached faculty for support, have organized many events, and are generally known as quite passionate. I think what you’re trying to say is that we should do all we’re doing, but not disrupt anything. Right.
Oh, and thanks for visiting our site! Did you just learn about us at the Town Hall?
[...] worry we are complicit in things we fervently disagree with - ranging from genocide to sexism to vivisection. Clearly, this is something with which most individuals agree, including many of the same folks [...]
Coming back to this post… I actually do support many positions of Take Back NYU, but it is a pity that you throw everything into the same pot. You are equating genocide, sexism and vivisection. Let me introduce my own equation: genocide, sexism, terrorism by the animal liberation front, and obscurantism (flat earth theory, creationism, opposition to medical and scientific experiments on animals)… If you do sincerely believe that no scientific experiments should be conducted on animals, you should consider yourself lucky to be alive today (thanks to medicine and science)
“Thanks to animal research, [animal activists] will be able to protest 20.8 years longer.”
“If you were a racist or a misogynist living a hundred years ago, you could say the same thing - killing people of color or oppressing women would be in line with the mass ethics of the day. As such, would you declare that I should sit tight and not worry about it? Or would you say that I have the right to know exactly what kind of oppression in which I am complicit?”
Why don’t you ask the current president, or any woman, what they think of being put on equality with rats and rhesus monkeys? I suspect that they might be a bit offended.
Speaking about genocide and extermination, come to think about it, I also doubt that my grandfather, who died in Auschwitz, would be very happy of having his plight compared to the plight of a rat used to study schizophrenia or epilepsy.