Animal testing for Cosmetic and Household Products
Julie Bercovici
Hi again.
I was overwhelmed by the responsed I recieved concerning my posting
about the use of animals in testing. There have been so many requests
for the list of companies that I have decided to post it. It should
be right behind this posting. Several people have asked some very
legitimate questions about animal testing and I'll try to answer them
the best that I can. I am no expert in law, biology, zoology or
anything else. I just read the literature sent to me and talk
to people who may be in the know. PETA has a newsletter which contains
the answers to the most frequently asked questions. In summary these
are:
Q.Isn't Animal testing of consumer products a law or required by the FDA?
A.No. No animal test are required by law or regulation. Companies use
animal testing to cover themselves if sued rather than putting warning
labels on products. It doesn't make much sense to me either.
Q.What other ways could they test their products?
A. 1. Enough is known about toxicity in humans to put the information into
computers and let the computers tell us if a substance or mixture
would be toxic.
2. Cell culture (test tube) systems can be used for toxicity and irritancy.
3. Human eyes from eye banks, membranes of chicken eggs or other
organ culture systems can be used.
These are the three mentioned in the PETA newsletter, more may exist.
All of these methods have been developed and tested yet the industry
is reluctant to use them.
Q.What can one person do:
A.Actually every consumer has some clout. Buying only cruelty free products,
and spreading the word to other people who care will hit the bad guys where
it hurts the most. Calling them to tell them what you are doing and why
is important. Bringing the problem to the attention of the media is a
way to reach thousands of people who care but don't know.
Join PETA or other animal rights organization.
The Humane Product Testing Act (H.R. 1877) is now before congress. Write
to your representive and tell them you support it.
This pretty much covers the questions I have been asked. If you have
any more feel free to contact me.
Thanks
Julie
Ross Miller
Better the animal than me. Sueing someone when I am dead doesn't help.
Also, would you seriously trust your life to a computer program, given
current software engineering standards. Also, there is a paradox here
if the animals are not used for testing, than they will not be born.
Supply and demand, gotta love capitalism.
Have an allergic reaction,
Ross
Stefan M. Vorkoetter
>Also, there is a paradox here
>if the animals are not used for testing, than they will not be born.
>Supply and demand, gotta love capitalism.
B... S... More domestic animals are born every day because of people not
getting them fixed and letting them run, than we know what to do with.
All the strays that get rounded up get put to sleep, or, get sent to any
place that wants them for testing. Companies do NOT breed test animals.
If they weren't born, they wouldn't be used for testing. Please people,
get your pets neutered and/or don't let them roam. (No flames about
neutering and/or letting them roam, that's not the point here)
P.S. Here in Ontario, Canada, we have a law that the shelters must give
unwanted animals to research when requested. The Toronto Humane
Society is currently doing there best to raise money and BUY these
animals from other shelters that don't want to break this law. The
THS then keeps them, in defiance of this law. They'd rather put
them to sleep if necessary, than have them tortured.
Craig Werner
> >A. 1. Enough is known about toxicity in humans to put the information into
> > computers and let the computers tell us if a substance or mixture
> > would be toxic.
> Is this just another expression of the myth "Computers can do Anything
> when given a lot of Data"?
The truth is that if anyone ever tells you that they can absolutely
predict the function of its molecule from its structure, laugh in his
face.
Take the following two examples. By a structure-function
relationship, Thalidomide should be perfectly safe. As a matter of fact,
it is perfectly safe - in rabbits, and in humans beyond 20 weeks gestation.
No one ever suspected that it would be such a potent teratogen for a
short period in embryogenesis. The FDA never approved it for use in the
US, but the tragedy in Europe was of immense proportions. It inhibited
the growth of the proximal limb bud, but who could have ever predicted?
Or take Dioxin, this should also be a fairly innocuous compound.
It does not induce mutagenesis in bacteria and is fairly stable. Rats
and certain strains of mice can literally eat it by the pound, but just
a few millionths of a gram will kill a guinea pig (or is it a gerbil).
This is not to say that certain animal testing isn't excessive,
but the shear fact that biology is stranger than nature will ensure
that it will never be possible to eliminate it completely.
--
Craig Werner (MD/PhD '91)
!philabs!aecom!werner
(1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517)
"Well that's my story, not that it matters..."
sas...@endor.uucp
> not getting them fixed and letting them run, than we know what to do
> with. All the strays that get rounded up get put to sleep, or, get
> sent to any place that wants them for testing. Companies do NOT
Yes, it is true that many domestic animals are destroyed because of
inconsiderate and unthinking owners. No, it is not true that test
animals don't get bred. There are companies that breed animals, mostly
for medical research. Mostly they breed and sell rodents and rabbits.
Many also bread dogs and cats, pigs, and primates of various types.
It is also true that much research is done using animals from animal
shelters and pounds, but most research (at least in the Boston area)
is done using specially bred and raised animals. Animals from shelters
and pounds come from uncertain backgrounds and are often of
questionable health, usually not suitable for controlled research.
I am not here to justify any of this, just wanted to make the point
that animals are bred for testing, and that capitalistic principles
are alive and thriving in this market.
----------------
Marty Sasaki uucp: harvard!sasaki
Strategic Information arpa: sas...@harvard.harvard.edu
80 Blanchard Road bitnet: sasaki@harvunxh
Burlington, MA 01803 phone: 617-273-5500
wi...@ut-ngp.uucp
> .... No, it is not true that test
> animals don't get bred. There are companies that breed animals, mostly
> for medical research. Mostly they breed and sell rodents and rabbits.
I'd like to second this, with a few details:
Much animal research, in experimental psychology as well as medicine,
becomes a great deal more fruitful if the population of animals tested
is very homogeneous, so that sources of error variance are minimized.
(There's less noise in the background, so to speak, so the effect
sought is much more clear.) Many mice and rats, in particular, are
bred from very purified gene pools, meaning the exact characteristics
of each animal are very very predictable: they are far more alike than
anybody else except identical twins. In fact, they're almost as
identical as identical twins; over the hundreds of generations,
gene variability has been almost eliminated. This is very useful in a
lot of kinds of research.
BTW, in this process, "maze-smart" rats have been bred which,
apparently genetically, are better at running a maze than ordinary
rats! In fact, would you believe that their extra ability is not just
ordinary higher intelligence; their extra ability seems to be SPECIFIC
to just *that* maze and no other. With other mazes, they do no better
nor worse than other rats. (You can, with these rats,
and theoretically probably with any living creature, breed for
any characteristic you wish to emphasize, simply by mating only those
who are high in that characteristic.)
--
Anne Hill Wiebe
(wi...@ngp.cc.utexas.edu, or !ihnp4!ut-ngp!wiebe, or
!allegra!ut-ngp!wiebe)
Mark Brader
> P.S. Here in Ontario, Canada, we have a law that the shelters must give
> unwanted animals to research when requested. The Toronto Humane
> animals from other shelters that don't want to break this law. The
> THS then keeps them, in defiance of this law.
For the benefit of those who aren't in the range of Toronto newspapers...
the Toronto Humane Society was recently, um, taken over by a group of
animal rights activists. I haven't been following the details, but the
most recent stage was a proxy-vote battle that ended with the Society's
board of directors reduced from 16 members to 5, and at least 4 of the 5
survivors having been founders of activist groups.
It appears likely that the activists wanted to change the course of the
Society from within in order to get their hands on its financial resources,
which include such things as inheritances and I think tax money also.
Since this has shifted from what-products-to-choose to the rights of
stray pets and other animals, I am adding talk.politics.misc to the
list of newsgroups, and deleting net.veg, misc.consumers, and soc.women
from the followup-to list. Please confine further postings to their
proper places, where I won't see them.
