About me: Covance, an animal testing laboratory, plans to build a 282,000-square-foot facility in Chandler, Arizona. Experimentation facilities like the one that Covance intends for Chandler may affect the entire community. Covance brings human health and animal cruelty concerns, and could affect property values in Chandler.
Covance is a contract lab—paid to test cosmetic ingredients, additives, pesticides, and drugs on monkeys, dogs, rabbits, cats, rats, and mice.
Covance was recently investigated and fined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Covance imported more than 12,000 primates for experimentation in 2005. Monkeys can carry an array of diseases dangerous to humans such as hepatitis B, shigella, tuberculosis, and Ebola.
A Covance facility in Virginia, operating under the company’s prior name Hazleton, was closed after disclosing that Ebola-infected monkeys had entered the facility. Hazardous material experts had to seal off the premises and kill all the animals present. Documents uncovered by Citizens Against Covance reveal a 2006 outbreak of
tuberculosis at Covance’s Madison facility, a fact
which Covance has not shared with Chandler
residents, or even with their local community.
Please explore the links in our Blogs section, and find out how you can help prevent Covance from permanently building in Chandler, AZ. Together we truly can make a difference!
***Update 1-1-08*** This Myspace profile is monitored only occasionally, for more up-to-date information please visit www.stopcovance.com or if you have an urgent question, drop us an email there. Thanks team!
Who I'd like to meet: Anyone who wants to join the cause and help us spread the word that COVANCE IS NOT WELCOME in our community - please see our website www.stopcovance.com
to get MANY more shocking details about Covance, sign up for our Yahoo Group, or order free lawn signs.
"Night of justice, knight of justice. Liberation’s crusade has begun. Your laws will have no meaning past the setting of the sun. Demons feeding off of the innocents’ pain. Generations of oppression, one generation will break this chain." -Earth Crisis
Can anyone please help this MySpace friend with information?
PROFILE NAME: Stop The Testing
Date: Nov 2, 2007 2:59 PM Subject: First Fridays Tonight... Body: I was just wondering if anyone is going to be going to First Fridays in Phoenix tonight? I am pretty sure I am going to going tonight and was wondering if anyone wanted to hand out some info about Covance? I am not sure I am going but if you are interested please let me know. Also is there any protests coming up against Covance? Please let me know. I have been slacking since school started back, but I am committed to going to every event I can with in my hectic life... So yeah if there is anyone who would like to meet up let me know. Just message me and I will let you know... Love, Drew
****Bipartisan legislation in congress to ban steel-jaw leghold traps in the entire United States.****
Legislation is in Congress to end the use of steel-jaw leghold traps on animals in the United States
**Representative Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Representative Chris Shays (R-CT) introduced legislation, H.R. 1691, The Inhumane Trapping Prevention Act, to end the use of conventional steel-jaw leghold traps on animals in the United States.
ACTION: Please contact your Representative and urge her/him to cosponsor H.R. 1691, The Inhumane Trapping Prevention Act. For more info: Click HERE Now!
Steel-jaw traps should be banned. They are barbaric and archaic. They are inhumane and cruel, not to mention ineffective and indiscriminate. As intelligent humans, we need
Hey there! I hope you're able to make it out to our next vigil on Sunday. It will be at 6:30 pm on the intersection of Gilbert and Ryan Rd. We've been getting a lot of great response.
STOP THE CANADIAN SEAL HUNT. Boycott Red Lobster. Boycott Canadian Seafood. BOYCOTT CANADA UNTIL THEY STOP KILLING BABY SEALS! Please visit www.Harpseals.org for more info!
On each of these websites, you can click a button to support the cause -- each click creates funding, and costs you nothing! Bookmark these sites, and click once a day!
Here's hoping that you had a peaceful, relaxing weekend. It looks like rain here and we sure could use it. I hope all is well with you and that you are having a terrific Monday.
I have a favor to ask of all of you. I live on the beach near a chain of stores called Wings. Some of you may have been in one recently and will know what I am talking about.
They have been carrying aquatic frogs for a few years now as souvenirs for tourists and children. (As if having the state of Maryland in my backyard wasn't enough, now we want to send them home with something tiny to torture.)
