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4.16.2008
Dear fellow primate,I am just checking in to give you an update on Primates Incorporated and to show you this cool new e-newsletter we have developed. Due to low turnouts at the monthly meetings, we have decided to cancel the in-house monthly meetings and work on these monthly e-newsletters instead. We will have a Comments Corner for each e-newsletter to ensure your input is still heard as we work to raise funds to build the Primates Incorporated Sanctuary. |
| Latest News |
Please Help Us Raise Funds |
Online Auction This September - Call for In-Kind Donations
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EVERY CENT MATTERS |
| We want to remind you that you can help raise money for us every
time you search the web. Just go to our Web Portal and use the Google search box. Google will actually give us money for some of the searches you do. The link to our Web Portal is: http://www.everycentmatters.com/orgpi Whenever you're at the Web Portal, you can also go shopping for just about anything you want at many of the internet's most popular sites, and we will get part of the money you spend. So if you're shopping anyway, you may as well make sure that some of your money goes toward something you care about. Just click the link near the top of the Web Portal that says Go Shopping to get to the Virtual Mall. From the Mall, just click the link to the site where you want to shop and shop as you normally would. You can also go directly to the Virtual Mall at: http://www.everycentmatters.com/orgpi/shopping.php |
Upcoming Arbonne Party at Amy's house - April 19th |
Amy is having a get-together at her house this Saturday, April
19th at |
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| Catherine, a Primates Incorporated Volunteer, has offered up her
house on Thursday, May 8th, to host a Partylite Fundraiser. Attend and buy great candles to help support Primates Incorporated. I am donating $20 and a $1 per head for each person who shows up. For more details on the party, and if you would like to attend, please email Catherine at castelli@uwalumni.com. |
Land Update |
| No one has responded to the 60 land inquiry letters I sent out. Debby and I will keep looking at properties now that the snow has melted. I am working with a local vegetarian group to coordinate a vegetarian dinner to help raise funds for Have a Heart Farm's land purchase. |
Article Summaries |
| Primate Retirement Chimps Deserve Better Campaign Made Progress in 2007 http://www.hsus.org/animals_in_research/chimps_deserve_better/chimps_des erve_better_1.html Excerpt: " The HSUS formally launched its Chimps Deserve Better campaign in 2007 to end invasive research and testing on chimpanzees and permanently retire chimpanzees in laboratories to sanctuary. A Step in the Right Direction There is growing acknowledgement within the scientific community and among policymakers that chimpanzees are aware of their desperate situation as research subjects and suffer greatly while living in laboratories. This has brought about some recent progress towards improving the plight of research chimps, including the decision by the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health to end the federally funded breeding of chimpanzees for research purposes. More recently, on Wednesday, December 26, 2007 President Bush signed into law the "Chimp Haven is Home Act", which will give retired research chimpanzees a permanent home at federal sanctuaries and prohibit their removal for further use as research subjects. Although these are encouraging steps, there still is far to go before chimpanzees will no longer be subjected to life as research subjects in U.S. laboratories..." Comment from Amy: Ensuring chimpanzees are retired from research and get federal funding for it is a step in the right direction. However, there are 60,000 monkeys compared to the 1500 chimpanzees in research. Monkeys are highly intelligent and sentient beings too and deserve to be retired as well - we will work with our congress members to let them know this. Article Review 3R's - Replacement Article Summary by Ann Three U.S. agencies aim to end animal testing http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-02-14-animal-tests_N.htm USA Today, Feb 14, 2008 By Elizabeth Weise This article describes how a coalition of representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, National Toxicology Program, and National Institutes of Health (NIH) have officially agreed to develop and implement innovative tests designed to determine the safety of drugs and chemicals that do not involve the use of animals. Martin Stephens of the Humane Society of the United States regarded the agreement as a "milestone" and ".the beginning of the end for animal testing," stating that tests for toxicology involving animals should be phased out within the next 10 years. According to Stephens, approximately 10 million animals, including rats, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, monkeys, and dogs, are used in research every year. Tests for the safety of chemicals for humans have historically involved injecting animals with the chemicals and gauging their reactions. The Humane Society has been protesting against the use of animals in toxicity tests for some time, especially those used to determine the safety of cosmetics. The government agencies cited the public's "unease" with animal testing, the rising cost of chemicals, the growing number of new chemicals, and high testing costs as factors leading to the development of the coalition. While the agencies note that it could take years of testing to validate the new scientific methods, they do appear committed to leaving the old methods behind. Francis Collins, director of the NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute, notes the flaws in the old methods, "It [historical toxicity testing] was expensive, time-consuming, used animals in large numbers, and it didn't always work." The new methods for toxicology testing utilize human cells grown in test tubes and computer-based test procedures, which allow scientists to determine the toxicity of chemicals without injecting them into animals. The EPA has already begun to use these new procedures to test 300 chemicals. Compared to the old methods, the new toxicology tests are extremely efficient. Over the past 30 years, the EPA has been able to test the toxicity of 2,500 compounds. On the other hand, thousands of chemicals can be tested at one time with the new system; a computer drips different chemicals into numerous tiny wells on a glass tray where hundreds human of cells are located, and then shines a laser on them. Toxicity is determined based on the response of each cell to the chemicals. The pressure to produce faster testing methods has been a catalyst for change within the agencies, augmented by scientists' realization that the same tests that pharmaceutical companies use to test the benefits of their drugs can be used to determine whether chemical compounds harm cells. While Elias Zerhouni, director of the NIH, explains, "animal testing won't disappear overnight," he also declares, "the agencies' work signals the beginning of the end [of animal testing]." Results from toxicology tests using the cell-based methods will be compared with the results using old methods to determine the reliability of the new tests. The data from the tests will be available on a public database. More information regarding the agencies' collaborative efforts can be found in the February 14, 2008 issue of Science. Comment by Amy: I think the FDA needs to come on board with these other institutions so that animal testing can be phased out. They currently require two species of animals be tested in the drug development process. Other Comments? Please send to amy@primatesinc.com |