Rise for Animals
[2] The New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS) was founded in 1895 in Boston, Massachusetts, in response to the migration of European vivisection practices to the United States.
In 1871, Professor Henry Ingersoll Bowditch established the first U.S. vivisection lab at Harvard Medical School, inciting concern from Edward Clement, editor-in-chief of the Boston Evening Transcript, which subsequently ran a series of anti-vivisection editorials.
[3] In 1890 George Angell and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) held an essay contest entitled "Why I Am Against Vivisection".
"[7] In anticipation of his retirement, Amory appointed a nominating committee that chose psychologist and former NEAVS board member, Theodora Capaldo, to succeed him.
[8] Under Capaldo, the board and staff developed and attempted to implement a succession of new strategies with which to achieve the organization's sole mission of ending the use of animals in science and replacing them with non-animal and scientifically superior alternatives.
Highlights of those programs include campaigning to end the use in research of the first nonhuman species, chimpanzees – human's closest genetic relative (Project R&R: Release and Restitution for Chimpanzees in U.S. Laboratories); ending the use of terminal dog labs at the first veterinary school in the country, a curriculum shift later followed by other schools; and, most recently, reaching out to and incorporating other social movements into the animal protection movement.
[28][29] A survey completed by the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association in 2007 indicated that half of U.S. vet schools no longer require terminal labs in core courses.
[30] NEAVS' affiliate, the Ethical Science and Education Coalition (ESEC), lobbied and testified before the Massachusetts state legislature in support of a bill that would have given public school students the right to opt out of dissection classes.
[35] Soon after, other organizations allied with NEAVS and after a decade of advocacy the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced it would retire almost 90% of its chimpanzees to sanctuary.
[37] As part of this campaign, NEAVS published a number of scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals examining the utility of chimpanzees in biomedical research.
[48] In 2012, NEAVS and others organizations submitted a rulemaking petition to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) asking for criteria defining when chimpanzees are no longer needed.
ESEC is a proponent of dissection choice legislation and policies which provide students the right to choose alternatives to animal use in their education.
NEAVS' campaign against hormone replacement therapy drugs made from the urine of pregnant horses encourages women to use alternatives.
[53] NEAVS supports using alternatives to animals in research, testing, and education, and promotes in vitro, epidemiological, and clinical study data as more predictive for humans.
Alternatives like in vitro, computer simulations, cell and tissue samples, and mannequins are reducing the millions of sentient animals forced into painful experiments worldwide.
Founded by Ethel Thurston, PhD, in 1977, AFAAR's mission is to "promote and assist the development and use of alternatives to animals in science."