These inch long frogs live in fresh water naturally and eat dried worms and things of that like. The frogs that Wings carries comes in a very small (maybe 3"x3") glass box, which is sealed with no way to feed or care for the frogs. I think it comes with a few pellets of food in the container, though as you can guess most of these frogs DO NOT make it too long.
In my opinion it is disgusting that people would actually want to buy a tiny life on their vacation and just end up tossing it in the hotel trashcan, their suitcase or even leaving it in the sun. The horrible possibilities are endless. These are living things that can feel fear and pain just like us. How about we try to persuade Wings into going back to the beachwear business and staying out of the pet store business?
I've already emailed them and received a response. It was actually fairly promising, though I think that if enough people email or call them, we will be able to save millions of frogs. Letting your kids hurt small animals starting at a young age could just form them into deranged serial killers in adulthood.
Please help!!! Below is the email address for Wings.
wings.customerservice@wingsbeachwear.com
You guys rock! Pass this on to your friends/family!
I have been looking and looking and I can't find a strait answere, how did Covance do in the election?? As someone who fought them I really want to know.
heyyy!!! glad were new friends...i support everything u do and CANNOT BELIEVE THIS COVANCE CRUELTY BULLSH*T! grrrrr...But on a lighter note, keep in touch:) keep me posted on chandler protests etc.even tho i am in nyc my mom will take part!!! xo
Layla
now thats it's a new year. lets start on planing some protests, this gose out to everyone out there if you want to have a protest. just write me and we can start planing one right away. hope to hear from you guys out there.
The Move To Label All Civil Disobedience "Terrorism"
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act makes peaceful protesters terrorists
Infowars.net | December 1, 2006
Steve Watson
An endemic crackdown on peaceful protest and dissent has continued with President Bush signing the 'Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,'. Under the guise of protecting researchers, scientists and their staff who conduct experiments and tests on animals, the latest terror bill seeks to class as "terrorists" those who seek to protest against such activities.
The bill expands criminal prohibitions against the use of force, violence, and threats involving animal enterprises and increases penalties for violations of these prohibitions. The operative term being "threats", because what an activist may see as protesting may be construed under the law to be threatening.
The Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent in September, just prior to the Congressional recess. A similar bill, H.R. 4239, was approved by the House of Representatives this month.
"It's depressing to know that, just because of our beliefs involving animals, we are going to be branded terrorists if we protest," said Lori Nitzel, a Madison attorney and executive director of Alliance for Animals, a statewide group that pledges nonviolence.
Nitzel wonders if even the kind of leafleting the group did Friday near a Madison fur store could be construed as illegal. The bill can impose punishment if an animal enterprise suffers "economic damage."
"We are, in fact, hoping to cause economic damage to the store," Nitzel said.
One report states that backers of the bill say opponents are trying to alarm people with wacky what-ifs. Unfortunately with the government's track record, with any piece of legislation like this you have to ask "what if?".
Without getting into a debate about animal testing itself, the real issue of concern here is the term "terrorism". The push to merge crime and terrorism laws can be no clearer than in this case.
What happens if down the line terrorism legislation begins to be combined? Suddenly you end up with a number of animal rights "terrorists" who can be labeled as enemy combatants and detained without trial.
The more crimes that become "terrorism", the more people you can label as terrorists and treat in the same way. Every time a piece of legislation like this becomes law, the more the Bill of rights is eroded and free speech is restricted.
"The frightening thing for me is that it heavily criminalizes civil disobedience, and just for animal rights activists," Lori Nitzel says. Nitzel is right, however, there are plenty more moves afoot to criminalize other forms of civil disobedience.
We have previously documented cases where those who attend antiwar demonstrations or Quaker meetings have been monitored and placed on a Pentagon database as possible threats. Think about that for a minute, the military is monitoring peaceful US citizens who do not agree with illegal warfare and placing them on a list of possible enemies .
We have previously reported multiple times on how the intelligence and law enforcement agencies have " domestic-terrorism files " into which peaceful protesters have been placed. These are not isolated incidents.
The precedent is set, if you protest you go on the subversive list and you'll be first into the forced labor camps when a city or two gets nuked.
