Animals taken from shelters and pounds should not become research and teaching subjects. Consider each individual companion cat or dog and what it goes through after being transferred from a human home to a shelter to a dealer and then from a Class 'B' dealer to a laboratory for lethal experiments.
After being held temporarily at the shelter and being exposed to several other animals that might have underlying maladies, the animals are transferred to animal dealers who are required by federal law to hold them for only 10 days.
They are again transferred to a laboratory where they will be used in lethal experiments of unsubstantiated benefit to any living creature, despite the finely tuned rhetoric put forth by biomedical lobbyists and researchers.
This continual transfer can put the animals' mental and physical health in jeopardy.
According to the University of Michigan Medical School, a taxpayer's random-source dog or cat might be incubating infectious diseases which might be manifested clinically during the experiment.
These once-healthy and adoptable companion animals are now purposefully made sick or experimented upon, forced to endure pain and or distress and eventually killed. Therein lies the betrayal.
While veterinary students should learn to practice surgical skills on living animals, several veterinary schools around the country have eliminated terminal surgeries on otherwise healthy animals.
Instead they teach through the use of models, supervised procedures such as surgical sterilization of animals who are available for adoption from local shelters, or through close observation and or assistance with surgeries or procedures on actual veterinary hospital patients who will benefit from their medical attention, not to mention the students who will benefit from learning some animals are not just disposable teaching tools.
In addition, shelters that sell animals to laboratories destroy public trust, leading to communities with perpetual companion animal overpopulation. It is a vicious cycle that is extremely inhumane, and financial interests should not supersede the humane treatment of animals.
Crystal Spiegel
American Anti-Vivisection Society outreach director
