Video: The Ethics of Animal Experimentation

The UW Animal Rights Society sponsored a public conversation on the ethics of animal experimentation. The Ethics of Animal Experimentation: A conversation between bioethicist Rob Streiffer and research critic Rick Marolt consisted of a 1 hour discussion followed by about 1/2 an hour of questions from the audience. The two discussed utilitarianism and other ethical frameworks, and applied this thinking to a maternal deprivation study using primates which is currently underway at UW-Madison. Rob Streiffer was on the Animal Care and Use Committee which approved this protocol, but he himself did vote against it.



The Ethics of Animal Experimentation from luciano M on Vimeo.

Fighting Asthma and the Real Estate Market

The last time I wrote, about a month and a half ago, I shared how well our exercise routine was going. We've still been doing it most weekend days, with just a couple missed days, and one with good reason: I had just given blood.

While the motivation is still there, the actual running has been harder lately. At first I had trouble breathing after I exercised, then a little bit during exercise too. Turns out I have mild asthma. My previous doctor told me this back in 2009, but at that time I had no symptoms. I was expecting them to tell me I had allergies, but those tests turned up negative. (By the way, I still think those tests results were wrong and am looking into redoing the test. Call me crazy, I don't care. I want to know why I have symptoms year round.)

So now, asthma. I don't know why this turned up all the sudden. I guess it was there but not noticeable to me 3 1/2 years ago. I'm determined to fight it, to learn what's triggering it and to not be breathing in steriods every day the rest of my life - or at least find a cheap generic medicine! Hopefully I'll find out what I'm allergic to (they better not say "nothing" this time around) and both my problems will go away!

In other news, my boyfriend of just over 4 years and I are looking for a condo - exciting right? It would be, if there were any available in the areas we'd like to live. There were just a couple, but nothing that looked right so far. So we're waiting. I'm not the sort of person who can easily just "wait and see". I like to be pro-active about things, but right now it doesn't seem there's anything to be done. Unless I wanted to knock on people's doors and see if they want to move any time soon.

So wish us luck! And if you have any suggestions for figuring out what I'm allergic to, please let me know. Right now I'm tallying up my sneezes at work v. at home.

Exercise

My boyfriend and I started exercising together Nov. 24, 2011, the day after we celebrated Thanksgiving with his family. (At dinner, his parents expressed their concern about our lack of exercising and offered to get us a gym membership. I thought that would be a waste of money and wouldn't get used - we have an exercise room in our building.)

It's been super convenient. The exercise room is just 1/2 a floor down from our apartment - even more convenient than going to the gym down the block from us, because we don't have to put on our coats and go out in the cold to get there in the winter.

The first day showed me how out of shape I was. I didn't have high expectations, but I was a little surprised that I needed to actually get off the treadmill and sit down for a few minutes to relieve my light-headedness after jogging only a few minutes.

When you start out like that, there's no where to go but up. The second day went 100% better. I made it 15 minutes without getting off the treadmill, doing a combination of jogging and walking. By the 4th day, Dec. 9, I was able to run for 15 minutes straight. That was an accomplishment, for me.

By now, we've gotten into a pretty good routine with just a few exceptions. Each Saturday and Sunday morning, we grab a water bottle and head to the room, stretch for a few minutes, get on the machines (BF does the elliptical) for 15 minutes, stretch and cool down afterward for a few minutes.

The things that I think have helped keep me motivated are:

1. The consistency of the routine, always going for 15 minutes, trying to do go each weekend day.
2. Baby steps. Not pushing myself too hard. If I push too hard and don't reach my goal for that day, I may get discouraged and not exercise again. This means I go incrementally faster (and therefore a longer distance) each day, but only slightly. A couple weeks ago I was feeling sick, so I even slowed down. That day my goal was just to get through the 15 minutes, and I did. We're also not trying to add more exercise days to the week just yet.
3. Keeping an exercise log, telling people. I've heard that if you write down when you exercise, tell people (perhaps blog about it), you're more likely to stick with it. It's sort of like you're making a commitment to them too, not just yourself. BF's parents may ask us about it from time to time, and I want to be able to tell them that it's going well.

UW-Madison Forum on Animal Research Ethics Open Discussion

This is the third year that the UW-Madison has hosted the Forum on Animal Research Ethics (FARE). They have brought several speakers, including researchers currently using animals and other experts. Each presentation has been followed by a question/answer period, but little involved discussion.

The main purpose of this forum was to discuss the ethics of nonhuman primate experiments at the UW Madison. Another purpose was to describe how monkeys are treated at the UW Madison.

Has this happened? No it has not.

[This description of FARE was copied from The Alliance for Animals' recent E-alert.]

The FARE Committee held an open discussion forum where they encouraged feedback about the past sessions and suggestions for the future of FARE.

Here are my notes from the meeting. I do not make any promises about accuracy or completeness.



