The point of this page is to ask the public and the U of T community to speak out against this unnecessary and inhumane research and testing. Louis R. Thank you!
At the University of Toronto live animals -- primates, mice, dogs, and rabbits -- are the subjects of inhumane scientific research and testing in the Medical Sciences and MARs buildings by immunologists and medical researchers, and use for educational purposes in the life sciences (rats, frogs). One way is to provide information to the moderators of this site regarding the details of experimentati
on so that we may investigate cases of abuse against animals and make the public aware of these abuses. If you are involved in research or know about it at UofT, contact or email Paul York (admin). Another thing to do is to send an email to the U of T Governing Council and Research Ethics faculty and staff, urging them to end all experimentation and research using animals (live or dead) and instead use more ethically sound and proven alternative testing methods. Alternative methods for education regarding animal biology have been devised as well, and should be used. Here is the contact information for Governing Council. Direct your emails to the entire Gov. Council (all their emails are placed, side by side below, for easy cut and paste):
Secretary of the Governing Council
Mr. Charpentier
Phone: 416-978-2118 / Fax: 416-978-8182
Email: [email protected]
"Either animals are unlike us and hence the experiments provide no useful data or they are like us, in which case the experiments shouldn't be done.” - Peter Singer
Animal Liberation
“I hold that, the more helpless the creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.” - Mohandas Ghandi
The ethical argument for using animals in research generally hinges on the belief that animals are not as valuable as human beings because they are not as intelligent as we are or they do not have the same capacity to reason as we do. However, this argument is fundamentally flawed because if one were to follow it to its logical conclusion, one could justify experimenting on mentally disabled people or even children. We do not grant rights to people based on their level of intelligence; we do so based on the knowledge that failure to recognize basic rights could cause them to suffer great harm as victims of exploitation. As people spend more time exploring their relationship with animals––and the fact that our society does not grant them even the most basic of rights––they find that they cannot justify subjecting animals to harmful experimentation or other forms of exploitation. Just as we would not intentionally harm a person who lacks certain abilities or attributes, we should not tolerate the deliberate exploitation of animals who may also lack some of those same attributes. While other animals may not be able to communicate in the same way that humans can, we are the same in our capacity to experience pleasure and to suffer pain. As the well known philosopher, Jeremy Benthem, stated: “The question is not, can they reason? nor,can they talk? but, can they suffer?”
If, as a civilized society, we desire a truly ethical system of research, we must put an end to cruel science and retire animal experimentation the trash-bin of history.
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U of T's position on the ethics of research using animals and a response
If you follow the different animal "modules" it gives a vague idea of what they do to the animals. For example, in the rabbit module, it talks about restraints and injections. Note that U of T also allows education using animals. Biology students, for example, are asked to dissect animals. These animals are bred and killed for this purpose. There are alternative methods for this type of education, so why is U of T still using a method that entails captivity and suffering? See http://www.cruelscience.ca/resources-links.htm
for Alternatives to Animal Education. On the U of T site is listed an Canadian Council on Animal Care - Categories of Invasiveness in Animal Experiments: http://www.research.utoronto.ca/ethics/ea_app_cat.html
U of T says that it abides by these categories. They categorize the pain levels and say they prohibit the severest type:
"Comment: Category E experiments are considered highly questionable or unacceptable, irrespective of the significance of anticipated results. Many of these procedures are specifically prohibited because of conflict with CCAC's "Ethics of Animal Experimentation." Class E experiments are frowned upon - at least officially. However, because they are discouraged or prohibited, the danger is that this may be used to justify Class D experiments, in which animals can experience the following atrocities:
“. . . severe distress or discomfort” from “major surgical procedures conducted under anesthesia, . . . exposure of animals to noxious stimuli for periods . . . prolonged (several hours or more) periods of physical restraint . . . induction of behavioural restraint . . . induction of behavioural stresses such as maternal deprivation, aggression, predator-prey interactions, procedures which alter perceptual or motor functions which consequently affect locomotion and behavioural activity; immunization employing Freund's complete adjuvant administered subcutaneously or intramuscularly; induction of an anatomical or physiological deficit that will result in pain or distress; application of noxious stimuli from which escape is impossible; procedures that produce pain in which anesthetics are not used, such as toxicity testing with death as an endpoint; production of radiation sickness; certain injections, and stress and shock research that would result in pain approaching the pain tolerance threshold.”
By any measure, this class D type of experiment is torture by another name. The relativist approach implied by the U of T classifications (A to E), which serves to excuse D (where E is severest) is flawed because it judges lesser and greater degrees of pain as the deciding factor. It does not address the issue of whether captivity and non-consenting experimentation is wrong, regardless of the degree of pain inflicted. Judging the ethics of experimentation this way is like comparing forms of torture of human beings and saying that waterboarding is ethically permissible, because it is less painful, rather than saying that ALL torture is wrong in an absolute sense (which clearly it is). U of T says that it abides by existing laws and may be true. Current legislation in Ontario – the Animals for Research Act – allows scientific research using animals under certain conditions. Here is the law in full:
Note that in Section 16 of this legislation, that “every animal” who is likely to experience pain “shall be anaesthetized” and be provided “analgesics adequate to prevent an animal from suffering unnecessary pain during the period of its recovery . . .”
