The History of the American Anti-Vivisection Society

SPRING 2008

A PU BL IC ATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY

The Birth of a Movement: the history of the American Anti-Vivisection Society

Contents Managing Editor Crystal Schaeffer Copy Editor Julie Cooper-Fratrik

STAFF Tracie Letterman, Esq., Executive Director Jeanne Borden, Administration Assistant Chris Derer, Director of Development & Member Services Laura Ducceschi, Education Director Nicole Green, Associate Director of Education Vicki Katrinak, Policy Analyst Nina Mak, Research Analyst Nicole Perry, Outreach Coordinator Kristine Rawls, Membership Coordinator Crystal Schaeffer, Outreach Director Austin Schlack, IT Manager & Graphic Designer Julie Sinnamon, Office Manager

VOLUME CXVI, NUMBER 2

F E AT U R E S

2 A Brief History of the American Anti-Vivisection Society

By Lily Santoro, Ph.D. Candidate, AAVS Archives Intern

A synopsis of AAVS’s lasting legacy.

6 The Foremother to Animal Advocacy: Caroline Earle White

By Bernard Unti, Ph.D.

As the founder of AAVS, Caroline Earle White was also instrumental in shaping the foundation of our modern animal rights movement.

Articles published in the AV Magazine may be reproduced with written permission and with credit given to AAVS. Also, we appreciate receiving pertinent newspaper and magazine clippings, including their sources and dates of publication.

When sending funds or making bequests, please use our legal title:

10 A Legacy of Kindness: Nina Halvey and The Miss B’Kind Club

By Laura Ducceschi, MA, AAVS Education Director

Maintaining a legacy of more than a century requires great leadership by committed and visionary individuals.

15 Mary Francis Lovell:

Writing the Wrongs of Animals

By Nicole Perry, AAVS Outreach Coordinator

Believing firmly in the power of the pen, this pioneer did much to lay the foundation of animal rights.

18 Let Us Visit the Past

A fun look back at our favorite and most poignant articles from our archives.

AAVS has long been dedicated to humane education, and Nina Halvey was a pioneer in the field, reaching out to children across the country in an effort to teach them to be kind to animals.

CO LUM N S

Organized and established in 1883.

22 NewsNet

Cover photo: AAVS staff members Florence Schippert, Nina Halvey, Dorothea Frerenceth stand in front of AAVS’s Philadelpia office in 1924.

By Crystal Schaeffer, MA Ed., AAVS Outreach Director

In an effort to create lasting change for animals, AAVS has dedicated itself to improving legislation and policy in an effort to better secure the well-being of animals.

20 MediaWatch

Printed on recycled paper.

Meet the Presidents of AAVS

Legislative Efforts

By Crystal Schaeffer, MA Ed., AAVS Outreach Director

American Anti-Vivisection Society 801 Old York Road Suite 204 Jenkintown, PA 19046-1685

The American Anti-Vivisection Society does not verify all of the claims made by the authors and the individual views expressed in the AV Magazine do not necessarily reflect the policy of the organization.

12 Leadership Mobilization:

16 Over a Century of Change: AAVS

GRAPHIC DESIGN/ILLUSTRATION: © Copyright 2008 eureka, www.abouteureka.com The AV Magazine (USPS 002-660) is published quarterly under the auspices of the American Anti-Vivisection Society, Sue Leary, President. Annual membership dues: $25 .00. Third-class postage paid at Lancaster, Pa. Office of Publication: 801 Old York Road Suite 204 Jenkintown, PA 19046-1685 Telephone: 215-887-0816 Fax: 215-887-2088 E-mail: aavs@aavs.org Website: www.aavs.org

ISSN 0274-7774

AAVS in the media today and through the years.

Taking a look back: Pets Stolen for Use in Medical Research; Dog Dies in Space; Protection for Laboratory Animals; First Animal Patents Issued in U.S.; A look at today: Heart and Brain Cells Created from Human Skin; Biochips More Accurate Than Animal Tests; SimPooch Could Help Teach Acupuncture Students.

24 Message to Our Members

Taking a look back and moving forward.

25 TRIBUTES

Special friends honored and remembered.

28 ARDF Update

The making of a leader in the alternatives development movement.

FIRST WORD

Who Are We? Founded in 1883, the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) is the first nonprofit animal advocacy and educational organization in the United States dedicated to ending experimentation on animals in research, testing, and education. AAVS also opposes and works to end other forms of cruelty to animals. We work with students, grassroots groups, individuals, teachers, the media, other national organizations, government officials, members of the scientific community, and advocates in other countries to legally and effectively end the use of animals in science through education, advocacy, and the development of alternative methods in animal use.

AAVS has two main divisions, each involved in specific activities. Animalearn is the education program of AAVS, which focuses on ending vivisection and dissection in the classroom. From elementary through college levels, Animalearn helps countless individuals make their classrooms more humane. Animalearn operates the most aggressive dissection alternatives lending library in the country, The Science Bank; it provides alternatives to using animals, from basic dissection, through psychology experiments. Animalearn also participates in national teacher conferences and hosts workshops to help teachers learn ways of educating without harming other living creatures. Animalearn’s National Humane Educators Network links interested parties with speakers across the country, bringing the message of humane education to thousands.

The Outreach division of AAVS educates the general public about animal issues through one of the top-rated literature collections in the animal advocacy movement and the informative AAVS website. Our quarterly publication, AV Magazine, and bi-monthly newsletter, Activate For Animals, provide comprehensive up-to-date information on the scientific and ethical dimensions of animal experiments and alternatives. Both publications encourage AAVS members and supporters to become actively involved in our campaigns. Outreach staff also travel to speaking engagements and conferences and place advertisements in national publications to spread the AAVS message across the country.

The Alternatives Research & Development Foundation (ARDF), an affiliate of AAVS, awards grants to scientists and educators working to develop non-animal methods of investigation. ARDF’s unique program provides the necessary resources for the development of alternatives to the use of animals, and it advocates the use of alternatives through the internet and by participating in conferences and seminars. Through these endeavors, ARDF works to promote scientific solutions for today with humane visions for the future.

We ask you to become a member of AAVS and help us to end the use of animals in science through education, advocacy, and the development of alternative methods. It is only through the support of members and other individuals that we are able to continue our vital and successful programs.

Putting together this special issue of the AV Magazine to commemorate our 125th anniversary has been great fun. Picking through files and photographs (one of our favorites is on the cover) and 19th century writings, we found inspiring people and stories that had been long forgotten. It is our pleasure to share them with you, but it is an educational journey as well.

“What is past is prologue.” These words from Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” are inscribed on the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, and may sound lofty, but they are practical. They tell us that what we do every day is built on what has been done before and sets the stage for the future. We are all part of a larger picture, extending through time.

The American Anti-Vivisection Society has an extraordinary history. It was the first organization in the U.S. dedicated to ending animal experimentation and has had enormous impact on the establishment and direction of advocacy for animals’ rights in the U.S. History tends to focus on notable individuals, and to be sure, we have such an individual to showcase: Caroline Earle White. We rightly regard her as the founder and force behind the establishment of our organization and the articulation of our cause in the U.S. Her profile is featured in these pages and the breadth of her accomplishments, especially considering that she did not even live to see women granted the right to vote, is awe-inspiring.

But Mrs. White would probably be the first to point out that she did not do it alone. In fact, by definition, an organization is not one person but many people. In our files, we have discovered many unsung heroes: devoted officers, staff, and members of AAVS who refused to turn away from animal suffering and chose to leave a legacy of caring.

All of us who care about animals share that legacy. AAVS may have carried the torch through some dark years, never giving up trying to find a way against the odds, but it was worth it. With our unwavering principles, faithful community, and carefully distributed resources, the modern animal rights movement that emerged in the 1970s had a solid foundation on which to build.

As we look forward, AAVS will continue to grow and evolve, determined as ever to find effective ways to achieve meaningful, lasting change for animals. We have a new logo and website to mark the milestone, and most importantly, a renewed sense of purpose.

We’d like to express special thanks to everyone who contributed this year to exploring our archives and bringing these fascinating stories to light. And of course, we extend heartfelt thanks to all our members, both new and long-standing. Each one of you has a special place in our inspiring story of animal advocacy in the U.S. Working together for the animals,

A Brief History of the American Anti-Vivisection Society

as the ‘moral compass’ of American society.

Caring for the weak and voiceless in society was the focus of progressive era reforms. Animal welfare fit into this category perfectly.

Into this progressive era milieu stepped Caroline Earle White and Mary Frances Lovell—both influential women of Philadelphia inspired by their work alongside their husbands in the Pennsylvania Society to Prevent Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA).

Feeling that they had more to offer to the cause than they could within the PSPCA, White and Lovell founded an auxiliary organization—the Women’s Branch of the PSPCA (WBPSPCA), known today as the Women’s Humane Society of Pennsylvania—in 1869. Both White and Lovell believed the humane treatment of animals was a moral issue that Americans could not ignore. The WBSPCA and PSPCA focused their early activities on fighting cruelty to horses and service animals as well as humane treatment and sheltering for dogs and cats.

As the first animal experimentation laboratories opened in the 1860s and 1870s, White and Lovell realized that their efforts were also needed on this front. Inspired by the legislative success of Cobb and the Animal Cruelty Act, White traveled to London to meet the pioneer animal advocate.

In 1883, White returned to Philadelphia and called a special meeting of the WBPSPCA during which the American Anti-Vivisection Society was formed. White and Lovell were convinced that “preventing torture in the labs should be the exclusive work of a concerned organization.”2 Though the President and other founding officers of AAVS were men, White became the Corresponding Secretary, and both she and Lovell remained the organization’s greatest advocates.

Feeding the fears of Science readers, AAVS wasted no time in pursuing its goals of antivivisection legislation. In 1885, AAVS proposed its first legislation. The Bill to Restrict Vivisection was defeated, but it marked the first attempt made

by AAVS to seek legislation to end vivisection.

In 1900, AAVS president Dr. Matthew Woods testified before the U.S. Congress in favor of the

In 1876, the British in science and society.

Parliament passed the In the following years, first anti-vivisection however, AAVS refocused law, the Cruelty to its mission, dedicating itself Animals Act. The result to the complete abolition of public outcry against of vivisection in the United vivisection led by Frances States. Over the past 125 Power Cobbe and her years, AAVS has continued Victoria Street Society, to speak for the prohibition the Act was passed by of animal experimentation Parliament to regulate by advocating legislation, the use of animals in education and public scientific research awareness, and alternative and experimentation research methods. in Great Britain. By The women we recognize 1883, the readers of today as the founders of AAVS Science, the organ of the were pioneers in the world of American Association animal welfare but not in the for the Advancement of sphere of reform movements.

