Hi,
I agree with what everyone else has said, I don't know the people who worked on the spanish dog testing that I think everyone is talking about but I have worked with dogs, mice, daphnia, fish etc in the course of my own studies and work. I would think that the experiments carried out in spain were done to the very same standards that I have seen and those standards are in a lot of cases better care than many dogs recieve in their own homes. From reading the paper I don't see any abuse in the slightest, They have very comfy quarters lots of walks and excercise and after these experiments are finished recieve very loving caring homes, but would recieve that any way from the people looking after them in the lab. The worst thing these dogs faced where lots of injections and blood test with a small blood sample taken from the liver. They were also made to be diabetic but the research has shown that this has been corrected and it's working for the moment here's an excerpt from the paper If anyone would like to read the full copy I can send it to you.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
Animals. Male Beagle dogs were purchased from Isoquimen (Barcelona, Spain) and
housed at Servei de Granges i Camps Experimentals of the Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona (UAB). Animals were fed individually once daily at 9:00 am with 30 g/kg body
weight standard dry food (Nestle, Vevey, Switzerland) or twice daily at 9:00 am and 9:00
pm with 15 g/kg body weight with diabetic food (Prescription diets w/d, Hills, Topeka,
KAN) when indicated. Dogs were monitored regularly at the UAB Veterinary Clinical
Hospital. C56Bl6 male mice (Harlan Teklad, Barcelona, Spain) were fed ad libitum with a
standard diet (Harlan Teklad) and maintained in the SPF-mouse facility at the Center of
Animal Biotechnology and Gene Therapy under a 12-h light/dark cycle (lights on at 8:00
AM). The Ethics Committee on Animal and Human Experimentation approved all
procedures.
Diabetes induction. Experimental diabetes was induced in 6-12 month-old dogs by a
single intravenous injection of a mixture of streptozotocin (STZ) (35 mg/kg) and alloxan
(40 mg/kg) (Sigma, St Louis, MO, USA) as described previously (15). When
hyperglycemia developed, dogs were maintained without exogenous insulin treatment,
unless indicated. Dogs receiving exogenous insulin were injected subcutaneously with
Lantus (Sanofi Aventis, Paris, France). When indicated, exogenous insulin treatment was
optimized individually, increasing gradually the insulin dose up to the maximum tolerated
dose that did not cause hypoglycemia. To induce diabetes in mice, animals aged 8 weeks
were given, on 5 consecutive days, an intraperitoneal injection of STZ (45 mg/kg bw)
dissolved in 0.1 mol/l citrate buffer (pH 4.5) immediately before administration.
AAV production and administration. AAV vectors were produced by triple transfection
of HEK293 cells and purified by a CsCl-based gradient method (16). Expression of an
engineered human insulin gene containing an endoprotease furin cleavage signal, and of rat
glucokinase, was driven by the CMV promoter in both vectors (9). For certain experiments
as indicated, codon-optimized versions of human insulin (oIns) (with furin cleavage sites)
and human glucokinase cDNAs (oGck) were used. Vectors were delivered to a total of 12-
25 sites on the lateral aspect of the thigh (with a 5-prong needle syringe) and the
craneolateral face of the leg (single point injections) of both hind limbs, with maximal
vector dose per site of injection being <6x1011 vg (Supplementary Fig. 1). Dogs received a
vector dose of 1x1012 vg/kg or 2x1012 vg/kg 2-4 weeks after diabetes induction