My Netscape is telling me that I have to learn how to rebuild it and do so
before I can see this site, but here's a message which Niki's boyfriend
sent her to send on to us to get to you.  If it's as described it's VERY
UPSETTING.
 
>I am not sure if your ferrety friends are the activist types, but I guess
>they might be... There is this Swiss scientist who is trying to make
>experiments on animals to find out how to help the brain recover after
>sustaining damage.  The Swiss would not let him continue or expand them,
>so right now he is in Sweden.  The experiments are sewing shut the eyelids
>of 90 kittens and to suck out 25% of the brain of 150 ferrets, keeping
>them alive for 3-4 months and then dissect them.
>
>There is one of those protest cards available on
>http://www.nsmpd.se/infomaterial/p_kort/innocenti_eng.pdf. The scientist is
>called Giorgio Innocenti and has the following address:
>[log in to unmask] I am sure people can find both sides of the
>story out there on the net.
 
I don't know if this is the same researcher but a good many years ago I
recall the debates going on at SB; there was a researcher who proposed doing
something like part of the above -- sewing kittens' eyes shut, openning
them after an extended period, and then looking at brain changes -- which
he claimed would help attain better vision for those who have corrective
surgeries after infancy, but the experiment design was considered to be
seriously flawed and the approach too severe while there could be gentler
options to learn the same information, but the person did not appreciate
such comments so wound up leaving the school under a cloud.  If the degree
of brain damage mentioned is being done then one wonders what could
possibly be learned since the original damage is so gross and there is
often extensive secondary damage after a major brain assault, at the
expense of many critters' suffering, especially since a Swiss university
seems to have already called the experiments into question if this report
is valid.
 
Sukie
[Posted in FML issue 2527]