Mark Brader
hu...@volkstation.uucp
Before anyone believes this crap, they should investigate a little more
closely. The original article listed those companies which engage in
routine, UN-NECESSARY testing of cosmetics, household products, and so
forth, on animals. It is obvious even to someone like Ross that if
you put clorox in your eyes it will hurt them. Therefore, is it necessary
to demonstrate that fact by routinely putting clorox in the eyes of test
animals? Then why did Clorox feel it necessary to do this?
Ross, if you are so severely susceptible to allergic reactions that you
feel it is justified to animal-test products which can be demonstrated by
simple laboratory chemical tests as hazardous, then I suggest you follow the
same procedure adopted by the two other similarly afflicted people: go
live in Mt Shasta California, in a safe-house with absolutely NO modern
manufactured products in it.
Hutch
camp...@maynard.uucp
> ... Companies do NOT breed test animals.
>If they weren't born, they wouldn't be used for testing.
Rubbish. There's a *huge* establishment about thirty miles from here
called "Charles River Breeding Laboratories". My brother used to work
there. They breed laboratory animals -- mostly white rats, guinea pigs,
rabbits, and monkeys -- in enormous numbers for the research market.
These animals clearly wouldn't be born if they weren't bred for testing.
--
Larry Campbell MCI: LCAMPBELL The Boston Software Works, Inc.
UUCP: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109
ARPA: campbell%maynar...@harvisr.harvard.edu (617) 367-6846
DOMAINIZED ADDRESS (for the adventurous): camp...@maynard.BSW.COM
d...@moscom.uucp
>If they weren't born, they wouldn't be used for testing.
This is not entirely true. While some strays are used for testing, there is
a large industry that provides test animals to industry. A white mouse or
rat that is used to test drugs must be germ free, so that the reactions tested
will be those of the drug, not some outside cause. The environments in which
these animals are raised is highly controlled, with airlocks, special foods,
emergency power sources, etc.
This is not a justification of the use of animals for testing. Some tests are
unnecessary or overly cruel, but many are the choice between them testing an
animal bred for that purpose and testing on me. I choose the animal.
>Please people get your pets neutered and/or don't let them roam.
Good point anyway.
--
rochester \
David Esan | moscom ! de
ritcv/
li...@cca.uucp
>> Take the following two examples. By a structure-function
>>relationship, Thalidomide should be perfectly safe. As a matter of fact,
>>it is perfectly safe - in rabbits, and in humans beyond 20 weeks gestation.
>> Or take Dioxin, this should also be a fairly innocuous compound.
>>It does not induce mutagenesis in bacteria and is fairly stable. Rats
>>and certain strains of mice can literally eat it by the pound, but just
>>a few millionths of a gram will kill a guinea pig (or is it a gerbil).
>
It seems to me these are very GOOD reasons *NOT* to rely on animal testing
for valid assumptions about human reactions to drugs, etc. There are lots
of animals suffering in these horrible experiments, only to arrive at
results like the above. "Does it cause cancer in rabbits?" "Yes." "Can
we assume it causes cancer in humans, then?" "Uh...I can't say."
What the heck are all these animals dying for? Rather useless information,
and potentially dangerous assumptions.
And as far as household cleaners, and the like. My great-grandmother in
Italy was cleaning her house with the same chemicals I am using today:
bleach, lye, etc. She didn't need someone to stick lye in a rabbit's eye
to tell her that it was dangerous stuff and that skin contact should be
avoided. And neither do I. Have they really added any new chemicals to
the household-cleaning and make-up arsenal in the past 20 years? If so,
why? The old ones work fine. And if not (new and improved = ga ga, in
my opinion) then why are they continuing to torture animals with repetitive
tests.
At any rate, thanks to Julie for sharing her list of good-and-evil manufact-
urers with us. I will not be buying very many of the same products I used to.
