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To
Mr John D. Wiley, Chancellor email:
jdwiley@bascom.wisc.edu
University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Dear Chancellor Wiley,
RE Taser Experiments on
Pigs
I would like to urge
you to please discontinue the taser experiments on pigs. There is no need
for the continued shocking of pigs in experiments. Human data are
already available.
The Department of Justice has
also awarded a grant to Wake Forest Baptist University for a far more
sensible study in which Taser-related police records and autopsies will be
collected, coordinated, and analyzed. This study will yield results that
directly apply to Tasers and their effects on humans with varying medical
histories. When that information is made available to criminology experts,
police and military personnel can be properly trained in the discriminate
use of "less-than-lethal" weapons. After all, collateral damage is bad PR,
and lawsuits can be expensive—but shocking pigs will not make anyone safer
or protect users from lawsuits.
Your university’s ACACUC could
not possibly have given this experiment due consideration. The ACACUC was
mollified by the fact that the pigs will be anesthetized—and that just
reveals the ease with which experiments on animals are excused from true
oversight. All’s well because the pigs won’t feel a thing—now there’s an
excuse for not engaging in a thoughtful review of the scientific and
ethical implications of an experiment.
Again, the premise of the
experiment is flawed. Porcine cardiac fibrillation safety margins will not
be equivalent to those in humans. Additionally, the genetic mutation in
pigs that is responsible for malignant hyperthermia is not present in
humans, so to draw conclusions about human physiology based on a porcine
model with a genetic mutation that doesn’t appear in humans makes the
research invalid.
Dr. Webster’s experiment is not
necessary. In a local newspaper
article, Dr. Webster has admitted, "I doubt that we’ll be able to cause
any problem in the heart from a normal Taser." This is a
half-million-dollar boondoggle to confirm a hypothesis that’s already
obvious to the experimenter himself. Not surprisingly, he and his group
"have found a need to further validate hypotheses," and that need is to
pocket the half-million-dollar grant.
This testing of technology on
animals has not raised "healthy debate in society" as you assert,
Chancellor Wiley. The biomedical establishment is so entrenched in
perpetuating animal experimentation that dismissive responses to our
ethical objections (as well as our scientific ones) have made "healthy
debate" almost impossible. A half-million dollars speaks louder than the
cries of animals and the clamor of reason and conscience.
Webster’s experiment is a gross
misallocation of attention and resources. We are now living in an era
where scientific credibility in general and animal research in particular
are increasingly being called into question. The cavalier treatment of
animals to test weaponry mocks the oft-repeated but baseless claim that
animal research is a powerful tool to improve animal and human health. The
University of Wisconsin is indistinguishable in this case from a common
contract lab that will do anything, no matter how invasive or bereft of
scientific merit, for a buck.
This experiment is particularly
vulnerable to public criticism because it epitomizes the worst of what’s
wrong with research using animals: It involves the most obvious ethical
and political objections, as well as questions of human rights, animal
rights, scientific dubiousness, and fiscal waste. Please have the
courage to stop what you must know to be wrong.
Sincerely,
[insert name]
[address -
optional] |