Study finds US among few NATO nations that use animals for military training

More than three-quarters of NATO allies use simulators, other non-animal models

2012-08-08

(Press-News.org) A new study published in the August 2012 issue of Military Medicine, the journal of the Association of Military Surgeons of the U.S., reveals that 22 of 28 NATO nations do not use animal laboratories for military medical training.

Researchers from PETA, in collaboration with current and former military medical personnel, surveyed officials in all 28 NATO nations during 2010 and 2011. Twenty-two NATO countries—including Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey—confirmed that they do not use animals in military medical training. Officials reported that they use exclusively non-animal methods—such as lifelike human simulators in realistic battlefield scenarios—for various reasons, including legal prohibitions against animal use and the superiority of simulation technology.

Six NATO countries—Canada, Denmark, Norway, Poland, the U.K., and the U.S.—reported using animals in invasive and often deadly procedures.

"The overwhelming majority of NATO allies have moved beyond stabbing and dismembering animals in crude and cruel training exercises," says coauthor of the study and PETA Associate Director Justin Goodman. "Our military's regulations require using non-animal methods whenever they are available—and PETA's report illustrates that modern trauma-training technology is widely available around the world."

Each year, the U.S. military and its contractors shoot, stab, mutilate, and kill more than 10,000 live animals in cruel trauma-training exercises, even though modern simulators that breathe and bleed have been shown to better prepare doctors and medics to treat injured better than animal laboratories.

### PETA's Military Medicine study is available at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/amsus/zmm/2012/00000177/00000008/art00020.

To learn more, visit PETA.org/Trauma.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Why do older adults display more positive emotion? It might have to do with what they’re looking at

2012-08-08

Research has shown that older adults display more positive emotions and are quicker to regulate out of negative emotional states than younger adults. Given the declines in cognitive functioning and physical health that tend to come with age, we might expect that age would be associated with worse moods, not better ones. So what explains older adults' positive mood regulation? In a new article in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researcher Derek Isaacowitz of Northeastern University ...

New study finds clients want real love from sex workers

2012-08-08

Los Angeles, CA (August 8, 2012) — While it is commonly believed that men who pay for sex are attempting to avoid emotional commitment, a new study finds that men who become regular clients of sex workers often develop feelings of romance and love. This study is published in a recent edition of Men and Masculinities, a SAGE journal. "In recent years, we have come to see a gradual normalization of independent escort prostitution, where sexual encounters have come to resemble quasi-dating relationships," stated study author Christine Milrod. "Our study shows that regular ...

Alcohol advertising standards violations most common in magazines with youthful audiences

2012-08-08

The content of alcohol ads placed in magazines is more likely to be in violation of industry guidelines if the ad appears in a magazine with sizable youth readership, according to a new study from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, the study is the first to measure the relationship of problematic content to youth exposure, and the first to examine risky behaviors depicted in alcohol advertising in the past decade. The researchers examined 1,261 ads for ...

Physics and math shed new light on biology by mapping the landscape of evolution

2012-08-08

Although the qualitative description of evolution – its observed behavior and characteristics – is well-established, a comprehensive quantitative theory that captures general evolution dynamics is still lacking. There are also many lingering mysteries surrounding the story of life on Earth, including the question of why sex is such a prevalent reproductive strategy. A team of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Jilin University in Jilin, China; and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, led by Prof. Jin Wang, has examined some of these puzzles from ...

Clemson researchers collect and reuse enzymes while maintaining bioactivity

2012-08-08

CLEMSON — Clemson University researchers are collecting and harvesting enzymes while maintaining the enzyme's bioactivity. Their work, a new model system that may impact cancer research, is published in the journal Small. Enzymes are round proteins produced by living organisms that increase the rate of chemical reactions. "We found a robust and simple way of attracting specific enzymes, concentrating them and reusing them," said Stephen Foulger, professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Clemson. "The enzymes are still functional after being harvested." Isolating ...

New tools and techniques enhance laparoscopic gallbladder removal

2012-08-08

New Rochelle, NY, August 8, 2012—Laparoscopic management of gallbladder disease offers a less invasive alternative to open surgery. Surgical outcomes continue to improve as new techniques and tools become available for performing laparoscopic gallbladder surgery, and these advances are highlighted in "Advances in Cholecystectomy Surgery (http://online.liebertpub.com/toc/lap/22/6)," a comprehensive special issue of Journal of Laparoendoscopic & Advanced Surgical Techniques (JLAST), a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers (http://www.liebertpub.com). ...

New phenomenon in nanodisk magnetic vortices

2012-08-08

The phenomenon in ferromagnetic nanodisks of magnetic vortices – hurricanes of magnetism only a few atoms across – has generated intense interest in the high-tech community because of the potential application of these vortices in non-volatile Random Access Memory (RAM) data storage systems. New findings from scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) indicate that the road to magnetic vortex RAM might be more difficult to navigate than previously supposed, but there might be unexpected rewards as well. In ...

TRPM7 protein key to breast cancer metastasis in animal models

2012-08-08

PHILADELPHIA — The protein transient receptor potential melastatin-like 7 (TRPM7) is a critical determinant of breast cancer cell metastasis, according to study results published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "The most important discovery that we report in this paper is that TRPM7 is required for metastasis, at least in a xenograft model of breast cancer metastasis," said Frank van Leeuwen, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Radbound University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. "While this fundamental biological ...

Cholesterol levels appear to be improving among US youths

2012-08-08

CHICAGO – In a study involving more than 16,000 U.S. children and adolescents, there has been a decrease in average total cholesterol levels over the past 2 decades, although almost 1 in 10 had elevated total cholesterol in 2007-2010, according to a study in the August 8 issue of JAMA. "The process of atherosclerosis begins during childhood and is associated with adverse serum lipid concentrations including high concentrations of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL-C), and triglycerides, and low concentrations ...

Study compares rate of death following diabetes diagnosis among normal weight and overweight adults

2012-08-08

CHICAGO – Participants in a study who were normal weight at the time of a diagnosis of diabetes experienced higher rates of total and noncardiovascular death compared with those who were overweight or obese at diabetes diagnosis, according to a study in the August 8 issue of JAMA. "Type 2 diabetes in normal-weight adults is an understudied representation of the metabolically obese normal-weight phenotype that has become increasingly common over time. It is not known whether the 'obesity paradox' that has been observed in chronic diseases such as heart failure, chronic ...

Study finds US among few NATO nations that use animals for military training

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: