Fight animal testing

EDITOR:

By now most people have probably seen the television reports of Lacy, the little dog whose owner tied her to a tree, hit her in the face with a golf club, poured bleach in her eyes and left her tied up for four days. I sincerely hope as many as can will help with the little dog's veterinary care.

As horrendous as that act was and as many of us who will contribute to Lacy, how many of us give a second thought to the hundreds of thousands of animals who have acts like that perpetrated on them in the name of product testing? Rabbits in particular are tightly encased in small boxes called Draize boxes with only their head sticking out so they can't move or pull their head out.

Caustic substances are then poured into their eyes - drain cleaner, nail polish remover, hair dye, oven cleaner etc. The law allows the animals to stay in the boxes in horrendous pain from the chemical and from being unable to move for 21 days. Are they given food and water? Who knows?

They're going to be killed and their eyes dissected to tell the "researchers" what we all know - caustic chemicals burn horribly, painfully and irrevocably. How many times does Drano have to be poured into animals' eyes to figure that out? What's even worse is all this is unnecessary. There are non-animal methods to verify product safety.

Contact the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine at www.pcrm.org or the National Anti-Vivisection Society at navs@navs.org to obtain a list of products not tested on animals.

Barbara C. Havens

Gardnerville