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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is considering repealing a rule that exempts captive members of 11 threatened primate species from protection under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). If the agency approves a repeal, the captive animals would be designated as threatened, like their wild counterparts, and researchers would need to apply for permits for experiments. To be approved, studies would have to be aimed at species survival and recovery.
[...] Writing to PETA on 1 March, FWS promised to "consider your petition request promptly," and assess whether ESA protection is warranted for each species. There is precedent indicating that the agency might agree with PETA. In 2015, it designated captive chimpanzees as endangered, like their wild counterparts. In doing so, it wrote that its reading of the ESA indicated that "Congress did not intend for captive specimens of wildlife to be subject to separate legal status on the basis of their captive state."
PETA's Goodman says a listing change would allow animal rights activists to better track—and challenge—research involving captive Japanese macaques. When a researcher applies for a permit to conduct an experiment on a species listed under ESA, the application is published in the Federal Register and open to public comment. That means, says Goodman, "We have the opportunity to stop experiments before they happen. And we have more information as to what the animals are actually being used for, how invasive the experiments are."
The Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys, have been housed at the Oregon center, part of Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), since 1965. The troop has provided animal models for multiple sclerosis and for an inherited form of age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of human blindness. Ongoing work studies the effects on offspring when pregnant dams are fed a high-fat diet. Several years ago, some males were castrated and received hormone replacement to study the effect of androgens on neurons thought to motivate aggressive behavior. Females with their ovaries removed have been used to study the effects of hormone replacement therapy on stress and anxiety, with potential applications to mood and stress in menopausal women.
[...] FWS designated the wild Japanese macaque as threatened in 1976, because the Japanese forests needed for its survival had been heavily logged.
Note: PETA = People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Wikipedia page)
Related:
Ebola Vaccine for Great Apes Hindered by Chimpanzee Research Restrictions
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday March 10 2017, @04:48PM (5 children)
It shouldn't be PETA = People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It should really be PETA = People Eating Tasting Animals.
Ok, they probably don't eat them. But - like too many green organizations - they are thoroughly hypocritical. Example: the 2013 PETA protest of the abuse of a cat that was being used in hearing research; meanwhile, PETA itself kills more than 1000 cats. [speakingofresearch.com]
If you are testing a new drug, the fact remains that you can only discover the actual effect by putting the drug into an actual organism. We simply do not understand biological systems well enough to do it any other way. Are there abuses? Is animal testing sometimes unnecessary? Sure, there are cases like that. But an absolute prohibition, as PETA wants to see? That's just dumb.
What bothers me more is the religious aspect of it: "my morality is right, yours is wrong". PETA members are welcome to avoid, themselves, medical treatments that were developed with the help of animal testing. However, they have no right to dictate what other people do.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @05:10PM (2 children)
You've summarized human nature, or certainly most of the internet, or at least the places like here where people interact via posts. The more vociferous followers of St. Snowden are like that here. They define where the morality line is (even for issues where "morality" is not involved), and if you're not on their side of the sometimes shifting line, then you are a subhuman fascist POS shill. It lets people feel better about themselves by defining themselves in comparison to another person or group onto whom they can look down. For instance, people on the Republican "team" are gleefully supporting all the bat shit crazy stuff Trump wants to do, stuff they loudly denounced only a year or two ago, but now that their team is "winning", their strong principles on which they say they always vote on have magically morphed into new absolute and unchanging "principles".
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday March 10 2017, @08:33PM
St. Snowden?
You say that as if there is any debate to be had. There isn't. In this specific case, yes, my morality is right and the dissenters are immoral subhuman fascist pieces of shit. Yes, morality is very much fucking involved, along with ETHICS. Why?
Privacy and Anonymity are BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS. Moreover, they are the BEDROCK of American Freedoms. Period.
To my knowledge, "St. Snowden" has never said anything but the truth, and only advocated for American's privacy and freedom. There isn't any discussion. I, and many others, will gut you and leave you dying in the middle of the street when you try and come for our freedoms, based on basic human rights. That's not crazy or immorally violent, but Americans standing up and protecting the Constitution of the United States Of America with whatever force is required to protect the American way of life. That way of life doesn't include mass surveillance, manipulation, and corruption by government and Corporate America.
Yep. Supporters of privacy and anonymity are 1 trillion percent on the right side of this and any dissenters truly are fascist subhuman pieces of shit. There are zero justifications for government, or large groups of powerful people, to remove the basic human rights of the unwashed masses via mass surveillance. ZERO.
ANY deviations from upholding these basic human rights MUST involve DUE PROCESS. It's an incredibly SERIOUS undertaking to remove my basic human rights. Unless there is enough evidence to convince a member of the Judiciary that my rights need to be infringed upon, then they cannot be. That logically, morally, and ethically precludes all mass surveillance efforts and criminalizes what Corporate America does every day.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by charon on Saturday March 11 2017, @01:16AM
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Friday March 10 2017, @09:03PM
There are alternatives [sciencedirect.com]...
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @10:33PM
Puhleeease.
I won't apologize for their douchey media moment moves, but euthanization is the only way to combat overpopulation of stray animals. Screaming hypocrisy here is just willful or blind ignorance.
Bradley13 I've noticed a trend in you railing against "lefty" stuff without very good rationale, almost like it is a knee-jerk reaction to alternative facts... You wouldn't happen to be sporting any other accounts would you? Perhaps on named jmorris? You two sound pretty similar.