Science (AAAS), were The late nineteenth and early warned that American scientists in the United twentieth centuries saw a rise in reform movements States faced similar publicity and legislation. In the known as the Progressive Era. Inspired by the new face of this threat, the author advised the medical science of sociology and cultural movements like profession to “inform the laity” how and why animal the social gospel, middle and upper class Americans experimentation was used in scientific research.1 increasingly engaged in reform movements aimed While many animal welfare advocates on both at uplifting the downtrodden and improving society. sides of the Atlantic lamented the weaknesses Women were central to the Progressive Era reforms. of the Cruelty to Animals Act, the authors of In the late nineteenth century, women made great Science recognized a nascent movement forming strides in reform movements like Temperance, among Philadelphians in 1883. Inspired by their Sunday Schools, food and drug regulation, women’s relationships with British leaders like Cobbe, a suffrage, and child-labor laws. In a world where group of Philadelphians formed the American women were supposed to be relegated to their Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) in 1883 with the own ‘separate sphere,’ many women joined goal of regulating reform movements the use of animals By Lily Santoro, Ph.D. Candidate, AAVS Archives Intern where in they acted

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Gallinger Bill, an act to regulate vivisection, based upon the British Cruelty to Animals Act. Though the bill did not pass, the publicity surrounding Woods’ testimony encouraged many members of the medical profession to join AAVS. The Society encouraged readers to contact their Congressmen in 1907 when AAVS successfully kept Congress from altering the 28-Hour Law, which ensured livestock would be fed, watered, and rested at least every 28 hours during transport.3 Through the efforts of AAVS and the American Humane Association, Congress not only upheld the 28-Hour Law but also worked to enforce it.

Throughout AAVS history, this interest in legislative solutions has persisted. Throughout the twentieth century, the society proposed and supported legislation to end pound seizure and regulate and restrict the use of animals in research. In recent history, AAVS has called for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to comply with the Animal Welfare Act by providing minimal standards of care and treatment to a wider range of animals, including 95 percent of animals used in research—birds, mice, and rats. AAVS has also promoted student choice legislation in states around the country.

While AAVS’s early legislative attempts were not always successful, its voice got louder as the nineteenth century came to a close. To this end, in 1892, the Society began publication of its first magazine, The Journal of Zoophily—printed in conjunction with the Women’s Branch of PSPCA. With education as its mission, Zoophily included news on vivisection and animal welfare issues, encouraged readers to support “humane education” (i.e. teaching children the importance of treating animals with kindness), and informed members about the Society’s latest legislative ventures.

For example, in the spring of 1905, readers learned that the Society’s recently proposed bill to encourage “humane education” in the U.S. Congress had gained committee approval.

Meanwhile, AAVS continued in its crusade for public awareness by notifying the public on the “evils” of vivisection. In 1910, the Society formed

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A Brief History of the American Anti-Vivisection Society continued

an Exhibit Committee, charged with creating a traveling exhibit displaying the instruments and practices involved in animal experimentation. Convinced that viewers could not help but be appalled by vivisection practices, AAVS opened its first exhibit in Philadelphia in 1910, and was soon sending materials to supporters around the country to display at state fairs and public gatherings. Also in 1910, AAVS and other anti-vivisection organizations reprinted an account found in the New York Herald, reporting on the use of vivisection on orphans in a Philadelphia orphanage. Citing an article in The Archives of Internal Medicine, the Herald (and later the Journal of Zoophily) reported that eyes of children at St. Vincent’s home were infected with tuberculosis, causing severe pain and even permanent blindness for some of the children.4 Public outcry resulted, and Americans called for stricter accounting of medical research.

Raising public awareness continued to play a major role in AAVS history throughout the twentieth century.

Throughout the 1950s, President Owen B. Hunt brought the AAVS message into American living rooms through his regular radio broadcasts, “Have You a Dog?,” and occasional spots on radio and television talk shows into the 1970s. In 1973, AAVS supported Congressman Les Aspin in bringing public attention to the military’s use of beagles in testing poisonous gases and other chemicals. The Department of Defense was forced to change this practice AAVS President Owen Hunt during one of his many radio broadcasts.

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Starving dogs, originally destined for research, being fed.

when the issue created the heaviest volume of public letters and outrage the department had ever seen. AAVS continues to raise public awareness of vivisection’s extremes through advertisements and articles in the AV Magazine.

Realizing the importance of education in changing public perceptions about vivisection, AAVS engaged in various humane education programs throughout the twentieth century. In addition to the Journal of Zoophily (which changed its name to The Starry Cross in 1922, The A-V in 1939, and later the AV Magazine), the Society published pamphlets and booklets describing the horrors of vivisection, and leaflets that reminded pet owners to safeguard their animals from brokers who sold animals to laboratories. AAVS literature asked readers to consider the moral implications of torturing animals for the soul of the vivisector and for society as a whole. Early efforts included attempts to eliminate classroom dissections and demonstrations using animals, as well as legislation to encourage humane education in public schools.

In 1927, AAVS Secretary Nina Halvey continued the charge for education by registering to teach humane education in schools throughout the Philadelphia area as ‘Miss B’Kind.’ Over the ensuing two decades, Halvey led a children’s anti-vivisection society known as the Miss B’Kind Club, which met regularly at AAVS headquarters, and even hosted parties for children who promised to “be kind to animals now and when I grow up.”5 In 1942, AAVS held a three-day AntiVivisection School in Philadelphia. Led by then AAVS President Robert R. Logan, students were treated to lectures and

practical instruction on the legislative process, public speaking, and running publicity campaigns. The school was held annually for several years. This emphasis on humane education for children and adults continues to be a goal of AAVS today, as seen through its Animalearn program.

Related to the goals of strong legislation, public awareness, and humane education, AAVS has spent much of its history seeking alternatives to the use of animals in science and society. In 1936, President Robert R. Logan began a campaign against trapping by promoting the wearing of fake fur. Logan himself wore faux fur coats to exhibitions and speeches.

Beginning in the 1970s, the Society began to raise awareness and advocate for alternatives to animal testing by cosmetic companies. In the 1980s, AAVS began making direct grants for alternativesdriven research. The first of these was given to Dr. Joseph Leighton and his research team at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, who worked to create an alternative to the Draize test that often blinded animals in cosmetic testing. This support of alternative research methods continues today through the efforts of the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation, an affiliate of AAVS. Throughout the past 125 years, commitment to AAVS’s mission has driven the Society’s public outreach as well as its many programs and campaigns. With each new generation, the organization has adapted to the times, yet in a very real sense, has remained remarkably consistent in striving for its goal of ending the use of animals in science.

MILESTONES 1883 AAVS is founded by Caroline Earle White.

1885 The first bill to restrict vivisection is prepared by her husband Richard P. White, and introduced in the Pennsylvania state legislature.

1892 AAVS, along with sister organization, the Women’s Pennsylvania SPCA, launches publication of the Journal of Zoophily, now known as the AV Magazine.

1900 AAVS President Dr. Matthew Woods speaks before the U.S. Senate Committee in favor of the Gallinger Bill for the Further Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which defines animal experimentation as an act of cruelty.

1910 AAVS learns of and publicizes horrific tuberculosis experiments conducted on orphans in Philadelphia, leading to public outcry.

1913 A bill to institute pound seizure in Pennsylvania is introduced. Outraged, Mrs. White writes to the legislature on behalf of AAVS, voicing opposition to the bill, which was later defeated.

1922

Journal of Zoophily, Vol. 14, No. 3 (March 1905), p.

26; Vol.15, No. 1 (Jan. 1906), pp. 5-6.

Journal of Zoophily, Vol. 19, No. 5 (May 1910), pp.

55-58.

4

“St. Vincent’s Home Experiments,” The Archives of Internal Medicine, Vol. 2, No 5.

“Miss B’Kind Club” pamphlets. AAVS publication, ca. 1940s. Found in AAVS Archives, Series 5, Folder 8.

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1941 World’s Fair in New York includes Animal Protection Day, and AAVS President Robert Logan is a featured speaker.

1942 AAVS hosts a three-day Anti-Vivisection School, giving the public the tools to be better animal advocates.

Non facias malum ut inde fiat bonum.

Latin for ‘You cannot do evil that good may result,’ this is one of AAVS’s earliest mottos.

Animalearn, AAVS’s education division is established; also the Demeter Fund, which later became the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation (ARDF).

1992

The Starry Cross From 1919-1938, the AV Magazine was known as The Starry Cross.

Students in Pennsylvania are granted the right to choose alternatives to dissection. AAVS drafts the original version of this bill.

1999 As a result of legal petitions filed by AAVS and ARDF, the National Institutes of Health, announces a new policy requiring researchers, with certain exceptions, to use nonanimal methods to produce monoclonal antibodies. It is estimated that one million mice each year are spared as a result.

2000

AAVS challenge succeeds in convincing the U.S. Patent Office to re-open Texas A&M University’s patent on beagles for research. The University abandons its claim to the patent.

2006 The first U.S. company cloning companion animals closes its doors after a multi-pronged AAVS campaign.

Responding to an AAVS petition, USDA amends its policies on cloned and genetically engineered animals by providing protections to these animals under the AWA.

Animal experiments are cruel Stop them.

The Weeping Beagle Widely used in the 1980s, the weeping beagle was an often used symbol to represent the plight of animals in laboratories.

Project Animal Welfare Act: An Act for All This mouse is an important logo for our Project Animal Welfare Act campaign, which was launched in 1998 and is working for the inclusion of birds, rats, and mice under the Animal Welfare Act.

2007

AAVS protests the Soviet space launch of Laika, a stray dog from Moscow’s streets.

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Over our 125 year history, AAVS has adopted several different logos and mottos in an effort to easily convey our mission of ending the use of animals in research, testing, and education. Here are just a few of our most widely recognized symbols used to represent AAVS and our important work.

1990

1957

The Help the Huskies campaign is established, providing aid to dogs living in impoverished areas in Alaska.

A Look Back

Suffer the Animals, an exposé documenting the suffering of animals in labs, is released. AAVS helps to fund this effort, partnering with the International Association Against Painful Experiments on Animals.

AAVS assumes leadership of the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics’ Leaping Bunny Program to alert consumers to cruelty-free companies and products.

1963

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1983

2005

The international anti-vivisection convention is held in Philadelphia.

AAVS establishes the Miss B’Kind Club, a humane education program for children across the Philadelphia region.

3

AAVS provides its first funding to develop alternatives to the Draize rabbit eye test.

1926 1927

Craig Buettinger, “Women and Antivivisection in Late Nineteenth Century America,” Journal of Social History, Vol. 30, No. 40 (June 1997), p. 858.

1981

AAVS and ARDF win standing for a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging USDA’s exclusion of birds, rats, and mice under the AWA. Ultimately, some of these animals are covered.

“The Vivisection Question,” Science, Vol. 2, No. 38.

(Oct. 26, 1883), pp. 551-552.

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AAVS mounts a powerful protest against the use of beagles in military tests of poisonous gases and other chemicals. This resulted in the highest volume of protest mail ever received by the Department of Defense.

AAVS’s Nina Halvey is awarded placement on the National Good Will Delegation to a war-torn France.

