Jul27
PETA Calls on State to Investigave UConn Violations
Posted at 09:27 AM | Permalink
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Remember the University of Connecticut story from a couple of weeks ago? Long story short: the USDA fined the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC) for seven violations of the Animal Welfare Act, stemming from experiments in which a guy named David Waitzman bolted restraint devices to monkeys' heads, drilled holes in their skulls, attached electrodes to their brains, and fastened small wire coils directly to their eyeballs.
Well we just took it a step further and filed a formal complaint with state auditors Kevin P. Johnston and Robert G. Jaekle urging them to investigate possible violations of the University of Connecticut's Code of Conduct as well as the possible misuse of public funds and property by the UCHC, its institutional Animal Care Committee (ACC), and UCHC animal experimenter David Waitzman.
Justin Goodman protests UConn primate experiments
Based on UConn graduate student Justin Goodman's 2005 complaints, the USDA confirmed that Waitzman was consistently in violation of laws governing the care and use of animals in research. Waitzman had received more than $1.7 million in federal funds to conduct the experiments, and part of his salary, the entire salaries of his support staff, and his overhead expenses were funded by state taxpayers, who will also have to pick up the tab for the $5,532 fine. Also, UCHC officials made false public statements regarding Waitzman's experiments.
UConn's Code of Conduct requires that faculty and staff abide by all federal, state, and institutional laws and regulations regarding the use of animals. However, since March 2003, UCHC has been cited for more than 65 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act related to the treatment of monkeys, cats, gerbils, guinea pigs, and rabbits at the facility. These violations include failure to employ personnel who were qualified to handle nonhuman primates, thus causing physical harm to the animals; failure to consider alternatives to painful procedures; failure to provide appropriate sedatives to animals; failure to painlessly euthanize a monkey who experienced severe tremors and seizures for more than six months; and conducting unauthorized experiments.
Here’s what PETA VP Bruce Friedrich had to say on the issue, "UConn has been torturing animals, making a mockery of its Code of Conduct, and squandering taxpayers' money in the process, UCHC's negligence and lack of oversight led directly to the prolonged suffering and deaths of animals, and we're calling on the state to impose all appropriate disciplinary measures."
I’ll keep you posted as things progress . . .
TAGGED:
David Waitzman
Comments
Tell me that is not a fur trimmed collar on Justin's jacket...I am glad he spoke up for the research animals, but I hope he is not wearing real fur...
Posted by: Kelley | July 27, 2007 06:02 PM
struggles for global conscience development are always hard on this planet. they are timeconsuming, healthconsuming, moneyconsuming and patience consuming. fact is: a small mentally and spiritually advanced number of people have to fight for centuries or even thousands of years for a special cause - outcast by the rest of the ignorant world - until the day shall come that the ignorant man gets the message. so it was with childlabour, womenrights, slavery, witchhunt, inquisition etc. today we have two other major problems: weapontrade and animalabuse. relevant for us here is animalabuse. the clue of the abuse and the arguments of the abuser are always the same as they were in the other mentioned cases: profit! so in order to reach their goal the profiteurs are working in top positions - in governments, churches, social welfare labor communities, universities, etc. - for this reason you can find the same person presiding a bank, a government, a slaughterhouse empire. so he first has to make sure that the victim is manufactured into the processing of the whole machine, then the profit on it goes to the banking system and so on. money gives power and so the profiteur reaches the top, for example the government. so this viscious circle can only be broken by the clear understanding of the putrified system and this system must be given a name: me i call it criminal. so what is the profiting adversary doing: first step: ignoring; second step: ridicularizing; third step: attacking with lies and false accusations and there is a fourth level which i don't name but peta knows what i mean. peta has to confront the enemies on all these levels. she has to fight against silencing, ridicularization, false accusation and so on.... the same thing can also happen to an individual animal protector. the aim of the adversary is to lame the animal protector on these levels with their mean strategy. but there is a way out: during all the time the organizations fighting the good fight had an ally: time! even if we are loosing great time, the time shall come when the rest of the world stands behind us. until that time there shall be many martyrs - here it's the animals - dying for the cause - there are always martyrs - in every just cause!
the great inconvenience of the good fighters is the fact that they don't just have the stupid mob against them but also a certain number of the so-called intelligentia, like for example the vivisectors! these vivisectors blind the public by telling them that animal experiments are necessary and good for the people! but they want just one thing: their subventions! because why is it that all these torturers in their white robe are not protesting and personally fighting for the free donation of medicaments for the third world - and also for the co-called third world inside the first world - for example aids patients! because they give a fuck for the issue of that people!
all this system is one big machine working for it's own belly and for nobody else! because why is it that they maintain slaughterhouses and the governments tell us that the human being needs to eat meat to stay in good health and on the other hand there are wars going on, killing millions of innocent people, there are also millions of people without shelter all over the world, there is a great misery on every level! why don't the rich countries not welcome the millions of refugees and feed them? because they just stuff their own belly with the meat eating the bread of the poor. the rainforest is dying because they are breeding the cattle for the steaks of the first world - not for the refugees, not for the homeless, not for the aids patients in africa, not for darfur but for those bellies sitting on the most respected chairs in the richest places of this world - and they got an ally - the stupid mass of ignorant people who think that they love them! poor stupid mass; indeed! and this stupid mass has to be fed and silenced with a victim - and this victim is the animal kingdom - suffering in silence and pain in the image of the christ.... the human being never acted in this image but under the influence of an other idol: money!
so please take a time and reflect! because time is the friend of the people fighting the good fight and i know - peta needs time - but the day shall come when she shall be victorious! because short is the life of the evil doer: he suffers more than his victim when he dies - when his victim dies it looses his pain; when the evil doer dies he loses his bad empire!
i sign here in the name of a woman, beheaded as a martyr during french revolution, immortalized by the famous book of alexandre dumas: la san felice
Posted by: La San Felice | July 28, 2007 12:22 PM
Justin Goodman, assuming your protest was peaceful (it looks like you're chained to the fence - that's priceless!) I say, good work!! Keep it up, brother!!
I live in Mass and between here and Connecticut (my mom graduated from UConn) there is so much financial and ethical corruption. Just look at the Big Dig.
I am horrified by experiments like the sleep-deprivation ones in cats. These and the primate experiments mentioned above are completely perplexing to me. Do the same people who torture animals find a way to get weathy from it? WTF?
Good on you for peaceful civil disobedience. You have all my support. If I can do anything for you, click on my name for my website. I'm in the area. Blessings.
Posted by: Maya | July 30, 2007 05:21 PM
Kelley: He’s not. Trust me. :)
Posted by: Jack | July 31, 2007 09:32 AM
Kudos to Justin Goodman for his valiant work in the name of animal protection!! Waitzman should be tossed out on his evil ear and tarred and feathered down the streets for his rotten deeds! Thank You PETA for all you do and God bless all of you!
Posted by: LovinZarra | June 18, 2008 10:50 PM