No More White Coat Welfare

At a time when people are suffering and dying because of budget cuts to healthcare, education, and social services, it is imperative that we look at how our money is being spent.

Despite the alleged shortage of funds to subsidize healthcare and other life saving social services, every year we waste billions of dollars nationally on animal research that is not helping people. Animal experimenters are receiving more and more white coat welfare without having to produce useful results and justify the cost.

In the U.S.:

It is estimated that the publicly funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been spending $8-8.5 billion annually on animal research and this expenditure is increasing.

43.6 million people have no health coverage. According to the Institute of Medicine, 18,000 people in the U.S. die each year for lack of healthcare.

The utility of animal research is being increasingly questioned by the scientific community. Because every species is different, animal experimentation gives us misleading data which delays medical progress, and which harms and often kills people. For example, penicillin was delayed for a decade and tobacco was 'proven' not to cause cancer.

Services that we know help children with mental health challenges are underfunded yet OHSU spends your tax money investigating in monkeys whether social support helps children avoid depression(link to specific abstract).

Animal experimenters, out of touch with people's needs, are receiving more and more money for their personal projects without having to justify the cost and produce results useful to the public. This amounts to nothing more than White Coat Welfare.

The industry tells people that the issue of animal experimentation is a conflict between the welfare of non-human animals and the needs of humanity. Given this premise, of course people will choose their sick child, relative or friend over the welfare of the animal. However, that premise is false. The reality is that both sick people and animals are suffering because of animal experimentation.

Animal Experimentation:

is not scientifically valid
provides false data which harms and kills people
is an entrenched multi-billion dollar industry whose main purpose is its own survival
wastes a huge amount of your money, time and resources
is not helping you

Are lab animals being sacrificed for sick people or are sick people being sacrificed to pay for lab animals?

In Oregon:

Massive budget cuts in the last few years have caused tens of thousands of people to lose access to medical care. Approximately 500,000 Oregonians have no medical coverage and coverage offered by the Oregon Heath Plan (OHP) is shrinking dramatically. Many social service programs have shut down and those agencies remaining are struggling to survive. Workers' wages go down and their caseloads go up.

At Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU), publicly funded animal experimentation is increasing dramatically despite the lack of returns on our involuntary investment. According to an estimate compiled from the NIH website, in 2002, OHSU spent over $130 million on animal research. The Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC), run by OHSU, has been open since 1962. In 2003, ONPRC research alone cost the public about $25 million, yet the center has not produced a single cure from its animal research in its 40+ years.

Access to mental health and addiction services is shrinking. Adequate funds are supposedly not available to help humans suffering from drug addiction, but we are paying for plenty of useless animal-based addiction research. We cannot learn about human mental health from monkeys. While we have plenty of opportunity to learn about human behavior from humans, OHSU is expanding their monkey-based behavioral research. In one example which was featured on Good Morning America's series "You Paid For It" about wasteful scientific projects, ONPRC researcher Judy Cameron flies gliders over monkeys' heads and claims this will teach us about depression and anxiety in adolescents.

Her ludicrous studies also include:

Investigating in monkeys whether exercise is good for the brain
Modeling human divorce in artificially created monkey families.

We have the money to help people but it is being wasted. While Cameron and others on white coat welfare hemorrhage money, we are losing services to adults and youth who are actually suffering from mental health problems. We are losing the services which demonstrably help people.

Like all animal research businesses, OHSU claims that their animal experimentation is done to benefit the public, yet they refuse to be accountable to the public. Oregonians voted against giving $10 million of the state's [tobacco settlement] to OHSU's risky business venture [the Oregon Opportunity Plan]. OHSU chose to ignore the will of Oregonians and asked for and received from the state legislature $200 million from the settlement. OHSU has for years refused to publicly debate the scientific validity of their animal research.

In the last few years, the Oregon Department of Human Services budget has been cut by hundreds of millions of dollars and more cuts to next year's budget are predicted yet OHSU's primate center is expanding. If Oregonians knew how their money was being wasted by OHSU, they would be outraged. The choice we are faced with is not between the lab animal and the sick person. The choice is between throwing your money away on fraudulent, wasteful science and putting it towards programs that will actually save human lives.

NO MORE WHITE COAT WELFARE!
For more information contact:
The Coalition to Abolish Animal Testing
PO Box 6716
Portland, OR 97228
503-972-CAAT
mail@caatinfo.org