Earlier this week, Jentsch, who addicts non-human primates to PCP and methamphetamines before killing them, announced his formation of Pro-Test UCLA, a group of faculty and administrators who had apparently intended to defend the university's ongoing practice of killing animals.
Contacted at Americans For Medical Advancement, Dr. Ray Greek, an anesthesiologist and outspoken critic of animal experimentation solely on the grounds of its scientific inefficacy, states "I, too, am more than willing to participate in a debate on the science behind using animals to predicthuman response to disease and drugs. A debate about the ethics of animal experimentation will be more informed if the science is clear before-hand. I look forward to a conversation based on science and reason if UCLA Pro-Test advocates have a capable representative and are willing to publicly state their position."
What an arrogant jerk David Jentsch is.
ReplyDeleteWe all know what it means when someone refuses to debate and defend their position in a legitimate forum. You can't defend the indefensible. What a rotten bastard.
He forms a group to advocate for animal testing but isn't willing to actually articulate what it stands for?
ReplyDeleteIt certainly makes it appear that he has no way to defend what's happening to animals at UCLA. It's not like debating on NPR is tantamount to debating at PETA headquarters.
It also makes me believe that opponents of animal testing are probably right when they say animal testing is just a dodge to continue getting grant money. Think about it -- if he could report that what they're doing to monkeys over there had achieved anything (other than cashing Philip Morris' $6 million check) you'd think he would jump at the chance to publicize it.
I think it's a fraud. I think they're killing animals, and worse, for no real reason at all.
There's a guy named Stephen Lisberger at UCSF who experiments on monkeys. Here's a description I found online of his "experiments"
"Clinical records from Lisberger's lab reveal a gruesome cycle of sedations, invasive surgical procedures infections, and medical interventions. Swollen, irritated eyes, seeping pus, bleeding surgical wounds, depressed behavior and self-mutilation are common.
To prepare monkeys for his experiments, Lisberger starts by slicing their eyes open with scalpels so that wire coils can be placed inside.
Screws are then drilled into their skulls, and a metal plate is placed under the scalp. Bolts that protrude from the plate through the scalp will later be used to screw monkeys by the head into restraining chairs.
Next, Lisberger drills holes into the monkeys' skulls and inserts stainless steel recording cylinders. Electrodes are driven through the cylinders directly into their brains. After a series of surgical procedures, a neurosurgeon drills into the skull, exposes the brain and removes a part of it with suction. After this, the monkeys cannot sit or stand for several days, and must be handfed food and drink.
Some of these surgical procedures are carried out many times, as bone erodes around the various bolts and implants and the eye coils cause such irritation that they must be removed and placed in the other eye. In addition, scar tissue must be peeled from the lining of the brain "dozens of times" for each monkey.
In experiments Lisberger calls "running the monkeys," the primates are strapped into restraining chairs, heads bolted into place so they are unable to move, and placed inside a plastic box. The chair is placed on a turntable that rotates them periodically.
The monkeys are forced to sit in these chairs for up to 8 hours a day, while electrodes implanted in their brains record neurological activity as they move their eyes in a certain pattern for juice rewards. If a monkey doesn't perform, he or she is denied fluids entirely until the next day when the animal is placed on the experiment again."
This is at UCSF -- today (not in the 1300s). What do you think is happening to the monkeys at UCLA?
I wonder if UCLA Pro-Test has a capable representative?
ReplyDeleteBrad Jensen
Cypress,CA
Good for David for refusing to debate someone who encourages the use of violence against researchers such as himself. Gee, if someone set my car on fire, I think I'd be a little sensitive about talking to people who endorse that type of illegal activity.
ReplyDeleteDavid said he wanted to debate anti-vivisection groups, ands was going to attempt to upstage an anti-vivisection rally on April 22 at UCLA.
ReplyDeleteSo, he appears to be confrontational when protedting an anti-vivisectionist rally, but not face to face with an anti-vivisectionist.
It appears that David is not even "talk the talk."
