Two University of Guadalajara academic centers (Health Sciences along with Biological and Agricultural Sciences) have been criticized for still receiving live animals from the animal control centers and for sweeping up animals off the street to use them as part of its medical and scientific practices in the areas of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Nursing, Odontology and Psychology. Apart from being a clear violation of the Mexican Official Standard (NOM 042 SSA) the practice is ethically wrong. Furthermore, the University of Guadalajara has a Center for Alternative Use of Animal in Education (CAAE) that has not been exploit to the fullest. ?
Dogs to be used for dissection and for practicing surgical procedures are either being captured in the street by trucks owned by the University or are being provided by third parties hired for the same purpose. In some cases, dogs are wearing tagged collars, showing they have owners. Other dogs are taken from the Animal Control Center in the nearby municipality of Tonala, Jalisco. The captured animals suffer from tremendous stress due to the conditions they are put through, even prior the %u201Ceducational%u201D practice. All the animals, including sometimes puppies and pregnant dogs are forced to live in cages, often going for days without any food, shade or water.
It has been through the evidence of photos, videos and the complaints of neighbors and some of the students deeply worried about the situation, the methods or torture and extreme cruelty these animals have to go through, as well as the poor health conditions the practices take place putting at risk the health itself of the students. Their testimonies describe the use of expired anesthetics and drugs that are employed in lower doses than required, before cutting open the animals. The result is that animals aren%u2019t properly sedated and frequently gain consciousness in the middle of the surgery when they have been already cut wide open, suffering from indescribable pain. In many cases their screams and moans are silent by beating them, and those in charge of the practices do not take into consideration the provisions applicable by law. Crying means the same in every language. Let%u2019s help to stop this disgraceful treatment towards animals. Sign the petition to stop these archaic methods of using live animals in educational practices and make a difference. They need our help.
Stop the use of live animals in the University of Guadalajara
Tag Archive: street
This is the second in a series of posts by Change.org writers, reflecting on the bullying or harassment they experienced growing up, by compiling a top ten list of the things in life that got better once they made it out of some rather homophobic settings. Check out the original piece in this series here, and if you have your own list, please feel free to include it in the comments.
1. College: Nothing in the world beats suffocating parents and intolerant high school mates than a good dose of college freedom. It’s miraculous how in a matter of literally minutes you can go from total dependence to utter freedom. You can shed everything that you don’t like about your life when you walk through that campus entrance and create a safe, like-minded environment with friends, potential lovers, and even classes that suit your little gay heart. College is the ultimate equalizer and if you can only hang on until then, things can instantaneously get better the moment you lay those extra long twin fitted sheets on your dormitory bed. (Not to mention that in college, I got laid a lot and had the best time of my life).
2. Graduate school: I know, sounds like a dorky second choice, but for me, graduate school was the most enriching experience of my life. This was a time in my life when I pushed my brain (and my time management skills) to the max. I also made lifelong friends with some pretty amazing artists and anarchists and intellectuals. I made connections that would help me in my career in media and that I still hold on to and value today. Plus, I got to attend the high-brow, snooty academic cocktail parties, where I sipped red wine and talked about the state of society and how dreadfully wrong everything and everyone was. Plus, those parties always had awesome cheese spreads.
3. Love: I Loved. And I lost. And I loved again, and lost again. But what did that famous, insightful writer once say, “Better to have had your heart ripped out of your chest and stamped on with a stiletto than never to have had that sloppy make-out session in the bathroom of the gay bar at all.” I paraphrase, but I would not for a second trade all of the loving and losing I experienced since high school. Sure, the relationships I’ve been in weren’t all perfect — hell, none of them were — but they were all worth it.
A woman named Patricia Reid was recently profiled in the New York Times. She has been unemployed for four years. Before being cut loose in massive layoffs, she worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing. The biggest fear for this 57-year-old college graduate? “Becoming a bag lady.”
“Bag lady” is my generation’s term for “homeless old woman with everything she owns stuffed in two big shopping bags.” It is a position that women, regardless of age, marital status, employment or resources, fear. It summons up visions of a “living death,” of tottering down a grimy street pushing a shopping cart, dragging our eco-friendly cloth shopping bags crammed to their cloth brim with fat-free cookies, a blanket with a torn satin edging, a stuffed animal, flannel pajamas and unread copies of supermarket tabloids. Don’t laugh. I asked several women just exactly what they envisioned would be IN those bags. That’s what they told me they thought they might need if they wanted to pass the night on the street in comfort. Obviously they’ve never given serious thought to what it truly means to be homeless.
I’ve found that for the middle-to-upper class, “bag lady” is a euphemistic way of saying “homeless.” It conveys slightly more pity than “homeless” because the stereotype doesn’t include addiction of any kind, only the sheer, oppressing poverty that frightens middle-aged women living in suburbia (and maybe a little mental illness). “Bag lady” is a step above homeless because it seems more like a specter in the night than a real possibility.
As Secretary of the Interior who oversees land and sea management, we have not yet seen you protect any natural resource of the United States. You have approved total destruction of our forests through logging (which Roosevelt fought so hard to conserve), polluted our water and land to make cooperate giants wealthy drilling for oil?and allowed the mining and land erosion in many places, most notably our national treasure, The Grand Canyon in Arizona.
Furthermore, you have allowed our incredibly diverse wildlife to suffer and have permanantly destroyed their natural habitats. Those habitats not destroyed, you simply allow the hunting to outright kill many species, such as the brutal slaughter of horses, and lions for food–bears and wolves for the terrorizing sport of ariel hunting.
Not only have you allowed the slaughter of millions of animals in the most barbaric and inhumane way, you have failed to protect any species at all, and have even gone so far as to remove Endangered Species from the list!
Perhaps it’s time you resign, Secrety Salazar.?Nowhere has greed ever been more apparent since yourself and Gail Norton have been making decisions. You have done a miserable job managing this once great land, coast to coast. And it has?cost countless animals to live in terror from ariel hunting and to loose their lives NEEDLESSLY.
Ken Salazar
Secretary of the Interior
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W. / Washington DC 20240
feedback@ios.doi.gov
Secretary_of_the_Interior@ios.doi.gov
Ask Secretary Ken Salazar to Resign
Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas must be feeling pretty bummed – her proposed $1.5 billion in farm “aid” may be nixed by the White House after all.
Lincoln, chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee who is gearing up for a tough re-election battle this fall, has been fighting for the funds since July when they were removed as a compromise deal from a small business stimulus bill. The Obama administration had promised to approve the package, which was designed to provide “disaster aid” to farmers who lost crops in 2009, by Aug. 31.
August has come and gone, and there’s no sign of the package. But before we get all sad for the poor farmers down the street whose crops were ruined, let’s examine this plan. America’s biggest, least sustainable farms — many of them in Blanche’s Arkansas — would benefit most from the plan, while smaller, more damaged farms would be left high and dry. Why? The funds would not be distributed based on losses, but on how much they received or should have received under a federal subsidy program based on farm size. As the New York Times explained last week, it’s an “unjustified” windfall, as farms with as little as five percent loss would receive an additional chunk of 90 percent of the subsidy in aid. Bigger, more profitable farms — the ones least damaged by rains — are far more likely to qualify. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the top 10 percent of wealthiest farmers would receive about two-thirds of the money, and about a quarter of the funds would (curiously) go to Arkansas farms.