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1973

AAVS celebrates its 125th Anniversary, rededicating its work to ending the use of animals in science.

Celebrating 125 Years Representing a wide variety of animals in our mission to end animal research, AAVS is proud to unveil its new logo!

A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY

The Foremother to American Animal Advocacy

Caroline Earle White

By Bernard Unti, Ph.D.

Caroline Earle White (1833-1916), founder of the American Anti-Vivisection Society, was one of the three pioneering figures of American animal protection. In both her personal evolution and her insights about the future course of humane work, however, she exceeded her esteemed colleagues Henry Bergh and George Angell. Indeed, in key respects, White seems the least anachronistic of the three, and her legacy is a highly useable one for SPCAs, humane groups, animal rights organizations, and anti-vivisection societies alike.

The daughter of a well-known Quaker abolitionist who represented free and fugitive blacks in his legal practice, White contributed both money and time to antislavery causes during her early youth. In a late-life reminiscence, she recalled that she had always loved animals, and that the frequency of animal abuse on certain streets near her home caused her so much distress that she avoided them altogether. Years before she helped to launch the humane movement in America, the Irishman who would become her husband suggested that with such affinities she should support the British SPCA movement.

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In the summer of 1866, after reading about his American SPCA, White visited Henry Bergh in New York, and decided to organize a similar effort in Philadelphia.

She and her husband began to secure signatures for a petition supporting the formation of a society to prevent cruelty to animals. Soon, she found that another Philadelphian, M. Richards Muckle, was pursuing the same course, and they began working together. With the assistance of White’s husband, an attorney, they drafted a charter with laws, and gained the approval and support of the state legislature.

Although she was the principal

force behind the organization of the Pennsylvania SPCA (PSPCA), it was her husband, not White herself, who was elected to serve on the board. Much has been made of this exclusion, but Jane Campbell, who knew and wrote about White for a women’s journal, believed that White “did not expect to be an active participant in the administration of its affairs” once the Society was established.

One of the objects of this Society shall be, to provide as soon as possible, a Refuge for lost and homeless dogs, where they could be kept until homes could be found for them…

Instead, White threw herself into the work of the Women’s Branch of the PSPCA, which lost little time in placing the control of animals running wild and potentially rabid in the streets at the heart of its agenda. In June 1869, at their third meeting, branch members approved

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A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY

The Foremother to American Animal Advocacy Caroline Earle White continued

Caroline Earle White leads a ceremony dedicating a drinking fountain for horses.

the motion that “one of the objects of this Society shall be, to provide as soon as possible, a Refuge for lost and homeless dogs, where they could be kept until homes could be found for them, or they be otherwise disposed of.” The proposal carried unanimously, and the women began to campaign for control over the taking up and disposal of stray dogs, and for the management of the city pound.

28-Hour Law, which mandated that animals be fed and watered after 28 hours in transit, and secured a number of important convictions.

This guaranteed their authority to supervise the manner of killing the animals, for so long as city employees managed the site, they believed, there could be no certainty in providing for humane death. The institution that emerged from this campaign was America’s first animal shelter and the inspiration for virtually all innovation in the field of municipal animal control during the formative decades of organized animal protection.

A few years into its work, the Women’s Branch declared its independence from the Pennsylvania SPCA and charted its own course, decidedly more assertive and hardnosed than its parent institution, and it was amongst the first to struggle with vivisectionists over the use of shelter animals in research. Later, in 1883, after meeting the British feminist and antivivisectionist Frances Power Cobbe, White became convinced that a

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separate organization was needed to address the use and abuse of animals in research, testing, and education. White founded the American Anti-Vivisection Society, the first of its kind in the U.S. Although White is remembered today primarily for her antivivisection activism and her role in the history of animal sheltering, she herself was most proud of the work

she and her agents did in securing compliance with the laws pertaining to the treatment of cattle in transit.

Under her leadership, the Women’s PSPCA stationed agents at specified locations along the major railroad routes to observe the cattle traffic.

They used telegraph communications to alert both their colleagues and federal officials to violations of the

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White also took an aggressive tack against captive bird shoots and other blood enthusiasms. In late 1887, the Society initiated a prosecution of pigeon shooters under the 1869 statute, securing a conviction in the lower courts.

Unfortunately, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did not sustain these judgments.

Under White’s authority, the Women’s PSPCA also challenged fox hunting in the Philadelphia vicinity, through public criticism, attempts to secure prohibitive legislation, and prosecution.

While White took no active political role in the women’s rights movement, she worked along its fault lines. Her longtime heroine in the anti-slavery cause, Mary Grew went on to become a leader in the suffrage movement.

Throughout the1890s, White wrote for and was written about in the Philadelphia journal Woman’s Progress, which carried AV MAGAZINE

regular features in support of women’s suffrage. Her work with the WPSPCA and AAVS typified what contemporary scholars call “social feminism,” the pursuit of expanded roles for women in public life through the creation and development of separate institutions.

Despite her many principled personal convictions, White remained pragmatic in all of her campaign strategies. She was never complacent, and proved very receptive to the more progressive strains of animal advocacy that emerged in the last decade of the century, and there is little doubt that she would have felt comfortable with the direction of animal protection in the twentyfirst century. Indeed, Caroline Earle White was a crucial figure in the field of animal rights and a true foremother of contemporary animal advocacy.

Dr. Bernard Unti is a Senior Policy Adviser and Special Assistant to the CEO and President of The Humane Society of the United States. His 2002 American University dissertation, “The Quality of Mercy,” is a history of organized animal protection in the United States before World War II. He worked at AAVS in a number of capacities from 1985 to 1992.

Many thanks to Janice Mininberg and the Women’s Humane Society for sharing their photos of Caroline Earle White.

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A Legacy of Kindness: Nina Halvey and The Miss B’Kind Club

Animalearn: Following in the Footsteps of Miss B’Kind

In an effort to promote humane education, Animalearn was established in 1990. Following in the tradition of Nina Halvey’s Miss B’Kind Club, Animalearn works with teachers, students, and parents alike in providing humane education and alternatives to animal use in the life sciences for grades K-12, college, university, and veterinary/ medical school.

By Laura Ducceschi, MA, AAVS Education Director

Throughout its history, AAVS has been spreading the message of kindness to children and schools through humane education. One pioneer in humane education was Nina Halvey, an official of AAVS, who in 1927 formed the Miss B’Kind Animal Protection Club, which impacted the lives of children and animals around the globe.

To children, Halvey was ‘Miss B’Kind,’ and she traveled to schools under this name to promote humane education.

Believing this to be an important part of every child’s learning process and development, she was known for accepting virtually every invitation to speak with groups of children at schools, clubs, parties, and assemblies. Children frequently referred to her as “the lady who helps them be kind to animals.”

The name ‘Miss B’Kind’ came to fruition during an assembly that Halvey was doing in Philadelphia schools during “Be Kind to Animals Week.” While hurrying to one of the assemblies, she asked a young boy to help her find the assembly hall. Halvey asked the child if he remembered her visit to the school last term. While the child could not remember her name, he remembered her message, to “be kind.”

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Halvey was pleased that her message of being kind was remembered, even if her name was not. It was at this point that Halvey vowed to become known to children as ‘Miss B’Kind.’

For over 40 years, Halvey worked to end vivisection. At least 20 of those years were spent working with the Miss B’Kind Club in an effort to inspire children to become active to help animals. As of 1935, there were 15 individual groups of children in the Philadelphia regions who met every other Saturday at AAVS’s headquarters.

Miss B’Kind Club members were also allowed to use the AAVS library during the week. The club was open to

children between the ages of 8 and 16, and there were no dues required to belong to the club. Meetings took the form of parties to further engage the children.

Students in the club pledged, “I will be kind to Animals now, and when I grow up.” There were many graduates from the program, who Halvey said had lived up to their word to be kind to animals when they grew up, indicating the lasting impact she had on students.

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Halvey promoted the club by placing announcements in newspapers inviting boys and girls to join the Philadelphia club. Children who responded received letters and a membership card. Almost 1,000 students were placed on the permanent list. Halvey made it clear to club members that if they observed animals who needed help, they could call her office, and someone would go to help the animal.

Halvey’s humane education efforts took her out of Philadelphia, and into neighboring states as well as to other countries. She appeared on radio shows and delivered various lectures.

In addition to the club in Philadelphia, Miss B’Kind had a correspondence membership for thousands of students in the United States, Australia, Canada, England, and Ireland. In 1949, on the World Day for Animals, AV MAGAZINE

AAVS was asked to ship 6,500 pieces of specially prepared Miss B’Kind leaflets and 800 posters for distribution in grade schools, which showed significant progress in humane education for AAVS at that time.

Halvey was decorated internationally for her humane work with animals.

She was awarded the Blue Cross of England for her work helping horses and dogs during World War I, and in 1931, she received the Humanitarian Award of the Geneva International Bureau for Protection of Animals. She was also active in opposing many attempts to remove a clause from Pennsylvania’s dog law, originally enacted in 1921, which banned the sale of impounded animals for vivisection. In 1950, she went to Geneva, Switzerland, for the International Conference on Animal Welfare.

Halvey served AAVS in various positions, including Recording Secretary and Managing Director from 1920 until her retirement in 1958.

She was also Managing Editor of its publications for several years prior to her retirement.

Nina Halvey died in 1972 at the age of 80, but her legacy of teaching children to “be kind” lives on at AAVS.

In 1996, Animalearn established The Science Bank, which has grown into the largest lending library of humane science products in the United States, and has over 400 CD-ROMs, models, videos, and manikins, all available for free. Traveling to various national education conferences, Animalearn showcases The Science Bank and Next of Kin, Animalearn’s humane education curriculum, along with Animalearn’s other outreach programs. In addition, Animalearn presents workshops to teach educators how to easily integrate the latest in humane alternatives into their classrooms.

Animalearn is also active in helping students and educators establish student choice policies in their schools, campuses, or states. Currently, 10 states have student choice laws for students in grades K-12, and Animalearn is working to expand student choice so that students in other states have the option to choose an alternative. Animalearn also travels to colleges and universities to help students, educators, and administrators implement student choice policies for their campuses.

A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY

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Leadership Mobilization: Meet the Presidents of AAVS

By Crystal Schaeffer, MA Ed., AAVS Outreach Director

his maxim, “Do Not Demand…Give,” many found no finer words by which to live.

Owen Hunt, Esq. (1950-1978)

Born in Ireland, Owen Hunt emigrated to the U.S. at 17 years of age. Four years later, when the U.S. entered World War I, Hunt enlisted in the army and found himself fighting in France. He was active in six major engagements, once in combat for 129 consecutive days, and received several commendations, including the Purple Heart, and had the unique honor

If pressed to identify who among our past Presidents has had the most influence in shaping AAVS, it would arguably be Mr. Robert R. Logan, Esq. From his humble beginnings in the Society to his last day, Logan remained pragmatic in his devotion and approach toward advocating for animals.