Of course, we have known for a long time that The renewed and extended Patriot Act will target protesters and allow secret services a wider latitude at public events. Penalties for such violations would increase from six months to a year in prison.
The Patriot Act as we have exhaustively documented is the key police state weapon the authorities have in their armory. The party line often heard from Neo-Cons in their attempts to defend the Patriot Act either circulate around the contention that the use of the Patriot Act has never been abused or that it isn't being used against American citizens. The Legislation's reach HAS gone beyond terrorism and it IS actively being used to target American citizens.
The most recent example of a U.S. citizen being targeted using terror legislation involved BBC investigative journalist Greg Palast, who was pursued by Homeland Security and charged with unauthorized filming of a “critical national security structure,” (an Exxon Oil refinery that was readily available to anyone with an Internet connection at Google Maps), under PATRIOT Act legislation. The charge was later dropped after an activist outcry.
Remember, section 802 is specifically aimed at US citizens and announces any crime as "domestic terrorism". Citizens can be held without a trial as "Enemy Combatants"
The Washington Post recently reported "The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say."
Also under the Patriot Act police are authorized to impose "Free Speech Zones" .
Top legal experts and scholars are nearly unanimous that the Military Commissions Act, another piece of Constitution shredding terror legislation, also affects American citizens.
Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman states in the L.A. Times , "The compromise legislation....authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights."
The endemic movement to kill off free speech has spread to Britain too. Free Speech Zones were also introduced in Britain last year, making it illegal to protest outside parliament. The new draconian laws forbid spontaneous free speech within a one-kilometre radius of the House of Commons.
Last year the Scotland Sunday Herald reported that the British Government was considering just banning protest altogether after a major terror attack and making it against the law to criticize the government in a State of emergency.
Both Britain and Australia also have domestic surveillance databases that gather the information of anyone who criticizes them or who they consider to be subversive
Everywhere we look the First Amendment is under attack. It seems that legislation is being passed daily, each bill tearing away at fundamental rights and condemning another form of protest as terrorism. It has got to the point for the government where what is being protested is less of an issue than the act of protest itself which they clearly see as the real threat
Testing drugs and chemicals on animals does not offer even a 50% likelihood of predicting their effects in humans. Likewise, researching human disease using animals is misleading and results in human harm, including death. Replacing the animal model is not about finding a one-to-one replacement for every current use of animals: that would be futile since the way animals are currently used is ineffective. We need to use research techniques that are genuinely effective; such as those described above. Only by devoting our resources to human specific research can we be confident that we are doing our utmost to ease human suffering from disease.
Many scientifically reliable research methods exist which are superior to using animals to learn about human disease or predict the safety of new drugs:
Microdosing – a new method of obtaining human metabolism data, which enables potential new drugs to be tested safely in humans at an earlier stage. Microdosing relies on the ultrasensitivity of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), one of the most sensitive measuring devices ever invented. Using AMS it is possible to conduct a full human metabolism study after administration of as little as 0.1 milligram of drug substance, measuring drug concentrations in biological fluids up to 1000 times less than the levels one would observe in a classical Phase I clinical study. This should be part of ‘Phase 0’ pre-clinical trials for every drug, instead of animal testing. Currently, preclinical studies take up to 18 months and cost €2.3-3.8m. Microdosing could reduce the time to four to six months and the cost to €0.26m per new molecule. Its accuracy at predicting human metabolism is unsurpassed. EU and US regulators have endorsed the use of microdosing to speed and improve the safety of drug development. See www.xceleron.co.uk, www.microdosing.co.uk
DNA chips – enable the study of pharmacogenetics, which, in turn, enables the practice of personalised medicine. This is the concept that since each person is genetically unique, medicines should be designed for individuals, rather than our current ‘one drug fits all’ approach. DNA chips are computer wafers with tiny wells where human genes can be exposed to a new drug, for instance. The computer then reads which genes are turned on or off (or up or down) by the experimental drug. See, for example, www.simugen.co.uk
Microfluidics chips – again just 2cm wide, have etched into them a series of tiny chambers, each containing a sample of tissue from different parts of the body. The compartments are linked by microchannels through which a blood substitute flows. The test drug is added to the blood substitute and circulates around the device; thus mimicking what goes on in the body on a micro scale. Sensors in the chip feed back information for computer analysis. Hurel (Human relevant) are pioneering this field: see www.hurelcorp.com
