Jerry Vlasak
oracknows | February 24, 2010Remember Dario Ringach?
He's the scientist who has endured a prolonged campaign of harassment because of his animal research. I first heard of him in 2006, when, after a campaign of threatening phone calls, people frightening his children, and demonstrations in front of his home, gave up doing primate research. Terrorism and intimidation worked, but who could blame Dr. Ringach? He was afraid for his family. That's because it was more than just threatening e-mails and phone calls, but rather the campaign of intimidation included masked thugs banging on the windows of his house at night,…
oracknows | March 2, 2009Over the weekend, some readers sent me a link to a story that, presumably, they thought would be of interest to me, given that I graduated from the University Michigan Medical School back in the late 1980s. Specifically, it's a report that U. of M. has halted the use of dogs in its surgical training:
Surgeons training at the University of Michigan Health System will no longer use live, healthy dogs to learn drastic surgical procedures that can save people's lives, the university announced Thursday.
The anesthetized animals -- obtained from shelters -- were used to teach tracheotomies, how to…