Animal testing during corona pandemic !!!

Scientists are ramping up the breeding of lab mice as well as the testing of primates and other animals, but it all takes time.

Laboratories around the world are racing to breed stocks of transgenic mice, and testing the susceptibility of other animals to infection with the virus that causes Covid-19

Among the many lessons of the corona virus pandemic is how close humans are to the rest of the animal kingdom. We get diseases from other animals, and then we use more animals to figure out how to stop the diseases. As research ramps up treatments and vaccines,animals are crucial to fighting the pandemic.

There are different animals at each end of the pandemic, of course. The new disease almost certainly began with a bat virus, scientists agree. That virus probably passed through another animal, perhaps pangolins, on its way to humans.

But the animals that scientists will depend on in the lab are mice, first of all, and then perhaps ferrets or hamsters or monkeys. Millions of mice, rats, rabbits, primates, cats, dogs, and other animals are locked inside barren cages in laboratories across the country. They languish in pain, suffer from extreme frustration, ache with loneliness, and long to be free.

Instead, all they can do is sit and wait in fear of the next terrifying and painful procedure that will be performed on them. The complete lack of environmental enrichment and the stress of their living situation cause some animals to develop neurotic types of behavior such as incessantly spinning in circles, rocking back and forth, pulling out their own fur, and even biting themselves. After enduring a life of pain, loneliness, and terror, almost all of them will be killed.

Around the world, different laboratories are racing to breed stocks of mice genetically engineered for research and testing the susceptibility of other animals to infection with the virus that causes Covid-19.

There are, of course, many objections to animal testing, particularly when it comes to primates, but researchers are deeply concerned about the hazards to humans of treatments or vaccines that have not been tried on other animals first.

No single kind of animal will serve all test purposes and scientists have several criteria for what makes an animal useful in testing therapies and vaccines for effectiveness.

First, it must be susceptible to infection, and not all animals are. Despite the quarantining of one dog in Hong Kong, with a “weak positive” test for coronavirus, various health agencies are not taking a single, ambiguous result as evidence for concern. Advisories state there is no evidence yet that pets are susceptible to the disease.

What You Can Do

Each of us can help prevent animal suffering and deaths by donating only to charities that don’t experiment on animals, requesting alternatives to animal dissection, demanding the immediate implementation of humane, effective non-animal tests by government agencies and corporations.

• Conducting groundbreaking eyewitness investigations and colorful advocacy campaigns to educate the public
• Pushing government agencies to stop funding and conducting experiments on animals
• Encouraging pharmaceutical, chemical, and consumer product companies to replace tests on animals with more effective non-animal methods
• Funding humane non-animal research
• Publishing scientific papers on the superiority of non-animal test methods
• Urging health charities not to invest in dead-end tests on animals

                                 TAKE ACTION FOR ANIMALS!

Works Cited

"These Lab Animals Will Help Fight Corona virus "nytimes.com March 14,2020

"Hong Kong Pet dog that tested for corona virus dies after returning from quarantine virus-free"

marketwatch.com March 19, 2020 at 3:42 p.m. ET

"Top Five Shocking Animal Experimentation Facts." Peta.org Peta, n.d. Web. 10 Mar.  2020