🚀 go-pugleaf

I support them, but what about the hundreds of thousands of HUMAN children
and elderly in this country which are being subjected to 24-hour-a-day,
health damaging levels of noise every day by the airline industy and the
FAA! Are they paying for this?

U.S. activists protest tests on monkeys
June 18, 1998 (Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO � Animal-rights activists dressed as monkeys locked in cages
Thursday protested researchers' plans to blast monkeys with sounds louder
than jet engines in order to simulate human hearing loss.
A group of about 25 demonstrators gathered outside the University of
California, San Francisco (UCSF), where researchers planned to anesthetize
six squirrel monkeys and then blast them for two hours with sounds as loud
as 140 decibels.
The researchers plan to kill the animals after a few months and dissect
their brains to examine how the brain changes as a result of hearing loss,
and how it might be "retrained'' to compensate for the loss.
In a statement, UCSF said the monkeys will not hear the noise, will not feel
any pain and will retain much of their normal hearing. UCSF also said the
study was approved after a university animal research committee determined
it to be humane to the animals and "of benefit to scientific
understanding.''
But Elliot Katz, a veterinarian and a member of the animal-rights group In
Defense of Animals that organized the demonstration, called the research
"ludicrous.''
Katz said it was unscientific to think that artificially induced hearing
loss in monkeys would be anything similar to what happens in humans. He also
challenged the hypothesis that the brain can "retrain'' itself to deal with
hearing loss.
"Let's assume there is some sort of graduate permanent damage to a portion
of the brain. What could one do to retrain the brain to do something
better?'' Katz said.
Katz suggested the university use the money earmarked for the project on
non-invasive research on the millions of people who already suffer from
hearing loss.
--
Bill Mulcahy, member of Sane Aviation For Everyone
http://pages.prodigy.net/rockaway/safe.htm