Why should Dr. Jentsch debate Vlasik, a guy who advocates killing animal researchers? Why would ANYONE agree to debate such a nut??? Come on!! As for the UCLA Pro-Test rally, it's time we stood up for the good work we do: period.
ReplyDeleteYeah, "Wise" what good work are you doing? What diseases have you cured?
ReplyDeleteWhat totally counterintuitive knowledge have we gained? Or have you added to the great body of knowledge by "discovering" that intelligent, social animals become distressed when they are mistreated? That babies suffer when they are separated from their mothers? That monkeys who have had their eyes sewn shut exhibit symptoms of stress? That monkeys who are forcibly addicted to meth have a tendency to steal their mothers' televisions?
Or have you discovered that animals's lives are cheap and that you can pretty much do anything you want to them? Have you discovered that getting money to conduct useless experiments from companies like Philip Morris, who don't really want you to learn anything that might actually reduce smoking is a pretty cushy way of making a living -- with the added bonus that you get to act like a martyr, and pretend to be the abused rather than the abuser?
If you weren't promoting genuine evil you'd just be pathetic. But you're WORSE than Philip Morris. Hard to do, but you've made it.
Wait a minute - did the last poster seriously just go off on the "wisewoman" poster and say that she was worse than a tobacco company?
ReplyDeleteIn answer to commenter #8, yes I did say that so-called scientists who take large grants, i.e. six million dollars, from clients like Philip Morris, are morally worse than the clients.
ReplyDeletePhilip Morris sells a product that kills people. People who know their product is poison continue to buy the product. As much as I despise how Philip Morris makes its money, I am absolutely free not to buy their cigarettes.
But Philip Morris, because of various lawsuits, needs to give itself some (im)plausible deniability that it is looking for a way to mitigate the inevitable effects of smoking. So it takes what is, for them, pocket change, and finds some scientists who will do “research” on smoking.
Tragically and embarrassingly, the scientists they found who were willing to take their six million pieces of gold were at UCLA.
Philip Morris does not want to end smoking. These scientists know this. The scientists also know that if we really wanted to stop smoking we would have to do our research on humans. Monkeys don’t buy cigarettes, nor do they willingly perform behaviors they know will kill them. But humans do. Humans who know cigarettes will kill them continue to smoke. If there is a solution to this it is to be found in research into human behavior, and possibly in the tobacco industry’s well-known manipulation of nicotine levels in cigarettes to increase their addictive power.
So the scientists know that nothing they do in a lab to a monkey is going to stop smoking. But they take Philip Morris’s six million dollars because they want to be paid well to do research. They can get lab animals easily and in the name of “research” they can do pretty much anything they want to them, because their activities are well-hidden. I used to work in the Psychology Department at USC. You could freely walk onto any floor of that building, EXCEPT the floor where the research animals were kept. You had to have a key even to get onto that floor via the elevator. Believe me, animal researchers and the animals they experiment on are well-hidden from view.
So these scientists are free to spend their time, unscrutinized and well-compensated, doing neurological research on exceptionally intelligent animals. It’s not that I can’t see how someone who is interested in neurobiology would be interested in research on monkeys. But that doesn’t change the fact that the whole basis of this project is NOT to solve any problem, except Philip Morris’s PR problem.
Humans have free will and have to choose a fairly complex set of actions to smoke. But monkeys have no choice. They can be imprisoned, operated on, mutilated, forced to smoke, forced into addiction, isolated and killed, and they have no say. All this is being done by people who KNOW Philip Morris doesn’t want to end smoking.
As bad as Philip Morris is, they don’t force people to smoke. But a team of scientists is hurting completely innocent monkeys for no greater cause than to keep Philip Morris’s checks coming in. Hurting and killing an innocent being is far worse than providing the tools for people to knowingly hurt and kill themselves.