In 1911, a young Robert Logan returned to Philadelphia, after having lived in Italy for several years, and found that his father and mother had become quite active in the American Anti-Vivisection Society.

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At the time, the Society’s presidency had become vacant, and AAVS founder Caroline Earle White had urged Logan’s father to accept the position, but he felt himself unequal to the task. As the story goes, just as a disappointed White was set to leave, Robert Logan entered the room, and his mother boasted that her son was a “staunch anti-vivisectionist” and suggested that White nominate her son for the presidential position. White, having no other candidate in mind, inquired if the younger Logan would be able to take on the duty, and at the 1912 annual meeting, Robert Logan was elected President.

In his farewell address in 1950, Logan admitted that at the time of his appointment, he knew little about the anti-vivisection movement, its origin, or status. He knew only that it involved the use of animals for painful experiments.

Resolute in his new calling, Logan wrote, “I had no thought then of compromise, nor even of argument for, to my whole instinct vivisection was wrong. Wrong because it hurt the bodies of animals and doubly wrong because it hurt the character of men.”

Indeed, Logan remained steadfast to this ideal throughout his tenure as AAVS President. It was under his leadership that the Society expanded its membership throughout the U.S and also became more

prominent in Europe. In 1926, Logan and AAVS chaired the International Anti-Vivisection and Animal Protection Congress held in Philadelphia, hosting participants from London, Switzerland, British Columbia, Canada, and all over the U.S. Remarkably large audiences, comprised largely of strangers to the cause, attended the public sessions and, afterward, as a result of knowledge gained from the speakers, joined AAVS, proving his assertion that the public has only to hear the truth about vivisection to demand that it be stopped.

A strong believer in the value of education, Logan participated in the Course of Lectures of Anti-Vivisection School, held under the auspices of AAVS. The faculty consisted of specialists in various fields, including Logan, and was held annually for several years.

Additionally, under Logan’s leadership, the development of AAVS’s first formal education program, the Miss B’Kind Club, was formed.

In his long dedication to AAVS and advocacy for animals, Robert Logan always held the ethical arguments against vivisection foremost, calling them the paramount principles in this as in every other movement which seeks to promote human kindness and eliminate cruelty. In

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Clearly, Owen Hunt was a mobilizer, and the animals benefited from his passion. For example, in the 1960s, Hunt visited several villages in Alaska and was deeply disturbed by the suffering endured by the people and their dogs who lived there. In an effort to help alleviate their suffering, he organized Help the Huskies and eventually raised enough money to send more than 50 tons of dog food and approximately $12,000 of veterinary supplies to Alaska annually.

In 1973, it was discovered that the U.S. Air Force was poisoning beagle puppies in experiments. In response, Hunt, along with other animal groups, launched a large advertising campaign, denouncing the cruel experiments in newspaper ads from coast to coast at a cost of $60,000.

The public response was enormous, and Congress and the Pentagon were deluged with thousands of protests by irate citizens, many of whom had just become aware for the first time of how badly animals in laboratories suffer.

Over the course of our history, AAVS has had the good fortune to be headed by many great leaders. Respected in society as well as in activist circles, they all possessed the qualities and characteristics needed to mobilize not just our supporters but also the public at large. Here, with great admiration to all, we highlight just few of our longest tenured Presidents, who loyally served the organization on behalf of animals.

Robert Restalrig Logan, Esq. (1911-1950)

significant growth, as membership increased more than 600 percent.

William A. Cave (1978-1990)

of being sworn in as a citizen of the U.S. while under fire on the battlefield.

After the war, Hunt returned to the U.S., enrolled in college, and later received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Specializing in insurance, Hunt advocated for better workmen’s compensation laws, and in 1928, he entered politics, at first locally, and then at the state level. Six years later, he was assigned the Cabinet post of Insurance Commissioner in Pennsylvania and was one of the authors and sponsors of the Group Hospitalization Law, which later became Blue Cross.

In 1940, Hunt became a legal advisor to local humane societies and was instrumental in defeating several pound seizure bills. Later, in 1950, he was elected president of AAVS, and during his tenure, Hunt spoke to more than 50 million people from coast to coast about the use of animals in research, and participated in several debates on the subject on both radio and television. As part of Hunt’s efforts to rally the public to advocate for animals, between 1950-65, AAVS experienced AV MAGAZINE

A native Philadelphian, William A. Cave first learned of AAVS after receiving a piece of literature in the 1950s. Moved by its message, he decided to attend one of its meetings. “When I met [the staff of AAVS] I realized they were committed to a cause, to a movement that made sense to me.”

Upon his retirement from his position as a sales engineer with a prominent Philadelphia firm, he started devoting his efforts to the humane and fraternal organizations that most interested him.

In 1969, he decided to forge his time and energies full-time into the working operation of AAVS, and he was appointed to serve on the Board. Nine years later, Cave was elected President of AAVS. Taking office during an era of great advances in science, Cave recognized the potential impact—both good and bad—of technology on animal research.

Always one to focus on the positive, Cave became a leader in the promotion of alternatives, and under his guidance, the Society first contributed to their development by awarding grants to those most committed to non-animal methods of research, testing, and education. In order to further this cause, in 1989, Cave established the Demeter Fund, known today as the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation.

Additionally, under Cave’s leadership, AAVS’s education program expanded tremendously, and our education department, Animalearn, was launched in 1990. Education was a theme throughout Cave’s presidential tenure and the hallmark of his philosophy in promoting animal rights. He firmly believed that knowledge works better than force, stating, “Education is the way. It gets into the subconscious and works there.”

Cave also valued cooperation and was active in a number of international coalitions, including the International Association Against Painful Experiments on Animals, Coalition to Abolish the Draize Rabbit Blinding Test, World Coalition for the Abolition of Vivisection on Mankind and Animals, and Beauty Without Cruelty, USA. In addition, what helped set Cave apart from other leaders of his time was his sensitivity to the needs and interests of grassroots activists and groups. During his presidency, Cave helped dozens of smaller organizations become viable players in the growing animal rights movement.

Known for his personable nature, over his nearly 12 year tenure, Cave became arguably AAVS’s most beloved President.

Believing that our organization is made up of individuals instead of numbers, Cave knew the importance of developing a relationship with our members, and often personally responded to letters received by our office. This personal approach helped to build a loyal membership, and to this day, nearly 20 years after his death, AAVS still receives donations in the memory of William A. Cave.

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Leadership Mobilization: Meet the Presidents of AAVS continued

From the late 1970s through the mid-80s, Leary also applied her energies to coordination of two grassroots organizations, Philadelphia Vegetarians and the Pennsylvania Animal Rights Coalition. It was during this time that Leary was first introduced to AAVS. In organizing transportation for Philadelphia animal advocates to Mobilization for Animals rally in Boston, AAVS agreed to sponsor a bus, and Leary stopped by the office to pick up the payment, where she was greeted by Mr. Cave’s wife, Eleanor.

This brief meeting was the beginning of a long relationship with AAVS.

Sue A. Leary (1995-present)

The years following Cave’s death presented a challenge to AAVS, which benefited from the presidencies of James A. Clark and Margaret Eldon during a transitional period. They were both appreciative when Sue Leary, a younger leader with what seemed to be the right balance of maturity and energy was introduced to the Board in 1991. Eldon wrote to a colleague, “[Sue] has no intent of being a ‘rubber stamp’ member and has already proven it.”

Outspoken and dedicated, she quickly assumed responsibilities as Secretary and in 1995, was elected President of AAVS. Although she protests the comparison, she does seem to share many of the same qualities of our pioneering founder, Caroline Earle White.

Having compassion for people and animals, Leary first became a vegetarian at age 19 while away at college, where she studied biology and animal behavior.

Struck by the feminist movement’s declaration that ‘The Personal is Political,’ she made the connection with the larger policies and institutions in society that could be responsible for an individual’s oppression and suffering.

She was drawn to careful analysis of problems, comprehensive solutions, and working for lasting change.

Pulling together a group of campus and community women, Leary was a key figure in the establishment of the Centre County Women’s Resource Center in 1975. Years later, she worked alongside Maggie Kuhn, founder of the advocacy organization Gray Panthers, and helped launch the Kids’ Café program at the Greater Philadelphia Food Bank.

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After being elected president in 1995, Leary advanced a leadership model that enlisted Executive Directors to work in partnership with the President, starting with Executive Director Tina Nelson and Director of the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation (ARDF) John McArdle. During their tenure, AAVS engaged in several precedent-setting projects that lay a foundation to further our cause, including our successful Antibodies without Animals campaign.

In addition, they conducted AAVS’s Project Animal Welfare Act: an Act for All campaign, and reached settlement with the U.S. government to institute standards of care and apply alternatives provisions for birds, rats, and mice (who make up approximately 95 percent of animals used in research) under the Animal Welfare Act. Although powerful opposition groups managed to reverse a substantial part of the settlement, it will still impact large numbers of animals previously not covered at all.

Presidents of AAVS 1883 Founder: Caroline Earle White

Mary Francis Lovell: Writing the Wrongs of Animals

By Nicole Perry, AAVS Outreach Coordinator

1883

other causes. Logan wrote: “Even when she was in her eighties, frail, bent over, crippled with rheumatism, she traveled alone to conventions of the American Humane Association as far away as Omaha, and although so deaf she could not hear speeches or discussions, she never failed to attend the meetings of the many societies and committees to which she belonged.”

Temporary President: Henry Flanders

1884 1st elected president: Thomas G. Morton, MD

Lovell led a well-rounded life, enjoying gardening, needlework, and reading great literature, along with her activism. A lover of Dickens, she organized a reading group of local women called the Dickens Club. She also had a penchant for bird watching and told Nina Halvey just weeks before her death, “My bird friends come every morning for their breakfast here— before I have my own, I give theirs to them. They are an insistent crowd. They would not allow me to forget them, even though I might—which isn’t very likely.”

1887 William R.D. Blackwood, MD

1891 Matthew Woods, MD

1904 Rev. Floyd W. Tomkins, Pastor of Episcopal Trinity Church s

s an editor of AAVS’s magazine, Mary Francis Lovell was the type of person who believed that the pen is mightier than the sword. For this, she was remembered by many as a persuasive writer and orator. In fact, the entire July 1932 issue of The Starry Cross was devoted to her memory with notes from readers and colleagues and stories from local papers. Robert R. Logan, then-President of AAVS, crafted an admiring obituary that described her as a kindhearted, opinionated, and dedicated advocate.

“She gave generously and continuously, day after day, year after year, her time, her money, and her energy to the defense of the tortured and oppressed; but more than all she gave her inmost self and grew in the giving until all that she wrote and said was overshadowed by what she was, and the force of her precept surpassed by the example of her unflagging courage and selfless devotion.”

1911 Robert R. Logan, Esq.

1950 Owen B. Hunt, Esq.

In addition to her current responsibilities at AAVS and ARDF, Leary serves on several other boards, including Ryerss Farm for Aged Equines.