For those of you who care, make your dollars talk! Corporations that don't
know the meaning of the word "ethics" are still very tuned in to the word
"money".
sim...@mit-amt.uucp
CLAIMER:
This message reflects the views of thousands of other people
who have already stopped reading net.veg.
wer...@aecom.uucp
> My examples:
> >> Take the following two examples. By a structure-function
> >>relationship, Thalidomide should be perfectly safe. As a matter of fact,
>
> >>It does not induce mutagenesis in bacteria and is fairly stable. Rats
> It seems to me these are very GOOD reasons *NOT* to rely on animal testing
> for valid assumptions about human reactions to drugs, etc. There are lots
> of animals suffering in these horrible experiments, only to arrive at
> results like the above. "Does it cause cancer in rabbits?" "Yes." "Can
> we assume it causes cancer in humans, then?" "Uh...I can't say."
As much as I hate to be involved in run-on discussions, I also
hate to be misinterpreted or misunderstood. The logical leap that
Libby Sackett makes in response to my examples is essentially
unjustified. There is a long experience to suggest that most chemicals
that are harmful in a proper animal model are in fact harmful to humans.
Furthermore, interspecies differences in reaction provide an insight into
the mechanism and action of compounds. It is the converse that is not
true: just because something is safe in animals does not mean it is
safe in humans. However, anything harmful to animals should be
considered harmful to humans until proven otherwise (and frankly I
don't think the effort to prove otherwise is generally undertaken).
One can never completely eliminate animal research. There
is some, admittedly, that is redundant and unneccesaary, but one
cannot generalize. One cannot generalize!
--
Craig Werner (MD/PhD '91)
!philabs!aecom!werner
(1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517)
"If you've heard this story before, don't stop me. I want to hear it again."
Chris Lewis
>
>
>>> Take the following two examples. By a structure-function
>>>relationship, Thalidomide should be perfectly safe. As a matter of fact,
>>>it is perfectly safe - in rabbits, and in humans beyond 20 weeks gestation.
>
>>> Or take Dioxin, this should also be a fairly innocuous compound.
>>>It does not induce mutagenesis in bacteria and is fairly stable. Rats
>>>and certain strains of mice can literally eat it by the pound, but just
>>>a few millionths of a gram will kill a guinea pig (or is it a gerbil).
>>
>
>It seems to me these are very GOOD reasons *NOT* to rely on animal testing
>for valid assumptions about human reactions to drugs, etc. There are lots
>of animals suffering in these horrible experiments, only to arrive at
>results like the above. "Does it cause cancer in rabbits?" "Yes." "Can
>we assume it causes cancer in humans, then?" "Uh...I can't say."
The US FDA says: "if a drug causes cancer in rats, we're not gonna certify
it for human use". Remember Saccharin? Because, if a chemical does
do something nasty to animals, it'll *probably* do something equally
nasty to human beings. And "probably" is good enough. And it's evil
(to use your terminology) to perform tests in that scale on human beings
to find out for sure - Hitler's Germany did such testing.
And, in the case of things like Saccharin, it's extremely difficult to detect
that a drug is doing nasty things. Saccharin, (If I remember correctly) was
guessed at being capable of causing a couple of cancers per *million* people.
You want to do testing on humans on that big a scale? How? Or (as they do
with rats) extremely high dosage testing for several generations? If doing
this testing on animals is unethical - what's doing the same on human beings?
Don't give me any nonsense about tissue cultures or computers. They simply
*won't* catch problems that subtle.
OF COURSE, killing thousands of animals to determine that Chlorox is corrosive
is stupid and cruel. But blanket condemnation of all animal testing is
equally so (to the people suffering from the conditions the drug is being
researched in the first place). Fortunately, most Universities have ethics
committees that review test plans before allowing researchers to perform
tests on animals or people. Perhaps the cosmetics industry should be forced
to clear test plans with a government body that evaluates testing for
reasonability.
--
Chris Lewis
Spectrix Microsystems Inc,
UUCP: {utzoo|utcs|yetti|genat|seismo}!mnetor!spectrix!clewis
ARPA: mnetor!spectrix!cle...@seismo.css.gov
Phone: (416)-474-1955