Jemesu
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Mad Science Awards: August 2003 the joy of animal abuse, how the horses suffer. Animal Aid Uncovers. - 2003/02/15 06:26
This was found on the brilliant Animal Aid website and covers animal abuse once again, completely unnecessary animal abuse. see
Mad Science Awards: August 2003
They don`t SPARE THE HORSES Animal Aid`s 2003 Mad Science Awards focus on eleven horse experiments conducted by research teams working in 14 establishments - including university departments, a pharmaceutical company and even a leading veterinary charity. Andrew Tyler presents the awards below. This report is also available online in PDF format. http://www.animalaid.org.uk/images/pdf/aamsa03.pdf and other scientific journals, describe how - among other torments - healthy horses were deliberately fed mouldy hay, subjected to leg wounds that took weeks to heal, walked on treadmills in experiments that lasted months, injected with chemicals that caused pain and inflammation, and made pregnant then infected with a virus that resulted in abortion.
Another pregnancy experiment involved the implantation of thoroughbred embryos into much smaller ponies and vice versa. Foals who were incubated in ponies were born with horribly deformed legs and muscle wastage.
Some of the experiments ended with the `equine models` being killed and cut up for analysis.
The justification invariably offered for such `procedures` is that they help a very large number of horses and so it is right to sacrifice the few for the many. Animal Aid`s view is that no animal, or group of animals, should be deliberately harmed in an attempt to advance the health of another group of animals - just as we would oppose invasive experiments on any group of people for the supposed `greater good`. It might be less convenient for researchers to develop surgical techniques and drugs by collecting data from horses suffering naturally-occurring sickness and injuries, but we regard this as the only humane and civilised option. Equally, data obtained from horses in a `real-world` environment will often be far more valuable than that extracted from equines held captive in an artificial setting.
It can also be said of the `greater good` argument, that while any horse - no matter how he or she is used - can get sick and injured, it is always low-value horses who are the experimental victims. Often they are little Welsh Mountain ponies - of no use to the racing industry or the point-to-point set. Expensive new drugs, innovative surgical methods and novel reproductive techniques are not developed with `low-grade` moor, mountain or New Forest ponies in mind. The target market are owners of `quality` horses, not least the thoroughbred racers who were the subject of Animal Aid`s special report, Riding For A Fall: the genetic timebomb at the heart of racing. http://www.animalaid.org.uk/campaign/sport/riding.htm
Published in April 2003 and based on scientific papers, industry data and commentaries by leading racing insiders, Riding For A Fall revealed that modern race horses are subjected to such extreme patterns of profit-driven in-breeding, training and competition that their fundamentalwell-being is under threat, and with it the very foundations of the racing industry.
Yet rather than confront the endemic problems that lead to thousands of horses every year failing to make the grade and hundreds more dying from race-related injuries and disease, the industry is looking for `answers` through grotesque laboratory experiments on live horses.
The parlous state of the modern thoroughbred was described recently by a leading Racing Post columnist: `Many learned students of this sport think the creature on which it all depends may now be in decline. Their disturbing contention is that excessive in-breeding for speed, as well as breeding to horses whose congenital defects may have been masked by so-called `medications`, has turned, or is turning, the thoroughbred ...into an increasingly fragile and vulnerable creature that is having ever greater trouble meeting the demands we place on it.` (Racing Post columnist Paul Haigh, October 31, 2002)
Top trainer, Ian Balding, gave his own informed view of the crisis facing the industry when he told Racing Post: `The fashion now is for speed and more speed. We have gradually lost [the] strength, stamina and durability, temperament, extra bone and courage that those horses have. If we carry on like this, then slowly but surely we are ruining the breed.` (`Decline of the Thoroughbred breed`, Racing Post, October 12, 2001)
The fear now among racing traditionalists is that the application of the new genetic and reproductive technologies will result in an even greater burden on the modern race horse. At present, racing authorities around the world ban the use of techniques such as artificial insemination and embryo transfer. They insist that mares be `covered` by stallions in the old-fashioned way.