Nonetheless, she still finds time to take courses at New School University where she is earning her Masters in Non-Profit Management.

1978

1992

Margaret B. Eldon

William A. Cave

1990 James A. Clark

1995-present

A

Lovell was born in London, in 1843, coming to the U.S. at the age of five with her family. She married a clock dealer at age 20 and took up residence

Sue A. Leary

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in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, 15 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Many issues were dear to her heart—the state of youth, Christianity, temperance, prison reform—but she was perhaps the most vocal about the plight of animals, whom she called “nature’s children.” After visiting a slaughterhouse in Chicago, Lovell was convinced of the animals’ ability to suffer, and she became a vegetarian, also abhorring fur. She later realized she could effect more positive change by passing the message of kindness on to others.

Sadly, at the age of 88, one month before her 89th birthday, Lovell fell from her porch, breaking her hip. The accident left her hospitalized, and she died on June 25, 1932. Those who knew her remarked that the world had lost a most compassionate soul, but her legacy of kindness lives on through the work of her various advocacy organizations.

In 1869, along with Caroline Earle White and Adele Biddle, Lovell helped establish the Women’s Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, serving as its Vice President and Corresponding Secretary until the formation of AAVS. She played many roles at AAVS, as Vice President, a member of the Executive Committee, and Associate Editor of The Starry Cross for over 40 years. Simultaneously, she became Director of the American Humane Association from 1905 to 1907, never failing in her duties to

A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY

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Over a Cent u r y o f C h a n g e

AAVS Legislative and Regulatory Efforts

By Crystal Schaeffer, MA Ed., AAVS Outreach Director Since the birth of our Society in 1883, AAVS has been advocating for legislative protections for animals in Pennsylvania, across the U.S., and globally. During our earliest days, society’s view of animals was so abysmal that AAVS issued a warning to guardians to protect their companion animals “lest they fall into the hands of vivisectors.” In an effort to champion the rights of animals, AAVS has advocated for restriction in the use of animals in research, successfully challenged several pound seizure bills, worked to enhance federal policies regarding the treatment of animals, and lobbied for additional regulations under the Animal Welfare Act. Efforts to restrict animal research

In 1885, Richard P. White, Esq., the husband of our founder Caroline Earle White, prepared the first bill to call for the restriction of vivisection. The bill was introduced in the Pennsylvania state legislature but, unfortunately, it was defeated. Resolute, AAVS forged ahead, and in 1895 introduced another bill preventing animal experiments for the purpose of demonstration or illustration. This legislation went through the state Senate but was defeated in the House. A few years later, then President Matthew Woods, MD, spoke at a hearing in Washington in favor of the Gallinger Bill for the Further Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which defined animal experimentation as an act of cruelty. Although this legislation was defeated, the evidence produced at the hearings received a great deal of publicity, and, as a result, many medical doctors mobilized for our cause and joined AAVS. After the close of WWI, AAVS continued to work to prevent the use of animals in research, and introduced House Bill 1130 into the Pennsylvania legislature to honor dogs used in the War and to exempt them from research.

In advocating for this legislation, then AAVS President Robert Logan wrote, “Here is an opportunity for Pennsylvania to take the lead in legislation that shall, while rewarding

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and honoring the dog for his loyalty and devotion, bring still more honor to the man for his justice and his mercy.”

Although there was a hearing, the bill did not come out of Committee. However, the Bill did generate media attention to the cruelty involved in animal research, and, over the years, AAVS supported several other dog exemption bills.

The Animal Welfare Act

In 1966, the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, later known as the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), was introduced in an effort to thwart the use of illegally obtained cats and dogs in experimentation and to establish humane standards of care for certain animals such as dogs, cats, and nonhuman primates used by animal dealers and research facilities.

AAVS voiced concerns regarding this legislation because it did not cover a very broad range of animals, and the regulations outlined were weak at best.

However, in 1970, the AWA was amended to include all warm blooded animals.

Pound seizure

AAVS has had a long history of fighting pound seizure, the release of animals from pounds to laboratories.

In 1911, for example, AAVS worked to stop the traffic of stolen animals who were sold to medical laboratories, which eventually formed the framework for the prohibition of pound seizure in Pennsylvania. Representing AAVS, Mrs. Margaret Halvey spoke on behalf of such legislation, claiming that “no impounded animals shall be sold for animal experimentation.” Two years later, Pennsylvania bill No. 436 was introduced to institute pound seizure, and, outraged, Mrs. White wrote to the legislature on behalf of AAVS, voicing opposition to the bill, which was later defeated.

AAVS continued advocating for animals in shelters through the years, especially during the 1940s when issues regarding pound seizure were heightened.

However, with so much legislative activity throughout the country to pass such bills, AAVS had to fight harder each time new legislation was introduced. For example, in 1945, after the introduction of yet another pound seizure bill, No. 1022, AAVS called on Mr. Owen Hunt, an area legislative advisor, who five years later became AAVS President, to lead our successful opposition of this proposed law. As the years progressed, Mr. Hunt, with the cooperation of our members, worked diligently to stop the passage of several pound seizure laws not only in Pennsylvania but also in other states, including Connecticut, Illinois, and New York. To this day, pound seizure is prohibited in these states as well as Pennsylvania.

Unfortunately, in 1972, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) arbitrarily decided that birds, rats, and mice would not be listed under the AWA’s regulatory definition of animal, effectively denying legal protection to those who presently constitute over 95 percent of animals used in research and testing. In an effort to challenge this, AAVS launched its Project Animal Welfare Act: An Act for All campaign in 1998, and petitioned the USDA to include these animals under the AWA. Eventually, AAVS and several co-plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the USDA, challenging its illegal exclusion of these warm-blooded animals.

In order to do this, however, AAVS first needed to prove that it had standing, a legal right and justification to sue the USDA. Over a year later, in a precedentsetting decision, the court granted the plaintiffs standing. This was the first case where a court granted a person standing to sue who was challenging the conditions and treatment of animals used in labs.

After much legal wrangling, a historic settlement was signed in 2000, as the USDA agreed to grant legal protection

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to birds, rats, and mice under the AWA. However, two years later, an eleventh-hour push by the biomedical community resulted in the passage of an amendment calling for the exclusion of birds, rats, and mice, bred for use in research, from the AWA. Although some animals did receive protection and awareness was raised, AAVS continues to work on behalf of birds, rats, and mice in an effort to gain full coverage for these animals who suffer just as other animals covered by the AWA do.

Giving students a choice

For decades, AAVS has promoted humane education across the country, and drafted the original version of the Pennsylvania Student Rights Option, a bill that guarantees non-animal alternatives to students in K-12 who wish to avoid dissection or vivisection in the classroom. It was introduced in 1991.

Previously, students could be penalized with lowered or failing grades for their refusal to participate. AAVS mobilized our supporters and urged Pennsylvania residents to contact their state legislators through several means, including direct mail campaigns. As a result of our efforts, on July 9, 1992, Governor Robert Casey signed the Students Rights Option into law. Following this historic moment, AAVS sent a mailing to all 500 Pennsylvania school superintendents informing them that the Student Rights Option had become law and offering assistance with the identification of suitable non-animal alternatives.

Saving 1,000,000 mice

In an effort to further protections for animals and encourage the use of non-animal alternatives, in 1997, AAVS petitioned the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in an effort to ban the use of mice in producing monoclonal antibodies (MAbs), which are used in almost every field of biomedical research, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. Prior to this petition, ARDF had funded research to develop an alternative to the animal ascities method of producing MAbs, which causes painful abdominal swelling.

After two years of legal battles over a historically unprecedented policy change, the NIH announced that government funded researchers would be directed to use in vitro methods as the default method of producing monoclonal antibodies.

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pet cloning industry. In response to a legal petition filed by AAVS, USDA revised its Policy 10 to stipulate that cloned and transgenic animals receive protections under the AWA.

This action is estimated to be saving up to one million animals every year!

Chimpanzee retirement

In 1999, working in partnership with other animal advocacy organizations, former Executive Director Tina Nelson enlisted the support of Pennsylvania Congressman Jim Greenwood (R) to create the original version of the Chimpanzee Health, Improvement, Maintenance, and Protection (CHIMP) Act, legislation that would create a sanctuary retirement system for chimpanzees no longer needed for federal research.

On May 18, 2000, six months after the CHIMP Act was introduced, Nelson testified before the House Subcommittee of the Health and Education Commerce Committee to urge Congress to pass the CHIMP Act. In advocating for the passage of the original version of the CHIMP Act, Nelson testified, “This approach provides a realistic cost-effective, humane alternative to current government policy of expensive laboratory warehousing of chimpanzees. It also holds the federal government accountable for a problem created under its program.”

Unfortunately, the final version of the CHIMP Act that passed did not guarantee that chimpanzee retirement would be permanent. However, 2007 saw the introduction of the Chimp Haven is Home Act, legislation that called for the permanent retirement of chimpanzees.

AAVS and the entire animal advocacy movement supported passage of this bill, which was signed into law by President George Bush in December 2007.

Biotechnology and animal suffering

In 2004, AAVS launched its No Pet Cloning campaign, and called on the USDA to regulate the burgeoning

In 2007, because of the enormous cruelty associated with cloning and its near 99 percent failure rate, AAVS focused its cloning campaign on animals cloned for food. Providing leadership in a coalition of animal, consumer, and environmental protection organizations that also opposed cloning animals for use in food production, AAVS protested the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Risk Assessment that claimed that food from cloned animals is safe.

As a result, AAVS and the coalition’s memberships submitted more than 100,000 comments to the FDA, urging the agency to engage in further research before giving cloned food final approval to enter the U.S. market.

Despite this overwhelming outcry, FDA announced its final ruling that cloned food is safe for human consumption.

Nonetheless, AAVS continued to work with Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) to include a stronger provision on animal cloning in the 2008 Farm Bill. This amendment was drafted before the FDA’s final decision on cloned food was announced, and explicitly required the FDA to delay issuing its decision until additional studies on human health, animal health, and economic impacts could be completed. The Senate Farm Bill passed by an overwhelming majority of 79 to 14, and is scheduled to go to conference to be reconciled with the House version, which currently does not include the cloning provision. In addition, AAVS spoke about the animal welfare impacts of cloning at a Congressional briefing in February of this year.

Conclusion

Over our 125 year history, AAVS has been leading the effort to end the use of animals in science by working to strengthen and change legislation and policy. AAVS’s leadership role has helped produce many animal victories, and we will continue advocating for animals until they are no longer utilized in research, testing, and education.

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The A-V; April 1946

Let Us Visit the Past

Where is Science Leading Us? The world has been horrified by the reported effects and aftereffects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Some of the victims are said to have been outside the range of the bombs at the time of the explosion, but on entering Hiroshima, long afterwards, they have been injured or killed by the remaining radio-active substances….

The following are excerpts from articles in our AV Magazine archives. We hope you will enjoy reading the perspective that spans our 125 year history.