Human tissue – all that we know about HIV/AIDS has come from studying humans and human tissue; particularly blood. Similarly, everything we know about Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases has been learned by studying patients and their tissues. According toDr. John Xuereb, Director of the Cambridge Brain Bank and Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre; “Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases occur in humans and it is in human tissue that we will find the answers to these diseases.” New drugs can be tested in human tissues, ethically obtained with fully informed consent, before they are given to volunteers in microdose studies. Companies such as Asterand work exclusively with human tissue because it is more appropriate than animal tissue: see www.asterand.com, www.biopta.com
Computer modelling – virtual human organs and virtual metabolism programmes can now predict drug effects in humans far more accurately than animals can. Computers can be used to design the molecular structure of drugs to target specific receptors. For example, the protease inhibitors for patients with HIV were designed by computer and tested in human tissue cultures and computer models, bypassing animal tests because of the urgent need. In 1997, Roche Pharmaceuticals had a new heart drug approved on the strength of data from a virtual heart because the animal data was inconclusive. Research teams around the world are working on a 'virtual human', which is designed to predict drug metabolism and metabolite interaction with any given organ - information that animal models will never be able to provide. Scientists can simulate experiments in silico (in computer) that could take months or years to do in the lab or clinic. See www.entelos.com, www.physiome.org
Autopsies – though neglected of late for a number of reasons, post mortem studies remain the best method of studying the effects of a disease on the whole body.
Epidemiology – studies lifestyle factors in populations to find commonalities that might be significant. Epidemiology linked smoking to cancer and high cholesterol to heart disease, folic acid deficiency in pregnancy to spina bifida and many more associations. See www.ukbiobank.ac.uk
Stem cell research – offers potential promise of treatment for a wide variety of diseases. Human stem cells have already been used successfully to treat some leukaemias, as well as improving outcomes for heart attack patients and for some patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
New imaging technologies – such as Magnetoencephalography (MEG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI (fMRI), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), positron emission tomography (PET), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), event-related optical signals (EROS), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and others are offering a view of the human body – in particular, the brain – that cannot be gained by studying animals.
Post-Marketing Drug Surveillance – if enforced, would ensure that unexpected side effects of new drugs would be identified much sooner; thus reducing the burden of adverse drug reactions: currently our 4th leading cause of death.
Clinical research – has been and will remain the sine qua non of medical practice.
Many medical treatments have never been studied for efficacy. Large clinical studies are needed to establish whether current practice is actually the best, evidence-based option.
Prevention – is always more effective than cure. It is estimated that 80% of all cancers and heart disease – our two biggest killers – could be prevented. Funding further research into establishing preventive factors would be money well spent.
http://www.curedisease.net/superior_methods.shtml
To measure severe burns on live tissue, a pet is burned alive with a flame-thrower until the charred flesh can be removed in large pieces from while the animal is still alive.
An experiment to study head trauma requires a pet’s head to be strapped down and receive high impact blows to the head resulting in severe brain damage.
To demonstrate there is no difference in eye protein levels of the site deprived, pet’s eyelids are sewn shut then later compared to normal protein levels.
To study recovery from injury, a pet is strapped down, and the pet’s knees are cut to leave large flaps.
Animal testing costs the American public over $136 billion annually. Animal testing is costing your family more then $300 dollars a year. Alternatives cost a significantly less amount and produce far better results.
Humans and animals are different in many ways. Many drugs approved for human use based on animal studies have had to be taken off the market at a later date because of side effects not revealed in animal studies. More than 100,000 people have been hospitalized and later died from toxic reactions to medications in 1994 that were not predicted by animal tests.
Here are some other examples of animal testing in failure:
Many patients who were administered the general anesthetic Methoxyflurane lost function of their kidneys because animal experiments failed to reveal possible kidney toxicity.
The arthritis medication Flosint proved fatal to humans after passing tests on rats, monkeys, and dogs.
Opren, a cough medication
