Paul McCartney Speaks Out Against NASA Animal Experiments

I am amazed at how well written that letter is. And I don't even care about small scale animal testing! Those are just three beautiful paragraphs.

I feel so buttered up right now. Like I've been lobbied to. This must be how politicians feel! It's so warm!

Will NASA respond by correcting the misinformation PETA has been spreading about this issue? Will McCartney, when presented with the facts of the case, be able to move beyond a knee-jerk animal testing = torture and radiation = death response? Updates please.

PETA kills animals:

http://www.petakillsanimals.com/petasdirtysecret.cfm

And you can read PETA's responses, weak as they are:

http://www.petakillsanimals.com/petarebuttal.cfm

Nothing new under the sun.

maybe he would prefer we do the testing on Yoko Ono :)

Everybody's got something to hide 'cept for me and my monkey...

I wouldn't eat steak if cows were not so delicious, but does animal testing count as playing with your food?

Actually, McCartney makes a good point. These types of experiments seem very regressive; the animal tests in our earlier NASA days were a dark part of our baby steps in space exploration, but there are better ways to test the space environment now. NASA itself pledged several years ago to follow the basic "3 R's " of animal testing that many responsible agencies and organizations have adopted, that being "Reduce, Refine, and Replace": Reduce the number of animals used and the number of experiments using them, Refine the research so that it causes less physical and psychological suffering, and Replace the experiments wherever possible with better models using simpler organisms, tissues, and other non-animal platforms that can simulate the human experience better and more humanely than using whole non-human animals. Monkeys, as social primates, suffer not only the pain of the experiments but the psychological suffering of the laboratory environment. This letter is a reasonable, compassionate request that I believe NASA should honor, and by doing so it would also inspire the many good biologists who are using more humane platforms for good research.

Rock stars... what don't they know?

As impolite as this sounds... shut up Sir Paul.

Your not going into deep space long term.

Others will someday and every point of data that can keep them healthy and alive is more important then a few monkeys. It's about long term survival of the human race, not short term comfort of a tiny handful of lab monkeys.

And yes, I am all for humane treatment and I HATE people who abuse animals. I've been around animals my whole life from hamsters to horses.

The universe isn't perfect and will not bend to our sensitivities.

It's dangerous out there, and we damn well better be prepared as best we can when we start sending people that cannot return to earth for medical treatments.

Do I wish magically it were not necessary?
Sure. But that isn't reality is it?