Journal of Zoophily; February, 1892 We have reached a period in the development of humanity, the approaches to which, though by the slow steps of centuries, have shown us the steady growth, through the influence of leaders in ethical thought, of the principle which is the converse of the old adage, “Might makes right.” The old adage, to be sure, is still acted upon, but it is growing more and more out of keeping with the ethics of the time.

If it is morally wrong to torture animals, because of their sensitive bodies, with what consistency can it ever be done? Yet it is done. The defenders of vivisection claim that it is right to inflict anything on a live animal which the needs of scientific investigation may demand, and which scientific ingenuity can devise, and this ingenuity seems to be absolutely unlimited. The prospective good of humanity is the usual pretext.

But if to torture sentient beings be a moral wrong, a violation of the divine law of compassion, no past, present, or prospective benefit to humanity can make it right.

Mr. Lawson Tait, whose great experience and brilliant achievements as a surgeon entitle him to a respectful hearing, declares that vivisection misleads, and has retarded discovery.

He says, that if, instead of cruel experiments on animals, “we had read the teachings of the masters, and had looked at the experiments in nature’s own laboratory-disease-and had taken the conclusions of these experiments as they stared us in the face, we should have been at least a century in advance of our present position.” There are no doubt, legitimate methods by which the ills of the body may be removed, but vivisectors are not seeking them.

We, as responsible beings, have no right to ill-gotten gain of any kind, no matter how great the gain may be. [The time is past when cruelty can be used to further the ends of justice. The time ought to be past when it can be used to promote the physical welfare of man. was

Carrying out such tests on animals seems not only reprehensible conduct but a futile method of seeking information, as there would be no certainty that the effects would be the same in human beings as in goats and guinea pigs. And this is only in relation to the immediate effects; whereas, the after-effects on man appear to be equally important. Surely the right place to study these effects is in Japan, where there must be many persons suffering from the after-effects of the bombs dropped there.

If, however, the Security Council of the United Nations is adopting means to prevent the use of bombs of this nature in any future wars, what is the reason for continuing to test them?

We are often told by those who uphold vivisection that it is “useful in saving or prolonging life or alleviating suffering,” but that excuse cannot be made in justification of these experiments in connection with the destruction of human life….

(From British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection)

The A-V;

y s home, Budd Stolen from hi m a laboratory. fro d later rescue

is great effort may say, no the er th he d out w made to fin r een stolen o 1929 dogs have b Cross; March hether w , d re ui q The Starry ac legitimately ne ys whom no ra st e ar ey n io th ct d se vi en vi ri the y to bef less ok for him in stands read und his dog dog? If so, lo fo ur pets whose an yo hi ld p o st el lo eh d e. u or hous one Phila Have yo the hous re m o he fr w d g anxiously is re t . Tha disappea rs are waitin d ne ha w o he s laboratories r te af . … Leaflet -four hours e cieties r their return so fo n than twenty c io e man in th ifi ct nt te ie ro unread by th animal p ral and sc n o in ai m t m ng e lly en ni re l th in na ve el n m E o w so ay e per elphia omen pro vivisection m s dog will b id the Philad “Men and w aspects of ho values hi an was held g today,” sa w m in cent of a en a ar as tiz he ch s ci a ll’ hi y w thronged for an , but ever f Mr. Mitche 1929, “at g et o , o re 8 d re 1 st a tu y comrade g ic ar p lin l ru Feb e menta his pet and es of stea f th g o ty y r ar ir b th ve ch Bulletin, of , ed n co p o ct is t ap affe ic d ble. ph Tr ail for cour d his dramat operating ta endant, Jose in $1,500 b e escape an eventeenth, bloody on an fir ion. The def S d at ar an er p ne o en t l p ee o ta Str g cut experimen Mt. Vernon . Avondale “Buddy” lyin on the dog age helper, hell, 2023 S itc M ys sa ne ll ri perimenting three, a gar he he ex at itc e C M er . . w ught with rs ve M ho -fi d by at being ca ll, twenty doctors w ed he he en itc T a M ht ni was accuse ig e va fr rg yl much promise f Penns her son, Geo e apparently ” University o make every er y, e w d to th Street and ud ed at “B e en p g st o and ha wed up and d the d a fire esca and rescue would be se a stolen pet after , ry he climbed g o le to d b ra s ta o hi b g in at La ll th worse. operat earch to Mr. Mitche stored to him none the Medical Res tory.” und, from an ra ho o b it b la b e ra th re d to r-old cared for an ken the dog people,” a twelve-yea el to most Trapp had ta way ck r at ni ei th a th d h g ne rt in o ar d w ly fin he le dy isn’t e hearing, are constant s “I guess Bud the day of th stolen dogs humanitarian n d o to ll an s he s w g itc o ne d M d urse no for him.” said Mr. That stray undergroun om is of co ke a million ro ss ta le n t r io n’ o d ct ul re se o . o vi d w pplie “but I to the vi there is a m e steadily su l aware that s le boratories ar la ru ry ch who are wel to ar ra se labo ch the re r the official A Aem V S by whi SPRING 2008 18 syst at, whateve th er th ei et cr se no is It

r Dog Guard You

AV Magazine; spring 1998

The Private Lives of Mice & Rats There are more than 3,000 species of rodents including rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, squirrels, porcupines, beavers, and muskrats. All but two of these animals, rats and mice, are covered by the Animal Welfare Act. This is particularly alarming because rats and mice are by far the most commonly used animals in experimentation millions suffer every year in U.S. laboratories…..

AV MAGAZINE

The A-V; March, 1982 Commentary: A Thousand Years

By Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci ….The very fact that animal welfare societies exist, and have increasing support, shows that the public conscience is aroused. Only a hundred years ago people said, “Slavery has always been—you will never abolish it.” People today say the same about cruelty to animals: “It has always been—you will never abolish it.”

We shall, but only by tremendous effort.

Getting to know wild animals, people will put themselves in their place and feel with them. Enough of this feeling and a thousand years of progress can be accomplished in the next few years. The first step is to find out what is going on….

Experimental laboratories…are immune to rules of common decency where treatment of animals is concerned. On factory farms, and in the transportation of livestock, animals are treated in ways that the public would not stand for if the victims were pet cats or dogs.

Animal protectionists and ecologists are joining forces. Vegetarianism is linking arms with anti-trapping. Some scientists are cooperating with the new movement to discover and implement alternatives to vivisection.

With everyone working together, we shall see progress in the next few years hardly dreamed of even ten years ago.

With today’s communication system, and a newly awakened public, a thousand years of animal-rights history may take place by the year 2000.

The Common Rat Scientific Name: Rattus norvegicus

The House Mouse Scientific Name: Mus musculus

• It is believed that the rat originated in the Orient, and arrived in North America via trading ships in the late 1720s.

• Rats are expert swimmers and divers.

• When two rats of the same family meet, one submissively falls on his back while the other licks him.

• The lifespan of the common mouse is 3 years, although she can live up to 6 years in captivity.

• Mice are extremely near sighted, and cannot see farther than 2 inches in daylight.

• House mice use ultrasonics to communicate…[and] can give off and hear very high pitched sounds that humans cannot.

A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY

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Before the Animal Welfare Act was signed into law, pet theft was an epidemic in some cities.

Animal dealers would often take healthy dogs and cats from people’s backyards and sell them to laboratories for a profit. A 1946 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer reveals that these tragic events were indeed happening in the city of brotherly love, and many of the animals were being shipped out of state. Nina Halvey (below) of AAVS

The State Of Pound Seizure A 1986 letter to the editor by Bernard Unti of AAVS was published in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. In this letter, Unti corrects an error in a previous article that underestimated the number of states in which pound seizure is prohibited. At the time, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont were all states that disallowed the release of shelter animals to research facilities. He wrote, “The assertion that most pound animals are strays is unverifiable. It is laughable to read that animals are often treated better inside the laboratory than outside of it. No one who carries out invasive and terminal experiments on animals may claim to have a commitment to animal rights. Animal rights means being concerned with keeping them out of cages and stereotaxic devices, not with giving them an anaesthetic and eventually euthanizing them.”

Minneapolis Star and Tribune March 27, 1986

Animal Experiments Debated in Eugene, Oregon When Owen Hunt was president of AAVS, he participated in numerous debates with physicians and researchers regarding animal experimentation. Many of these debates were either broadcast or reported on in newspapers such as The Eugene Register-Guard. In 1966, this paper covered a hot debate between Hunt and a local physician named John Bascom. Nearly 50 people attended the debate, which was moderated by the director of a Eugene radio station. “There are no accurate methods of checking on the number of experiments being conducted in America,” Hunt said, “but in England, where reporting is mandatory, there were about 4.5 million animals vivisected in one year. Some 85 percent of these were without anesthetics.” He went on to argue that in spite of the many experiments performed in the past, diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and pneumonia were on the rise in the U.S.

As a native of northeastern Pennsylvania and the Director of Animalearn, a humane education program located near Philadelphia, I wish to respond to a letter from Carolina Biological Supply (CBS) regarding cat dissection.

While Animalearn cannot speak specifically to CBS’s current practices of procuring dead cats for sale to schools, we can state that 1989 video footage shows live cats being brought to CBS headquarters and killed on the premises.

Additionally, there are many other biological supply companies that sell dead cats to schools for use in dissection, and they do not necessarily obtain their specimens from shelters. Some cats killed for dissection are strays obtained from Mexico and shipped to the United States. Thus, one can surmise that cruelty is embedded in the procurement of many animals used in dissection.

Some shelters have policies in place preventing the sale of euthanized animals to biological supply companies or other

Anti-Vivisectionists Meet

said that many dogs and cats were sold to facilities in Baltimore and New York in order to avoid detection from their owners. “This is a vicious practice that has been going on for years,” Halvey said, adding, “Pet owners of this city should realize the danger that they are confronting.”

The article notes the heaviest losses were seen in the north section of the city.

Philadelphia Inquirer March 26-27, 1946

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It was finally agreed that the group would conduct an essay contest, offering a prize for the best argument against vivisection. Applicants would read their pieces in a public forum that would doubly serve as an arena to get the message out about animal testing.

Philadelphia Times, January 29, 1889

SPRING 2008

Laura Ducceschi, AAVS Education Director Pocono Record Submitted and Printed November 17, 2007

Fortunately, the U.S. Congress shares AAVS’s concerns. Just last week, the Senate passed the Farm Bill (H.R. 2419) with a provision introduced by Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) requiring the FDA to delay its decision on cloned animals until additional studies can be completed by the USDA and the National Academy of Sciences. The House-Senate conference is expected to decide on the provisions of the final Farm Bill in early 2008.