“Class D” experiment do seem to require these measures. However, as noted earlier, the deeper issue is whether or captivity and experimentation should be allowed at all. Furthermore, who is to judge what is “unnecessary pain” and “necessary pain”? The position taken here, on behalf of the animals, is that ALL pain is unnecessary! Ethically, any and all kinds of animal experimentation or research using animals (live or dead) is deeply problematic and should not be allowed, for these and other coherent reasons stated by ethicists Peter Singer and Tom Regan in their respective works. See http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/animalrights/
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Further action you can take
Tell CIHR and NSERC to Kick Their Animal Research Habit
All federally funded research in Canada is paid for with your tax dollars. As the two main funders of animal-based research in Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council need to hear that you don’t want your tax dollars used to underwrite animal experiments, whatever their purpose. Points to make:
• Animal experimentation is an inherently violent and unethical practice that I do not want my tax dollars used to support.
• Health and ecological effects research funding should be redirected to emphasize the use of epidemiological, clinical, in vitro and computer modeling studies in place of laboratory experiments on animals. Send letters to:
Dr. Alan Bernstein
President, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
410 Laurier Ave. W., 9th Floor
Address Locator 4209A, Ottawa, ON K1A 0W9
Email: [email protected]
Dr. Thomas A. Brzustowski
President, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
350 Albert St. Ottawa, ON K1A 1H5
Email: [email protected]
Please send a copy of your letters to Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh and Prime Minister Stephen Harper (contact information below) and your Member of Parliament. To find out who your MP is, click here or call Elections Canada at 1.800.463.6868. Minister of Health, House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6 (no postage necessary if mailed in Canada) Email: [email protected]
Prime Minister of Canada, House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6 (no postage necessary if mailed in Canada) Email: [email protected]
Here is how to contact your MPP to urge him or her to change this law, to ban ALL animal experimentation in Ontario, on ethical grounds that ALL captivity and experimentation is wrong:
A few additional points on the ethics of animal experimentation - by P. York
The idea that animal experimentation saves human lives is often cited in defense of the practice, but in fact most of the experiments have nothing to do with benefits to humanity. They are often carried out for the purposes of corporate research, which pays the university to do this research for its own, far less noble purposes. For example, the big pharmaceutical companies have a big presence at U of T, at the Medical Science building, and it is certain that much of the experimentation that goes on is in fact little more than product testing for them. These are drug that even when approved are certainly not healthy for human beings (see http://www.healthcoalition.ca/pharm.html). Money is the driving force behind this research, not humanity's well-being. Testing to cure cancer, for example, is used as a smokescreen for testing that will only benefit the pharmaceutical companies insofar as they will have yet another product in the marketplace as a result. Every time you hear a TV ad talking about the side effects of the drugs, you can be sure animals have had to suffer those side effects. These purposes and ends may be phrased in such a way as to convey a sense of great importance or necessity, but if we compare these ends to the means used to achieve them (i.e. animal testing) they do not measure up - especially when alternative methods could be used. For a more detailed argument along these lines see http://www.cruelscience.ca/research.htm
Right now, at U of T, the corporations are taking over the campus, allowed by the U of T Administration through the "2030 Vision" outline by President Naylor, and contested by the student unions. Many faculty and students feel this massive infusion of research money (billions of dollars) will erode academic freedoms; we are also concerned that it will also erode ethical standards on many fronts, including the university’s position on human rights, civil rights, and not least, animal rights - especially if military research funding is expanded through MARs, which partners with U of T. A few years ago, military funding was proposed in connection with OISE but was withdrawn after protest; however, there is a sizable danger that military funding will increase under the current Administration, and that an exponential rise in animal testing will accompany it. Ethically, there is no substantial difference between human and non-human animals; we all feel pain and none of us wishes to be held captive and tortured. Therefore, if non-consenting experimentation and torture are ethically wrong against human beings on these grounds, it is also wrong to do this to non-human beings. Animal experimentation may rightly be called institutionalized animal abuse and torture in the name of science, not unlike the atrocities carried by Japanese scientists on Chinese POWs during WWII or the Nazis in the same era. The only difference one can point at is that these experiments were carried out on human beings. Yet if there is no substantive difference between human and non-human beings in terms of capacity to feel pain (both emotional and physical) on what grounds can the Research Ethics office justify experimentation on animals? Any possible justification assumes that testing will proceed and seeks only to mitigate the most egregious forms of it; but this mitigating approach serves to sanction continued experimentation! Perhaps the Research Ethics office ought instead to take a strong stand against the practice entirely! There is no valid ethical justification for animal experimentation, unless you maintain that human life is more valuable, but that is logically indefensible. Attempts to formulate ethical justifications are done so in order to safeguard the research funds which the university gets for doing so. Some good people in the Research Ethics office may see themselves as mitigating the more horrible practices and without their invention that may very well be true, but mitigation also serves as de facto sanction, and this is the ethical sticking point that cannot easily be resolved. In an ideal society this would not happen at all. The only thing holding us back from making society better is fear of being isolated and ostracized by those who do not share a vision of a more just society, as well as the comforts that go along with complicity with injustice. At a certain point, for a few people, these incentives for maintaining an unjust status quo at the expense of innocent creatures is not enough. Liberating yourself from the burden of conscience is not such a terrible fate; more people in ethically compromised situations ought to take this "road less travelled." They and the world would be a better place for it. Remember: none of us lives forever; in the short time that we are on this Earth, the true measure of our worth is what we contribute to the well-being of others.
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Thank you for taking the time to read and reflect on this site, and most importantly, to act upon it.
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