Letter From Darlene Kaiser about Federal Funding for Vivisection - 2 Jan 2014
Letters From All-Creatures.org and The Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman Family Foundation

January 2, 2014
 
Senator Patty Murray
154 Russell, Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C.  20510
 
Dear Senator Murray:
 
Re: The $14 billion per year the U.S. spends on cruel, fraudulent animal experiments
 
Realizing that you receive thousands of letters, I’m enclosing a pamphlet which, I hope, will make you realize how horrible animal “research” truly is, and why these grant monies to the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies must be stopped.  I’m also sending this pamphlet to Rep. Rick Larsen, Senator Maria Cantwell, Speaker John Boehner, the Budget Director, the Vice President, the President, and anyone else who I think might help. 
 
Our government is trillions of dollars in debt, but we taxpayers are still paying $14 billion per year for these atrocities to animals.
 
The Animal Welfare Act does NOT protect or apply to animals in government funded experiments.  State and local anti-cruelty to animal laws can’t help these poor creatures.  And experimenters are NOT required to give them anesthetics.
 
Here are more examples:
 
1). Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison.  Researchers cut into the brains of cats, drilled holes in their skulls, placed wire coils in their eyes, deafened them, and starved them to death.  $3 million.  Their justification:  “NIH funds were meant to ‘keep up a productive publication record that ensures our constant funding.’”
 
2). Johns Hopkins University. For more than 9 years professors have been cutting the skin off the penises of live animals while painfully electro-shocking their genitals for five minutes.  $2.8 million taxpayer dollars.  (Payout #5R01DK067223)
 
3). UCLA and Yale.  Monkeys shot up with PCP at 15-20 times the common human recreational dose (on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts).  Multiple grants (just one of these was $525,000) through the Natl. Institutes of Mental Health, Natl. Institute on Drug Abuse, and Natl. Center for Research Resources.
 
4). New York University Emotional Brain Institute.  Baby rats tormented by electric shocks, stepped on, subjected to “forced swim tests” to see how long they struggled to swim before they drowned, or had electrodes implanted in their brains to infuse psychedelics – to study “child abuse.”  $2.6 million, beginning in 2009.
 
5). University of Houston, College of Optometry, Vanderbilt University, and the Natl. Institute of Mental Health.  Newborn monkeys had electrodes surgically implanted in their heads, placed in head frames for up to 4 days, killed, and their brains “studied.”
Funded by the Natl. Eye Institute, $734,000 per year.
 
There are THOUSANDS of these barbaric experiments repeated year after year at taxpayer expense, funded by our government through its various agencies, beginning with the National Institutes of Health. 
 
Millions of us voters are begging you to help stop this. 
 
Respectfully,
Darlene K. Kaiser
Lynnwood, WA

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