November 2, 1966

Consumers May Receive Unwelcome Gift This Holiday Season This holiday season, people have more to fear than the dreaded fruitcake. Advocacy and watchdog groups are putting consumers on alert. The meat and dairy products they buy may soon come from cloned animals, and they will not even know it. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has completed its analysis on cloning, which means that

AV MAGAZINE

Glowing Cats Are Cruel, Not Cool Last week, scientists in South Korea announced that they had cloned transgenic cats with a fluorescent protein that makes them

A recent teen survey shows that the majority of high school aged students would rather choose an alternative to dissection instead of dissecting a dead animal. That is one reason why Pennsylvania enacted a Student Choice Law, allowing all K-12 public school students the ability to say no to dissecting cats or any other animal. It has been shown through comparative studies of student performance that students using alternatives do as well as or better than those who dissect animals. For free alternatives to animal dissection, visit Animalearn.org.

an announcement could come by the end of this month that animals can be cloned and sold for food, and without labels.

Eugene Register-Guard

An 1889 issue of the now defunct Philadelphia Times reported on the annual meeting of the American AntiVivisection Society. Among other agenda items was a discussion of tactics used to call attention to the horrors of vivisection. As the article reports, “Dr. Blackwood, who presided, suggested that a letter should be written to each physician calling his attention to the cruel practice of vivisection. Someone [sic] remarked that it could easily be done with a type-writing machine. This, Miss Adele Biddle (right) said, would fail of its purpose. A type-written letter was as likely to go into the waste paper basket as a pamphlet. Several other suggestions were brought forward, one to the effect that articles with cuts picturing some of the atrocities practiced should be inserted in the newspapers. ‘They won’t publish them!’ exclaimed Dr. Blackwood. ‘I have tried them all.’”

animal dealers. This is partly due to an ethical concern involving shelters receiving compensation for selling euthanized animals to biological supply companies, and the potential problems this presents, such as ensuring shelters give animals enough time to be adopted before euthanizing them and if such transactions involving profit impact their guidelines for declaring those animals who are adoptable and those who are not.

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Philadelphia Pets Stolen For Use in Laboratories

More Discussion on Animal Dissection Needed

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In addition, the House has passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act with language that strongly encourages the FDA to maintain the voluntary moratorium on cloned foods and directs the agency to complete a study with the USDA investigating the economic and trade implications of introducing cloned animals into the food supply. The Senate is expected to pass the Act later this week.

“There is broad bipartisan support for this cloning legislation,” said Tracie Letterman, Executive Director of the American AntiVivisection Society. “Congress is clearly telling the FDA to wait on animal cloning because more information is needed about human health, animal welfare, and economic impacts. The FDA should respect that.”

Joint Press Release December 18, 2007

glow when exposed to ultraviolet light. In response, the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) is calling on the scientists to halt their experiments and redirect their attention to more humane and fruitful pursuits.

“Animals suffer terribly as a result of both the cloning and genetic engineering processes,” says Nina Mak, Research Analyst at AAVS. “Cats are beloved pets for millions of Americans. I don’t think the American public, or the international community at large, would support this kind of research with cats, given how invasive the procedures are and the potential to cause the cats extreme pain and distress.”

AAVS is calling on the scientists in South Korea to embrace the future of medical research and redirect their attention to investigations that are more likely to help humans without involving the use of animals.

Says Mak, “AAVS supports scientific advancement, and we all want to cure disease, but we should focus on research that will provide the maximum benefit for the minimum harm.”

AAVS Press Release December 18, 2007

A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY

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Pets Stolen for Use in Medical Research The early 1900s saw an epidemic of pet theft in the U.S. as dogs and cats were being stolen from people’s backyards and sold to medical institutions and colleges for research. A 1911 issue of the New York Times reported that a janitor at Wellesley College was stealing cats for use in the school’s dissection projects. When a prized angora cat worth $350 went missing, police decided to investigate other cases of local pet theft as well.

On February 25, 1911, John Squires was arrested and fined $15 for the crime, a fee paid by his boss,

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the Superintendent of Grounds at the college.

Fortunately, Mrs. Bent and her angora cat were reunited after the arrest, but many people had lost their dogs and cats forever.

AAVS educated the public by printing brochures to warn pet owners of this thievery, but it also realized the need for legal action. To this day, AAVS continues to advocate for companion animals who are most vulnerable by working to strengthen the Animal Welfare Act and ban pound seizure. Only three states require the release of animals to research institutions—Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Utah.

First Animal Patents Issued in U.S.

In 1988, the USPTO issued its first patent for a mammal ‘invented’ by For over 200 years, the U.S. Patent researchers at Harvard University.

Philip Leder and Timothy Stewart and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued exclusive property rights called developed a technique for breeding patents to inventors of “any new and mice who were highly susceptible to useful process, machine, manufacture, breast cancer, modifying a naturally or composition of matter, or any new occurring gene, and then injecting that DNA into embyros. They called and useful improvement thereof.”

To most people, this means toasters, their ‘creation’ the Oncomouse.

At the time, public concern was clocks, and other inanimate objects. so strong that Congress considered However, the agency adjusted its two bills in 1987 and 1988 calling for definition in 1987 after granting a moratorium on animal patents. a patent for genetically modified oysters, stating that it “now considers Unfortunately, both bills failed in the U.S., but the Canadian Supreme Court nonnaturally occurring, nonhuman, ruled 5-4 against issuing a patent on multicelluar living organisms, the Oncomouse or any other animal. including animals, to be patentable subject matter.”

AAVS has spoken out against

Protection for Laboratory Animals With the problem of pet theft rampant in the U.S., President Lyndon Johnson signed the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act (later known simply as the Animal Welfare Act, or AWA), into law on August 24, 1966.

Johnson avowed, “Science and research do not compel us to tolerate the kind of inhumanity which has been involved in the business of supplying stolen animals to laboratories, or

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which is sometimes involved in the careless and callous handling of animals in some of our own laboratories.

This bill will put an end to these abuses.”

animal patents since the 1980s and continues to do so. In fact, we have recently successfully challenged two animal patents: one on beagles who were purposely sickened for use in drug tests and another on rabbits whose eyes were purposely injured so that they could be used to develop treatments for dry eye.

In 2004, after much outcry from AAVS and our supporters, Texas A&M University dropped its rights to the beagle patent. Additionally, as a result of AAVS’s continued work on this issue, three years later, the Japanese company holding the rabbit patent rescinded its rights to the claim. These are welcome victories, and AAVS is committed to continue working to ban patents on animals.

As history would later prove, the AWA did put an end to some abuses—but certainly not all of them.

To this day, the AWA remains the only federal law designed to cover animals who are used by dealers, exhibitors, transporters, and researchers.

Lamentably, since it formally excludes birds, rats, and mice bred for use in research, the law covers only a mere five percent of animals used in research.

In November 1957, just one month after the launch of Sputnik, the Soviet Union announced it had sent another satellite to circle the Earth.

They called it Sputnik 2.

Besides the fact that it was heavier and faster than its predecessor, Sputnik 2 was celebrated and abhorred by many because it also carried a dog, named Laika.

Laika was the first living creature to orbit the Earth, and she was also the first to die in orbit. A small Labrador retriever, she was found as a stray wandering the streets of Moscow and brought into a laboratory to prepare for takeoff. Russian technicians trained Laika and two other dogs by keeping them in gradually smaller cages and getting them used to jellied food.

In the end, they chose Laika for the mission, with Albina and Mushka as back-ups.

For the first time in scientific history, researchers have created functioning nerve tissue and beating heart muscle in a test tube from adult human skin cells. Shinya Yamanaka, of Kyoto University in Japan, used the results of a previous animal test to study skin cells taken from a 46 year old woman. After genetically engineering them back to an early embryonic state, he found that the skin cells could develop into a myriad of other cells. It was revealed that these cells can develop into any of the 220 specialized tissues of the human body, such as mature nerve cells for repairing an injured spinal cord. Professor James Thomson of University of Madison-Wisconsin conducted a second study in the U.S., which confirmed Yamanaka’s findings.

Many in the scientific community believe that this development could lead to the growing of ‘spare parts’ for transplant surgery. Doctors, they say, will soon be able

With the impending ban of animal tests for cosmetics in the European Union next year, companies are rushing to create new viable alternatives. Recently, a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of California at Berkeley, and Solidus Biosciences announced their newest invention: a pair of biochips that can be used together to test toxicity of chemicals in the early stages of cosmetic product development. Some even believe the chips may be useful in the development of pharmaceuticals.

to replace damaged tissues with those which are grown from their patient’s own skin, minimizing the chance of rejection. In addition, such a development would make the mysterious world of xenotransplantation (the act of transferring animal organs to human patients) obsolete.

Others believe that this new method could help resolve the bitter controversy over the use of human embryos for medical research. Ironically, Professor Thomson was the first to isolate embryonic human stem cells in 1998, essentially starting the debate. Yet, he contends, “The new results may not eliminate the controversy [over the use of stem cells], but it may be the beginning of the end….” Both researchers assert that the stem cells obtained from this new method are just as good as those derived from early embryos.

The DataChip is a small, glassy object containing 1,080 human cell cultures. Suspended in gel, these cultures are arranged as naturally as they would be in human organs and allow researchers to quickly screen the effects of potential ingredients on different cells of the body.

The DataChip can be used in conjunction with the MetaChip, an alternative method that mimics the metabolic process. This is an important step to perform, since some chemicals become toxic only once they are metabolized by the liver.

The use of these chips allows for faster results at a lower cost than traditional animal tests. What’s more, the researchers claim their invention is more accurate as well.

Jonathan Dordick, an author of the study, stated, “We believe it is going to be ultimately more predictive [than animal tests] because we are using the cells that we are made of.”

SimPooch Could Help Teach Acupuncture Students

Laika was introduced to the world one night on Moscow Radio, which broadcast straight from the laboratory.

Congenially, she barked into the microphone, melting the hearts of many listeners. It was not until she was actually in the air that her caretakers divulged she would not return alive, a statement that outraged many observers.

Every year, senior electrical engineering students at Colorado State University (CSU) must create a final project that allows them to collaborate with partners in interdisciplinary industries. This year, a group of undergraduates has decided to team up with staff from CSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine, specifically with a professor of Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Dr. Nadra Robinson wants to teach her students how to correctly perform acupuncture without distressing animal subjects in the process. She maintains that the science of acupuncture is based on anatomy and that the idea of invisible energy systems is an “erroneous notion.” Therefore, students need anatomically correct models to simulate the physical feel of applying acupuncture.

She began the project last year by building a life-sized head of a Laborador retriever with the help of mechanical engineering students. Their model was so realistic that it had varying densities of bone, muscle, skin, and fat. Now, electrical engineering students will work alongside Robinson to hook the model up to a computer. Their goal is to create a software that can inform users of their precision and accuracy when applying acupuncture, a technology that has been studied previously for other medical simulations. They have affectionately named their project SimPooch.

“SimPooch can be a teaching tool and a testing tool. Since the model is portable, students can learn and test it anywhere. No live dogs are needed, and students can practice their techniques over and over again without causing stress to live animals,” said Robinson.

New research suggests Laika experienced much stress as the temperature and humidity increased in the satellite.

