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26/09/2017

Queen’s Journal article on dog haemophilia research

 

The Queen’s Journal published an article on “Fighting for transparency with Queen’s haemophiliac dog colony”, covering an issue that Queen’s Animal Defence has been dedicated for for a long time.

In the basement of Botterell Hall, below the scattered study spaces and underground lecture halls lie some of Queen’s more contentious research labs.

The live animal research facilities hold a range of companion species, including dogs. Most famously, a research colony of schnauzers, spaniels and beagles carrying the sex-linked gene for haemophilia  (a rare blood clotting disease) have been held and studied at Queen’s since 1981.

Although the research conducted on the colony has given rise to ground-breaking leaps in understanding the disease, it has met resistance around Kingston. In April 2014, The Kingston-Whig Standard published an article(link is external) citing lack of transparency in animal research at Queen’s. The Journal published articles in 2006, 2014 and 2015 citing an increased demand for accountability when it comes to live animal research on campus.

Read the entire article here.

06/05/2016

Zoos and circuses: The wrong kind of education about animals

Asian elephants perform for the final time in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus on May 1 in Providence, R.I. (Bill Sikes/Associated Press)

Asian elephants perform for the final time in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus on May 1 in Providence, R.I.
(Bill Sikes/Associated Press)

Donaldson and Kymlicka, co-founders of the Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics research initiative at Queen’s University, published today an op-ed in The Globe and Mail on the issue of animals used in zoos and circuses and what it teaches us.

Growing public unease has prompted the multibillion-dollar zoo industry to rebrand zoos as institutions of “education” rather than “entertainment,” in the hope that this will make captivity seem more acceptable. But notice that this shift is more about the human experience than it is about the situation for the animals. For them, the realities of social and environmental deprivation remain, and so-called enriched zoo habitats merely gloss over the realities of rigid control, manipulation and impoverishment, whether or not animals are trained for public performance.

Click here to read the full article.

14/12/2015

Animals in Science Policy Institute

Animals in Science Policy Institute - homepage

Great news to launch the holidays and new year!

We have an important development to report concerning animals used in scientific research, testing and education in Canada. At long last, Canada has an independent body to advocate for these animals. Last week marked the launch of the Animals in Science Policy Institute based in Vancouver, under the direction of Dr. Elisabeth Ormandy. (Our readers may remember Dr.Ormandy as a recent participant in our Hidden Costs/ Hidden Potential poster campaign. She was also a speaker at the 2014 Queen’s conference on “Thinking Outside the Cage: Towards a Non-Speciesist Paradigm for Scientific Research”. The conference report is available here.)

AiSPI envisions “a society where the public ethic, and technological advancements and global communication strategies in the scientific community have made the use of nonhuman animals in science obsolete“. The Institute’s mandate is to:

  • conduct research projects into the efficacy of non-animal alternatives
  • provide up to date resources and information about non-animal alternatives
  • collaborate with stakeholders in science and policy
  • liaise with researchers, governing bodies and other decision-makers about the importance of non-animal alternatives
  • encourage transparency and meaningful public engagement about the use of animals in research, testing and teaching in Canada

Check out AiSPI’s informative and up-to-date website. And read about their recently completed project on “Non-animal alternatives in UBC undergraduate teaching“, and their current project on “High School Dissection“.

Bravo to our Vancouver colleagues!

07/02/2015

Mini “Organism in a Chip” is an Award-Winning New Technology

Grimm - Against Animal Testing

According to this press release, “researchers at the Dresden-based institute, working jointly with the Institute for Biotechnology at the Technical University (TU) of Berlin, engineered a new kind of solution that could render the use of animal-based experiments superfluous in medical research: a multi-organ chip that faithfully replicates complex metabolic processes in the human body with startling accuracy.” (our emphasis)

Using the compact multi-organ chip (comparable in size to a one-euro piece), and those of three separate microcircuits, researchers can study the regeneration of certain kidney cells. © Fraunhofer IWS

Using the compact multi-organ chip (comparable in size to a one-euro piece), and those of three separate microcircuits, researchers can study the regeneration of certain kidney cells.
© Fraunhofer IWS

See also the Dodo’s article on this exciting new technology.