Monday, September 25, 2006

Do you want this Covance lab in Arizona????

Arizona residents, students, and faculty at ASU! Don't sit idly by and complacently let the company COVANCE build a lab in Chandler. Clamorous protests drove them out of Alameda, California. They have a notorious unethical reputation. Covance was sited recently by the U. S. Department of Agriculture for 16 violations!!!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

“The Hot Zone” is one of the scariest stories I’ve ever read. The cause of all this terror is from little beasts that are only microns in size, filoviruses. There four of these viruses, Marburg, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Reston.
Everyone should be afraid of Ebola. Filoviruses are hemorrhagic viruses, causing those to be infected to crash and bleed out. This book focuses on the discovery of Ebola in Washington D.C., a monkey house in Reston Virginia that is full of dying monkeys that are infected with Ebola. Covance has imported three shipments of Ebola-virus infected monkeys; plus other primates brought in by this company (Covance) harbor other pathogens that can cross the species barrier and infect humans.
The potential concerns for public health is staggering especially if an “accident” equivalent to the Ebola virus strikes in a Covance Lab in Chandler.

I ask myself why is our State and City government Officials and Newspapers NOT ALL OVER THIS COMPANY and PRESIDENT CROW at ASU PROTECTING OUR COMMUNITIES and STATE instead of worrying so much about their political and economical profiles.

Anonymous said...

I also have been lookiing into this covert research at ASU and with Covance and wondering WHY it is not getting any press or political inquiry. One thing I know for sure that President Crow is extremely gooding at "spinning" and ALWAYS sets himself up so that ANY negative play or involvement reflects ALWAYS on the OTHER PERSON NOT DIRECTLY TO HIM. It is scary to also for my family, community and friends to be exposed to this kind of danger! I tell everyone I meet about this.

Anonymous said...

blogmaster - i am a writer interested in talking to you and to the people who post here. i've set up an e-mail account for posters to contact me at... they can choose to stay anonymous if they like, though i'd love to get some of these comments on the record or at least meet some of these commenters in person. (the main reason the press never covers this is that absolutly no one will go on the record). you can reach me at tips.information@gmail.com.

Anonymous said...

The “animal rights” movement has pulled off a deadly deception: promote a vicious, anti-human policy, while feigning benevolent, compassionate motives. The deception takes the form of opposing life-saving medical research--in the name of opposing cruelty to animals.

Consider PETA’s ongoing campaign against Covance, a company that conducts vital medical research on animals to fight diseases such as breast cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. PETA is staging an elaborate, heavily backed PR effort claiming that Covance engages in gratuitous and unnecessary torture of monkeys. The centerpiece of the campaign is a 5-minute video allegedly proving PETA’s accusations.

In fact, PETA’s effort is a classic smear campaign. Many of the “abuses” it documents--such as the use of restraints or delivering drugs through nasal tubes--are necessary to effectively administer drugs to animals. And the few examples of seemingly inappropriate behavior they find, such as the bizarre taunting of monkeys by a few Covance employees, are treated as pervasive industry practice--even though it took a PETA operative (operating illegally within Covance) over 10 months to cull a mere handful of such instances.

No sane person seeks to inflict needless pain on animals. Such practices, where they exist, should be condemned. But anyone concerned for human life must unequivocally endorse the rightness of using animals in medical research.

Animal research is absolutely necessary for the development of life-saving drugs, medical procedures, and biotech treatments. According to Nobel Laureate Joseph Murray, M.D.: “Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements, and all vaccinations.” Explains former American Medical Association president Daniel Johnson, M.D.: “Animal research--followed by human clinical study--is absolutely necessary to find the causes and cures for so many deadly threats, from AIDS to cancer.”

Millions of humans would suffer and die unnecessarily if animal testing were prohibited. But this is exactly what PETA and other “animal rights” organization seek. They believe that all animal research should be banned, including research conducted as humanely as possible (the declared and scrupulously practiced policy of most animal researchers).

The founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, has declared unequivocally that animal research is “immoral even if it’s essential” and that “Even painless research is fascism, supremacism.” When questioned what her movement’s stance would be if animal tests produced a cure for AIDS, Newkirk responded: “We’d be against it.” Chris DeRose, founder of the group Last Chance for Animals, writes: “If the death of one rat cured all diseases, it wouldn’t make any difference to me.”

The goal of the “animal rights” movement is not to stop sadistic animal torturers; it is to sacrifice human well-being for the sake of animals. This goal is inherent in the very notion of “animal rights.” According to PETA, the basic principle of “animal rights” is: “animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment”--they “deserve consideration of their own best interests regardless of whether they are useful to humans.” This is in exact contradiction to the requirements of human survival and progress, which demand that we kill animals when they endanger us, eat them when we need food, run tests on them to fight disease. To ascribe rights to animals is to contradict the purpose and justification of rights: the protection of human interests. Rights are moral principles governing the interactions of rational, productive beings, who prosper not in a world of eat or be eaten, but a world of voluntary, mutually beneficial cooperation and trade.