But one of our 2003 Mad Science Award winners - in fact, he claims a total of three 2003 AAMSAs* - has gone on record calling explicitly for an end to the AI ban. He is Professor William `Twink` Allen, director of the Thoroughbred Breeders` Association`s Equine Fertility Unit - a registered charity based at Cambridge University in Newmarket. Allen produced the world`s first test tube horses, has conducted embryo transfer experiments and told a House of Lords Select committee hearing last February that he is also keen to get to work on horse cloning. (February 5, 2002 before the House Of Lords Select Committee on Animals In Scientific Procedures)
Another of Allen`s enthusiasms is a project to map the genome (or genetic composition) of the thoroughbred horse. Allen - who is father-in-law of jockey Frankie Dettori - claims that the project will enable bad traits to be bred out and thereby open the way for the busting of the ultimate taboo - the mating of stallions with their own daughters, and brothers with their sisters. A geneticist at the Animal Health Trust (AHT) - a veterinary charity also based in Newmarket and a winner of no less than four 2003 Mad Science Awards**- is the leader of the equine mapping project. Allen`s team provides the AHT with animal tissues. The AHT`s work, says Allen, is proceeding `way ahead of the rest of the world`. (`Revolutionary ambitions of improving the breed with a genetic map of horses`, Racing Post, February 18, 2003)
Confirming that the mapping project is, at least, to some extent about producing better performing animals for the racing industry, Allen told Racing Post in February this year: `...if the map can tell you, "Boy that mare`s got some bloody good speed genes", you say, "OK, let`s make sure we fix that into that family".`
Animal Aid`s concern is that such developments will not only generate a great deal of painful research on horses but will lead to yet more pressure on racing animals - which, in turn, will generate more experiments aimed at fixing the problems produced by those same technologies.
The horse, like the dog, cat and monkey, is supposed to have an elevated status under the Home Office animal experimentation licensing system. `Special justification` is required from the licence applicant in all cases where horses are intended to be used. The research projects that win our 2003 Mad Science Awards show that the system is marked by anything other than rigour, compassion and logic.
*See Experiments 5,6,7 ** See 1,2,4,9
Mad Science Winners 2003 Animal Health Trust, Newmarket, Cambs; University of Cambridge, Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine; Royal Veterinary College, North Mymms, Hatfield, Herts To study cartilage damage caused by strenuous exercise, 12 young female thoroughbreds were exercised - gently or hard - for 19 weeks, during which time they were kept indoors. All 12 were then killed and their lower legs sawn off for analysis. It is particularly chilling that the Animal Health Trust - a leading veterinary charity - should engage in experiments whose `endpoint` is the killing of 12 perfectly healthy young horses. There is, after all, no shortage of horses to study post mortem - animals with healthy as well as damaged cartilage. According to a Jockey Club survey, 657 died between 1996 and 1998 as a direct result of injuries sustained on British race courses. There are literally thousands of additional equine fatalities every year in Britain, from whom data can be obtained. Equine carpal articular cartilage fibronectin distribution associated with training, joint location and cartilage deterioration. Murray RC, Janicke HC, Henson FM, Goodship A. Equine Vet J 2000 32 (1) 47-51 University of London; Department of Clinical Sciences, Kansas State University, USA; Royal Veterinary College, University of London Many young racehorses suffer lameness due to the way they are in-bred, trained and raced. In order to mask the pain and swelling so that the animals can continue with their race schedule rather than being allowed to rest and recover, steroids are often injected into their inflamed joints. This is despite evidence that the steroids weaken the bones and predispose them to fractures.
This experiment was designed to test how a commonly-used steroid affects bone structure. Eight two-year-old female thoroughbred horses were injected with the steroid 16 times and exercised on a treadmill for 13 weeks before they were killed.
The experiment suggested that the steroid does not adversely affect bone structure in the ankle joint after all. But the researchers neglected to examine whether the cartilage was affected and so they advocate further studies, which would kill yet more horses. This is despite their paper citing five previous published studies of the effects of steroids on cartilage composition in horses. Once again, there is no allusion to the obvious resource of the many horses killed during racing and ..
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