Thousands of Reasons to Stop Vivo Bio Tech Lab

By Jason Baker, Director for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Asia

Vivo Bio Tech, an Indian drug company, plans to build a multi-million-dollar animal testing laboratory in Malaysia. Those who will be affected by it the most were never consulted, their wellbeing never considered. But this facility will cost them their lives. The laboratory will house thousands of primates, dogs and small animals who will die in painful experiments.

Before allowing an Indian company to construct this laboratory on their soil, Malaysians should consider monkey 2287. She is the oldest monkey at an Indian laboratory owned by All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Monkey 2287 is a 22-year-old female who has spent almost two decades sitting alone in a barren 2′ by 2′ cage. She should be climbing trees and nurturing her family. Instead, she is forced to stare at the same metal walls only a few inches from her nose, hour after hour, decade after decade.

Whether they are in Asia, Europe or North America, animals in labs suffer a grim fate. When the Hindustan Times investigated the conditions at the AIIMS’ laboratory, what they revealed was typical of facilities around the world. Monkeys, who are extremely social animals, were kept isolated, housed individually in small, barren, rusty cages. A terrified infant was kept separated from his mother. Sick and dying animals were left to suffer, including rabbits with an infectious skin disease and guinea pigs who had gone blind.

To get an idea of what animal experiments involve, consider the findings of an undercover investigation at the University of Utah in the United States. In the university’s labs, monkeys had holes drilled into their skulls and metal hardware attached to their heads. Dogs, who at first greeted lab technicians with wagging tails and friendly barks, soon lost hope. Their necks were cut open and medical devices were implanted inside.

This is the way animals in labs are treated in countries that have laws designed to “protect” them. What’s different about Malaysia is that there is no legislation governing the use of animals in research. The animals killed by Vivo Bio Tech will not even be afforded the most basic protection.

In addition to the trauma of the experiments themselves, animals in laboratories suffer psychologically from being forced to live alone, deprived of all that comes naturally to them. They will never run freely or breathe fresh air. Only death will free them from their stainless steel prisons.

Although drug companies with financial interests in animal laboratories argue that this barbaric treatment of animals is for the sake of medicine, many experiments on animals have no direct link to any treatments. For example, for more than 40 years, experimenters have been removing infant primates from their mothers for no other reason than to record the devastating emotional effects. How many baby monkeys must we torment in order to illustrate what we already know?

Additionally, experiments that do focus on treatments are unreliable. In 2004, the United States Food and Drug Administration confirmed that only eight percent of drugs that pass animal tests make it to the marketplace. This means that of all the drugs that are found to be safe and effective in animals, 92 percent are found to be either unsafe or ineffective in humans. This should not be surprising considering the vast physiological differences between species.

In laboratories around the world, millions of animals are drowned, burned, cut open, shocked, poisoned, starved and wounded. Their only “offense” is that they weren’t born human.

Animal rights groups are fighting to stop the construction of the Vivo Bio Tech lab on humanitarian grounds. They deserve all of our support.

Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Reddit Stumble This Post