I've previously posted past FARE presentations:
2012 series: Frans de Waal, David Abbott, Lori Gruen
Fall 2011 series: Paul Kaufman, Andrew Rowan
Spring 2011 series: Lawrence Hanson, Charles Snowdon, Gary Varner

Welfarist? New Welfarist? Abolitionist?

My definitions

Welfarist - One who believes it's okay to use animals for food or otherwise, so long as they are treated humanely. Unfortunately, "humane" labels in the food industry don't mean much at all, aren't well-regulated, so I have no idea what sort of meat they would be promoting.

New Welfarist - One who believes animals should not be used for our purposes, that the end goal is abolition, veganism, but who believes welfare campaigns (larger crates, etc.) are a stepping stone to that end.

Abolitionist - One who believes animals should not be used for our purposes and that the only way to get to that point is by promoting veganism, abolition. They also believe welfare campaigns are working against ending animal suffering, that they do more harm than good.

Read: One-Track Activism by Norm Phelps

Animal Trapping in Dane County Parks

Dane County Parks Resolution 17, 12-13 is regarding the acceptance of Stewardship Grant money for reimbursement of several Dane County parks. The way the resolution is written, if Dane County accepted this money, they would also need to allow hunting and trapping in the parks.

Here is the video of the part of the meeting on May 7, 2012 which discussed this issue.

Trip Review: Vegan Safari to Tanzania

by Ben and Gina

Because finding food on vacation is always a pain, we looked for a specifically vegan travel company. We ended up choosing Your Time Travels for a wildlife safari to Tanzania, and it was a great experience.

Liz, our contact at YTT, sent us weekly emails before the trip letting us know what to expect, how much to tip, and she even left a bottle of wine in our hotel room the first night (which we were way too jet lagged to drink at the time). We felt very prepared and didn't forget to pack a single thing (how often does that happen!?). Our trip was all pre-paid; the only thing we had to pay for were tips, and this made the trip a lot less stressful, I think, than if we had tried to plan it ourselves.

The trip was just the two of us with our guide, which seemed to be standard (based on the other tour groups we saw). Due to safety concerns you will spend most of your time inside a jeep, but they have full sunroofs which you can look out of for easy viewing and better pictures. Our guide taught us a few Swahili words along the way, was very knowledgeable about the different national parks and species in them, and a pleasant person to spend the week with.

We saw a phenomenal number of animals - even driving along the highway (or rather: what counts as a highway in Tanzania) we would see giraffes and elephants in the distance. Inside a park, we never went more than a couple minutes without seeing wildlife. Our guide knew all the names of the different species of gazelle and birds and where to look for the hard-to-spot creatures.
Now, on to the important stuff: food. A lot of the local food is vegetarian (due to poverty) and every lodge we stayed at had vegetarian food on the buffet (all food was served buffet style). The major food crop of Tanzania is bananas, which is a food I would never make the center of my meals, but it turns out that fried green bananas taste quite similar to fried potatoes, and bananas aren't half bad in a curry. Of course, if you stay at a nice lodge it will probably have a lot of American/European type food as well (including Champagne for breakfast, which I had never heard of but is apparently all the rage).

Like everywhere, vegan food is harder to find than vegetarian. (You can't eat anything that's been washed in the water, so the worst-case-scenario-fall-back of salads is out.) Our guide was great in ensuring that we had good food for lunch, but we were on our own for dinner and breakfast. We just asked waiters/chefs which foods were vegan and they were very nice in figuring it out (there was always a vegan option), but it would have been nice if things on the buffet were marked vegan. (Your Time Travels is working on arranging that with the lodges they use, so by the time you read this the problem may have been fixed.) For lunch, our guide made us a delicious fresh fruit and vegetable salad each day, after washing the fruit with bottled water, and we also had food packed up from the lodge that morning.

The lodges that we stayed at were no worse than a nice hotel in America: shower soaps, flushing toilets, great views. Our guide told us that there are lodges that are less expensive, but we guessed that Your Time Travels only books with certain lodges that they know can provide vegan food and excellent service, so if you're looking to stay in a vegan-friendly hostel (or equivalent) in Tanzania, it probably doesn't exist.

A plane ticket is about $1,400 round trip (protip: buy about nine weeks before you leave) and Liz told us that it's hard to spend less than about $200/day/person (and quite easy to spend more) so you should expect to spend a few thousand dollars for a week-long trip (it seemed like ~10 days was the standard, but we were fine spending only 7).

All in all, I think it was a worthwhile trip. Rhinos are near extinction, and if we had gone even a few years later we probably wouldn't have seen one (even today, seeing a rhino is unusual). It is phenomenal just how close you can get to a lion, and pictures don't do justice to the sheer number of zebras and wildebeest migrating across the Serengetti. And vervets are just so cute when they play.