What do you all think of the story of the Ridglan Beagles being rescued from medical research? - YouTube
Seeing the difference in demeanor and conditions from how they’re kept for breeding/research vs playing together in a field has been gut wrenching to watch. What’s worse is knowing this is only saving 1500 of 40k+ in the US alone...
I don’t do animal research myself, but this sent me down a rabbit hole…. including reading this overview about how much waste and useless science exists in this field. It makes me think we need to fight for some real change from WITHIN the scientific community.
I get that IACUC exists. It is not enough. And I get that there are multiple ways these dogs are being used (tox, basic research, clinical trials, ortho apparently from that article). Most of it is not worth the trade off of what we’re putting them through.
And if a tiny percent is - then I’m talking about cutting the crazy scale and waste with which this is happening for 40k+ dogs and countless other animals to live and die in agony *every year*.
These dogs are purchased from hellish breeders (Marshall is the only big one left now that Ridglan is closing) and are subjected to even worse after. And this doesn’t even touch on primates and other animals.
And after all of that, over 92% of the medical trial studies done on animals don’t even translate to humans.
It’s embarrassing that it is taking animal rights activists and RFK Jr - two groups who couldn’t be more different politically but agree on this - to force change that should probably be coming from within the scientific community a lot faster.
We like numbers - this stuff doesn’t even translate well. And I like to think most of us still have enough empathy to weigh this from both sides of the scale.
This doesn’t even touch on another huge human issue - the trauma that folks go through who have to do these things to these poor animals every day. Some of you who do may be reading this. If you are - what can we do to end this?