May 6, 2016
CAARE is calling on the Simons Foundation to stop funding cruel experiments on monkeys that place electrodes inside their brains to see what happens while they are trained to perform a “charitable task” while immobilized in full-body restraint chairs.
Brain recordings are made while monkeys are tested as they respond to images on a screen that are linked to a reward of a squirt of fruit juice. In hundreds of trials, these experiments examine whether the monkey will give a juice reward to himself or his partner or both.
Researchers are claiming to track the brain biology of kindness in monkeys, and claiming they can somehow link that to a cure for autism!
It’s time to demand that modern technology replace antiquated and egregious animal experiments.
When functional MRI was first revealed, doctors and scientists were wowed by its capabilities to demonstrate how the normal brain works and how that function is impeded by disease.
Dr. Hans Breiter at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston called it "… the wonder technique we've all been waiting for. At last we can see inside the human brain."
Dr Walter Schneider, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh, summed it up saying, "We have, in a single afternoon, been able to replicate in humans what took 20 years to do in nonhuman primates."
The problem is these statements were made 23 years ago, shortly after the first fMRI machines were first demonstrated at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1991.
Twenty five years later, many thousands of animals continue to be used in lethal, mutilating brain research in vain attempts to produce information about the human brain.
One of the main reasons this continues is because animal researchers get paid to do it.
The animal research industrial complex is a mighty force that convinces charitable foundations to fund their work. But more and more Americans are speaking up to let funders know that animal experiments are cruel and irrelevant.
That's why adding your name to our petition is so important.
Not only has advanced non-invasive brain imaging existed for decades, but it has been improved and refined immeasurably over the last quarter century. Scientists and clinicians can learn about the brain through safe and ethical human studies.
Citizens for Alternatives to Animal Research (CAARE), is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, established to highlight and promote research without animals.
Please donate to help CAARE carry out our mission to speak up for animals in laboratories, and to reduce animal suffering by disseminating information about the power and progress of research without animals.