Wow! Are YOU out of touch! This is a waste of my time debating with idiots. I'm logging out permanently from this blog to go do good things for humanity. I suggest you do the same.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly what I'm talking about. Both Lisberger and the oddly self-described "Wise" woman have absolutely no facts to support them. Getting unrighteously outraged is their only available response because they're wrong and they're scared.
ReplyDeleteThe internet may be responsible for some bad things, but God knows it's great for blowing the cover of those who do evil in this world. The info is getting out there, it's no longer solely the province of those who have a stake in keeping animals in labs -- and you guys' transparent responses are the best possible ad we could have for our side.
Everything I wrote is common knowledge. You can't hide behind the mystique of your lab coat because you don't need to be a scientist to understand smoking. How could I, or anybody for that matter, be out of touch when this is information EVERYBODY knows(?)
Thanks "Wise" -- since I'm pretty sure that despite your protestations and your outrage you will be back here.
You can't help it.
And de-bunking you is part of what I'm doing for humanity -- and monkeys. (:
I guess "wisewoman" is not pleased with the reactions here either. Shame on her for choosing to do only good things for humanity rather than all living things.
ReplyDeleteBrad Jensen
Cypress,CA
Vlasak is the SAME PERSON who posted the Animal Liberation Brigade's claim of responsibility for torching Jentsch's car to the internet. Vlasak has publicly endorsed murdering researchers, which, ironically, uses the same "hurt a few to help the many" logic that animal experimentation uses. This disqualifies Vlasak as someone who's actually interested in rational discussion. Refusing to debate him is like refusing to debate a global warming denier. It gives him the appearance of more credibility than he deserves.
ReplyDeleteYou don't get to make death threats at people, I'm sorry, "pass along anonymous death threats," and then grandstand when those same people refuse to debate you about Ray Greek's tedious, pseudoscientific disinformation. If you aren't comfortable opposing animal research without propaganda claiming that it's useless, maybe your beliefs about animal rights aren't as absolute as you claim they are.
Most who are opposed to animal experimentation oppose on moral or spiritual grounds, not ineffectiveness. But a lot who oppose experimentation fear that many people don't share that a priori reverence for life and use secondary arguments to gain a wider support.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone is convinced one way or the other by these arguments.
The love for all sentience that many of us feel transcends argument. It is a spiritual experience. We cannot communicate that because those who haven't felt it feel as if we are looking down on them and get even more angry.
Even to attempt to bring the discussion into the sphere or ethical or moral philosophy is difficult, because it requires access to that experience and then developing a moral philosophy secondary to that experience.
If you don't have it, you are left with ethical and moral relativism, from which some great philosophers, such as Kant, try to generate a universal moral code based on intellectual principals.
The right to lifers I think have that same feeling for the sanctity for life and feel a strong need to protect it and will use violence.
I think most of us if we saw a baby or a dog being beaten to death would make some act to stop it even if the baby were not related nor the animal our property.
Here we are protecting the helpless or innocent against as aggressor. I think is a point many of us would use violence to stop violence.
Basically, I think debate useless. This is no science or ethics, it is about how connected we feel with other life.
Next time you or someone close to you (i.e. your children, your parents, etc) come down with an illness, cancer, etc...please, first check and make sure that none of the drugs you might recieve were tested on animals. If they were, I'd suggest that you not take them or else you'd be a hypocrit.
ReplyDeleteHow do you think treatments are made? All of you must be 20 years old with perfect health or something. Some people in the world are seriously ill, and will die unless a treatment is developed. We can not create drugs and stick them directly into a human. We must first make sure they are safe.
Would you prefer that we not make drugs anymore? If so, please never take a prescription or over the counter drug again...stick to your "herbs" and good luck with that cancer.
Did you read this post? Most of the animal research is not cancer related, but appears to be retetitve busywork, junk science, such as inserting probes into monkey's eye or testing allergy reactions of cosmetics.
ReplyDeleteYou talk only about the best case scenario for the researchers.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with being a hypocrite. What is done is done, we want further testing ended now, or at least a review that eliminates 90% of the stupid and cruel testing.