Sadly, her pulse increased three times her normal rate during the launch, and she died after five to seven hours. Her satellite, however, continued to orbit the Earth for almost another year before burning up in the atmosphere.

SPRING 2008

Biochips More Accurate Than Animal Tests

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NewsNet

Heart and Brain Cells Created from Human Skin

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Dog Dies in Space

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message to members

TRIBUTES

Dear Friends, Since I was a small boy, I’ve always had a great respect and fascination for animals. In 2002, I began volunteering at a local wildlife rehabilitation clinic, which greatly strengthened my love for animals and helped shape a future career path. I was working full-time for a local environmental advocacy organization when I learned of the job opening for Membership Coordinator at AAVS. I immediately submitted my resume, anxious for the opportunity to interview and (hopefully) join the staff. Much to my delight, I was hired a year and a half ago, and was just recently promoted to Director of Development & Member Services.

I don’t know if many people can say that they love their job. Well, I can. For the first time in my life, I know that I’m in the place I’m supposed to be and doing the work for which I was destined. I am very proud to be part of the American Anti-Vivisection Society and contribute to its mission of ending the use of animals in science. As the new Director of Development & Member Services, I look forward to growing with AAVS and serving the needs of both members and animals everywhere.

In loving memory of my husband, David Eldon.

Peggy Eldon (President of AAVS, 1992-1995) Elverson, PA

In memory of Magic and Kat, a dog and cat that brought joy and comfort to my family.

Anthony Montapert North Hollywood, CA

In memory of Ashley Kunkel. For 15 years, you were my faithful companion and best friend.

You will be greatly missed.

Ramona Kunkel Baltimore, MD

In loving memory of Arthur B. Padilla.

Barbara St. John Oroville, CA

In memory of Poodie, you will always be in my heart.

Annette Lia Bronx, NY

As highlighted in this issue of the AV Magazine, AAVS is celebrating its 125th anniversary by looking back and honoring the significant milestones and impressive accomplishments throughout the organization’s long history. It also has shined a light on the future of AAVS, its mission, and how we are preparing to meet the new challenges ahead of us. Even with a modest staff size and resources, AAVS has the capacity to accomplish a great deal, and I have never known a more dedicated and determined group than the individuals with whom I have the pleasure to work with each day.

In memory of Pumpkin. You touched my life and will always be in our hearts and memories as a beloved companion.

Ann Pollack Chicago, IL

AAVS is made even stronger through the dedication and support of members like you, and I know we can count on your continued support in all of AAVS’s current and future campaigns to make life better for all animals.

In memory of Gizelle, my little girl.

Elaine Durell West Palm Beach, FL

Best regards,

AAVS Memorial Fund Chris Derer Director of Development & Member Services

Tina Nelson Sanctuary Fund This fund was established to honor the memory of Tina Nelson, AAVS’s Executive Director from 1995 to 2005.

Sanctuaries and their work to provide a safe haven for animals who were once used in laboratories or exploited in other ways were a cause very dear to Tina’s heart. She was a constant champion for all animals and was especially drawn to the plight of primates used in research. This Fund will provide support for sanctuaries that provide homes for animals in need, and will also provide a lasting legacy for Tina’s vision and AAVS’s mission to end experiments on animals. For more information on the Fund, please feel free to visit us at www.aavs.org and click on the Support AAVS tab to learn more about the woman who inspired the Fund and how to make a donation.

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SPRING 2008

The Memorial Fund is a unique way of paying tribute to companion animals and animal lovers while making a gift in their name to help stop animal suffering. All AAVS memorial gifts are used to continue our mission’s work of ending the use of animals in biomedical research, product testing, and education.

Memorial donations of any amount are greatly appreciated.

A donation of $50.00 or more will also be acknowledged in a special recognition section of AAVS’s Annual Report. At your request, we will notify the family of the individual you have remembered with your memorial gift.

AV MAGAZINE

In memory of Gremlin, Critter, and Yeti. I still miss you.

Regina Hesse Whittier, CA In fond memory of Ethel Hanwell, the best mother a son could wish for.

David Hanwell Schwenksville, PA In memory of Klondike, my loving Siberian Husky. We miss you so, and you are in our hearts forever.

Evelyn Scimone Grayslake, IL In memory of Max, Randy, and Sheba. You all were my heart. Now you’re running free in dog heaven.

Mr. and Mr. Lyn Guzower Prescott Valley, AZ In memory of Princess. You were a wonderful dog.

Julie and John O’Connor Tenafly, NJ In memory of Kayla. To our best friend, you were such a precious gift in our lives. You are loved and deeply missed. Memories of you are forever in our hearts.

Angela McFetridge Bethlehem, PA In memory of Grimmie. I miss you and love you so much, and am trying to help all the critters for you.

Margaret Iannuzzi Mount Laurel, NJ In memory of Chloe, my best friend, my soulmate. I miss him so.

Ms. Joyce Rivera Mullica Hill, NJ

In memory of Moses. We miss you and always will.

Sandra DiDomenico Woodbury, NY In memory of Schmoozie, Snuffles, Rexy Cat, Heidel—one couldn’t ask for better companions.

Randolph Richardson Southbury, CT In memory of Sienna Tracey.

Keep smiling and focus your energy and attention on what you can do. I love you, Mom. Erika Willhite Santa Monica, CA In memory of Bulldog and Lily.

Wheezie loves and misses you.

Kathryn Barringham North Haven, CT In memory of Binky, a wonderful companion who hardly left my side. He was happy to leave the shelter for a home.

Joyce Morway Clark, NJ In memory of Chipper. From Central Park to my heart. See you in heaven.

Rosemary Bonanni Portland, CT In memory of Gwen, our loyal companion for 15 years.

Jane Austrian New York, NY In memory of Nickey, a loving cat whose life was cut short by much sickness. Hopefully, there will be better ways to deal with the diseases that took him away.

Burton Berkowitz Glen Rock, NJ In loving memory of Tina Nelson, our friend and trusted colleague.

Stephanie Shain and Adam Roberts Washington, DC

A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY

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AAVS and our Membership through 125 Years 3

Here at AAVS, we feel that one of the things that sets us apart from other organizations is our special relationship with our members and supporters. Over the years, members past and present have played a vital role in AAVS’s many victories for animals, whether it be through volunteering, supporting us financially, or actively participating in our programs and campaigns. We thank all our members for helping AAVS meet its mission of ending the use of animals in science.

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Then AAVS President Owen Hunt meets with fellow anti-vivisectionists in Iowa in 1964.

In 1915, AAVS hosted an exhibit in Williams-Grove, PA, where we distributed literature and displayed restraining devices used in research.

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Then AAVS President William Cave

addresses a crowd of supporters at our 100th anniversary celebration in 1983.

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Over the years, AAVS volunteers have

played an important part in the daily working operation of the organization, including mailing out our literature. In 1948, we honored some who served AAVS for several years.

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An AAVS advertisement promoting World Day for Animals, which appeared in Philadelphia’s Evening Bulletin in 1957.

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AAVS’s first Annual Meeting is held January 30, 1884. A follow up meeting was held several weeks later, which was open to AAVS supporters and the public.

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One of our earliest

correspondences, a personal letter from Dr. Matthew Woods and his $2 donation to AAVS. Dr. Woods became President of AAVS in 1891.

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AAVS volunteers distributed more than 10,000 pieces of literature at a Philadelphia World Day for Animals event in 1976.

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A rare peek into the inner offices of AAVS in the early 1920s, when the organization was located at 22 South 18th Street in Philadelphia.

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In 1999, then AAVS Executive Director Tina Nelson stands with 40,000 petitions signed by our members and supporters, urging the USDA to grant full legal projection to birds, rats, and mice, under the AWA.

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A special note

from longtime life member Violet Lersch, regarding our Annual Meeting in 2003.

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AAVS’s Nina Halvey hosted a weekly radio program that highlighted some of our supporters’ dogs, which opened the opportunity to talk about animal research.

SPRING 2008

AV MAGAZINE

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ARDF UPDATE

There’s another anniversary to be celebrated in 2008: the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation (ARDF) will officially be 15 years old. It may not sound very impressive compared to the 125 years of its affiliate, AAVS, but its accomplishments are substantial for a junior partner.

The origins of ARDF go back to 1979, when AAVS provided its first funding for alternatives research. In his remarks at the 1980 Annual Meeting of AAVS, President William Cave predicted that the Society’s “active participation in financing research in alternative methods” would be remembered as a “landmark” in the organization’s history. He explained that, “Your Society believes that one of the avenues leading to the abolition of vivisection is the substitution of alternative methods of research and testing.” The grant program was a cooperative venture with the American Fund For Alternatives to Animal Research (AFAAR), newly formed by New Yorker Ethel Thurston, and was modeled on a similar program, The Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding Fund for Humane Research, in England.

AAVS records indicate that approximately $400,000 in grants were awarded for various alternatives research projects before the organization decided to establish the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation as an independent affiliate in 1993. The ARDF’s stated mission is “to fund and promote the development, validation and adoption of non-animal methods in biomedical research, product testing, and education.”

By focusing on alternatives, ARDF has been able to encourage increasing interest in alternatives in the U.S. The

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program has grown, and, today, the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation is thriving, and helping provide a boost to the field of alternatives research that is growing by leaps and bounds in Europe but still needs more dedicated resources in the U.S. Expert scientific reviewers are engaged to judge the potential of proposals to assure that the science is high quality and the projects productive. Some of the funded projects are what you might expect; for example, one of the first was an alternative to the Draize rabbit eye test. However, some of the grants in recent years have involved testing alternatives not only for cosmetic and household products but also for drugs and medical research. Since 1993, ARDF alone has awarded approximately 1.2 million dollars in research grants, and the 2008 program is expected to distribute almost $200,000 more. It is a very positive and well-received message to offer funding for excellent research, and has built bridges with individual researchers and their institutions, providing avenues for meaningful change.

15th anniversary, ARDF is planning a forum on the subject of alternatives in October 2008 in Philadelphia. As a joint venture with partners from the Institute for In Vitro Sciences, this promises to offer genuine value for researchers who take seriously the mandate to stop using animals in testing.

ARDF’s motto is “Humane Visions for the Future; Scientific Solutions for Today.” This evolution and continued partnership with AAVS on the subject of alternatives has opened new doors that ultimately will help the animals in a lasting way.

In addition to the grant program, ARDF has made it possible to bring alternatives researchers together at scientific conferences by sponsoring such conferences and workshops for the scientists, accelerating advancement of the field. In association with its

SPRING 2008

When it comes to the last hour of your life, it will be a great consolation to feel that you always protected the poor, the helpless, and the unfortunate; and that you exercised a particular care towards animals.

Caroline Earle White, AAVS Founder, 1913

American Anti-Vivisection Society 801 Old York Rd., #204 Jenkintown, PA 19046-1685

A Non-Profit Educational Organization Dedicated to the Abolition of Vivisection