The death and destruction that would result from any serious attempt to pretend that animals have rights would be catastrophic--for humans--a prospect the movement’s most consistent members embrace. Newkirk calls human beings “the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” Freeman Wicklund of Compassionate Action for Animals declares: “We need a drastic decrease in human population if we ever hope to create a just and equitable world for animals.”

The central issue in the “animal rights” debate is not whether it is acceptable to torture animals, but whether it is proper to use them for human benefit. The “animal rights” movement’s emphasis on the senseless torture of animals--in the rare cases where it actually exists--is a red herring. It is a way of promoting opposition to life-saving animal research companies, and sympathy for themselves--so as to further their evil agenda of subjugating human beings to animals. They must not be allowed to get away with such dishonesty. What is needed is a principled, intellectual defense of the absolute right of animal experimentation, against the deadly notion of “animal rights.” Anything less is cruelty to humans.

Anonymous said...

Stop this project in its tracks!

Covance has a lot of explaining to do—from the hundreds of violations of the Animal Welfare Act documented by PETA’s investigator to the sloppy business practices noted in its violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to problems
ensuring safety of its workers and its host community.
It does not deserve a red carpet welcome into Chandler!
To defend this Company is just another "spin" on the truth for ASU.

Anonymous said...

"Information about the true extent of animal research...deserves to be heard above the bullhorns and protest signs", no one offer "information about the true extent". In fact, it is the same old script that we have heard repeatedly from animal-user industries.
First, the they tell us how indispensible animal research is to human health, then they assure us that the research is conducted "safely and humanely" by responsible and caring researchers. When they're caught red-handed abusing animals, there are two routes they take for damage control. First, they try to suppress the evidence. Then, if that doesn't work, they pretend the abuses are isolated incidents. But this is all just industry PR propaganda.
The media and the public are fed a carefully orchestrated public-relations script. The industries “speak with one voice, tell the same story, even use the same words to denigrate their common enemy: animal-rights extremists. Regan says: It began in 1989 with the publication of the American Medical Association’s white paper 'Use of Animals in Bio-Medical Research: The Challenge and the Response.' Among the AMA’s recommendations: People who believe in animal rights must be seen as 'radicals,' 'militants,' and 'terrorists,' who are 'opposed to human well-being.' By contrast sane, sensible, decent people must be shown to favor animal welfare, understood as humane, responsible use of animals, by humans, for humans.
Former deputy director of presidential speechwriting for George W. Bush, had this to say in Dominion. "In its current form...the AWA [Animal Welfare Act] is a collection of hollow injunctions, broad loopholes, and light penalties when there are any at all..." and "...the persistent animal-welfare questions of our day center on institutional cruelties—on the vast and systematic mistreatment of animals that most of us never see.
Abuse is widespread and well-documented. Corporations deny abuse in the face of incontrovertible evidence and go to court to silence the whistleblowers. Major universities deny responsibility for abuse, all the while paying the fines and carrying on business as usual. Serious moral questions need to be addressed. Animal activists are asking the questions. Unfortunately for the animals, the answers are coming from a propaganda script!

Anonymous said...

PCRM Steps Up Efforts to Keep Covance Laboratories Out of Chandler

Help as we step up efforts to prevent Covance Laboratories from building a 591,000-square-foot animal experimentation facility in Chandler, Ariz. Covance, a New Jersey-based contract testing company, recently filed preliminary plans for the project with the city’s Planning and Zoning Department, but the company faces growing local opposition from PCRM members and other concerned citizens.

PCRM has been informing Chandler residents for months about the dangers a Covance laboratory could pose to both animal and human health. The company, which is paid to test cosmetic ingredients, food additives, pesticides, and drugs on monkeys, dogs, rabbits, and rodents, has a history of animal cruelty.

Covance was recently investigated and fined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture based on documented allegations of striking, choking, and tormenting primates at its Virginia facility. Now, a new PCRM report details a long list of Animal Welfare Act violations at five Covance facilities around the country. The company is also one of the world’s largest breeder of dogs for experimentation and the largest importer of primates.

The proposed Chandler facility could also pose health threats to humans. Monkeys can carry an array of diseases dangerous to humans, including hepatitis B, shigella, tuberculosis, and Ebola. A Covance facility in Virginia, operating under the company’s previous name, was forced to shut down after a monkey there was found to be carrying the Ebola virus. Covance's plans include a thermal waste destruction unit, which could be used to burn animal carcasses and medical waste. This type of incinerator could release hazardous toxins into the atmosphere. That’s especially troubling because the proposed location for the facility lies less than one mile from a public school.

Anonymous said...

Question: Do those of you who oppose animal research refuse to use or take any medication which has been tested on animals?

Anonymous said...

i'd ask that anyone who opposes animal research to examine whether or not they take any drugs, prescription or OTC. You would know if they are building BSL4 labs for ebola research. Stop freaking out about propaganda.