Blinded by the cover

Cover photo, 9/21/05 [The Sex Issue] – Wow! A spot of light like that can blind you forever, and ever, and ever.

Aza Con Du
San Francisco

Gee, sorry about that

First, thank you for the ads for mindful yoga orgasm, cosmetic surgery, leather, strippers, and prostitutes [The Sex Issue, 9/21/05]. Where you stand depends on where you sit. Does your dependence on sexual advertising inhibit you being critical or progressive about the sex industry?

Second, sex toys are masturbation aids. Why omit vibrating cock rings for couples?

Will Barium
San Francisco

No oversight

In "Animal Instincts" [9/28/05], Tali Woodward rightly questions the effectiveness of UCSF's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. But as a research analyst who reviews experimental protocols, I can tell you that similar problems are evident at university IACUCs across the country.

These committees, which are supposed to carefully review applications and ensure compliance with animal welfare regulations, are frequently dominated by animal researchers or other employees of research facilities. As a result of this conflict of interest, IACUCs often fail to provide animals with even basic protections.

One key example: Researchers proposing experiments causing pain or distress are required by law to search for viable nonanimal alternatives. But time and time again, IACUCs approve invasive experiments even though the researcher has done little or no work to search for an alternative.

Kristie Stoick,
MPH Research analyst Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine Washington, DC

Don't be so fair

Thanks so much for your cover story about UCSF's animal experimentation. I love the Bay Guardian, but I have to say I was really frustrated that this article seemed to bend over backward to accommodate UCSF's PR machine. Instead of a photo of UCSF's vice chancellor, why not a photo of a monkey tearing his hair out or mutilating herself, as referenced in the article? Why cite so many UCSF talking heads who, in the face of dozens of federal Animal Welfare Act violations, justify such cruelties as depriving caged monkeys of water for days as "proper care"? Mentioning just some of the thousands of drugs, such as Vioxx and thalidomide, that were approved for human usage based largely on animal tests and yet proved to be so damaging to humans that they were pulled from the market, would have elucidated this debate as well.

Human health versus animal research is simply a false dichotomy. If the National Institutes of Health truly wanted to improve human health, how about sparing the dogs and the monkeys and instead providing affordable health care, subsidizing and increasing access to healthy food, or restricting the cancer-causing toxins in our environment that are making us sick?

Nora Kramer
San Francisco

It doesn't work

It is easy to get emotionally caught up in the ethical controversy of using animals in medical research. But the recent controversy surrounding the use of animals in research by UCSF has ignored one less-emotional yet important aspect: utility.

Animals are used in biomedical research under the pretense of finding cures for humans, a different species. This use is based in part on the fact that similarities in genetic makeup suggest that mice, humans, and dogs are more similar than different. This reasoning is, however, specious.

Consider: Drugs that harm humans are safe for some animals and vice versa. How humans respond to diseases like HIV is unique. Not only do different species respond differently to drugs and disease, but also different individuals respond differently. Twins do not suffer from identical diseases, and men do not react the same way to drugs as women. Eight out of 10 drugs recently withdrawn from the US market were withdrawn because of side effects that occurred primarily in women, not men.

Each of us is unique and responds uniquely to disease and treatment. Vioxx was a very good drug for some but killed others. If men cannot predict how a drug will affect women, what is the probability an entirely different species will?

Ray Greek,
MD Americans for Medical Advancement Los Angeles

Enneagram, engram, whatever

When Deborah Giattina, in her otherwise enlightening article ["Hard Science, 9/21/05], says, "Think of L. Ron Hubbard's enneagrams and '70s swingers," she confuses L. Ron Hubbard's engrams with the Enneagram. The Enneagram has nothing to do with dianetics or L. Ron Hubbard or replayed mental traumas; rather, the Enneagram is a mathematical and spiritual model of the universe's cyclical motion through its nine key stages, as well as a powerful system for studying humanity's nine personalities and their paths to evolution.

Tony Brasunas
San Francisco