Meet the Vivisectors at UC Berkeley!

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New UC Berkeley Vivisection Lab!
Disclaimer: Please keep all communications with these individuals legal.

Yang Dan's research: Cats bolted down in stereotaxic devices (pictured) and electrodes inserted into their brains.



Home:
Yang Dan
140 Panoramic Way
Berkeley, CA 94704

Office:
Professor Yang Dan
230D Barker Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Office Phone: 510-643-2833
Lab Phone: 510-643-3935
Email: ydan@berkeley.edu

UC Berkeley's Yang Dan has been using and abusing cats and rodents for years in useless "scientific curiousity" visual experiments, like her natural scenes model, where she recorded the world through a cat's eyes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/471786.stm

Supposedly performed under sufficient anesthesia, Yang Dan's cats and other animals are paralyzed with a drug, a hole is drilled in their skulls and electrodes inserted directly into their brains. They are placed in "stereotaxic device with ear bars, eye bars and a mouth bar to stabilize the head position." Their eyes are "glued" to "posts." They are subjected to visual stimuli, and the electrical firings of roughly a dozen single brain cells or less are recorded continuously for up to "72 hours" non-stop until the "cortex stops giving normal visual responses." Rats are placed in a "light-tight box, and kept under no-light conditions for 48 hours to 1 week prior to recording," or one eye would be sewed shut. Rats will also undergo fluid deprivation to "motivate" them to perform tasks to test Dr. Dan's "visual discrimination paradigm."

The purpose, she claims, is to "understand how visual neurons code and process information" and how "connectivity between them are modulated by visual inputs."

From a 2003 paper of Yang Dan's:

A total of 18 anesthetized adult cats were used. ...Single unit recordings were made in area 17 [of the brain] using tungsten electrodes. Eye movement was minimized by mechanical stabilization. Visual stimuli were generated with a personal computer and presented with a monitor.

Jack Gallant's research: Fluid deprivation and restraint chairs (pictured) on non-human primates. Electrodes inserted into their brains for vision experiments



Home:
Jack Gallant
1057 Siler PL.
Berkeley, CA 94705

Office:
Professor Jack Gallant
3115 Tolman Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Lab Phone: 510-642-2606
Fax: 510-642-5293
Email: gallant@socrates.berkeley.edu

From Indybay: "Professor Jack Gallant performs invasive single-cell brain recording in vision experiments on Macaque monkeys. Fluid deprivation is used to make them perform eye movements or visual fixations while they are in restraint chairs with their heads bolted still as single-cell activity is recorded invasively with wires sticking into their brains."

From a 2005 Animal Care and Use Committee Document detailing Gallant's primate research and extreme cruelty.

"Currently, two projects approved by the ACUC involve regulating water in experimental studies. The projects require regulating the water of the animals during training and recording procedures. The animals are on a schedule that regulates their access to water to daily laboratory sessions of up to 6 hours per day during training and neurophysiological recording. Juice or water rewards are used during these times as a positive reinforcement in shaping the animal to perform the required tasks using operant conditioning techniques... ...During this reporting period, nine animals underwent fluid regulation."

"Prolonged physical restraint of alert animals is prohibited unless essential to research objectives. All such restraint must be justified to and approved by the ACUC... ...The ACUC approved three projects that require physical restraint of unanesthetized animals. The second and third projects involve research that tracks the eye movements of a non-human primate to specific visual stimulation. The animal sits in a specially designed chair, which allows him to freely move his limbs and adjust his posture while in a head restraint. In-chair training is initiated several months before the actual study begins, to allow the animal to adjust to an increasing duration of restraint... ...The animals are chaired between 2-6 hours per day, 5-7 days a week for studies which may last up to 3 months... ...During this reporting period, nine animals underwent physical restraint."

From a 2004 paper of Gallant's:

We recorded spiking activity from 74 well isolated neurons in parafoveal area V1 of two awake, behaving male macaque monkeys. Extra-cellular activity was recorded using tungsten electrodes. A custom hardware window discriminator was used to identify action potentials. During recording, the animals performed visual fixations for a liquid reward. Eye position was monitored with a scleral search coil.

Stephen Glickman's invasive reproductive experiments on female hyenas



Home:
Stephen Glickman
1488 Summit RD.
Berkeley, CA 94708
Home Phone: (510) 540-0598

Office:
Professor Stephen Glickman
3131 Tolman Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Office Phone: 510-642-5797
Fax: 510-642-5293
Email: glickman@socrates.berkeley.edu

Professor Stephen Glickman describing what he's learned while putting hyenas through a life of hell in an enclosure in the hills north of the UC Berkeley campus: "The external genitalia are highly "masculinized," i.e., the clitoris has hypertrophied to form a pseudopenis, traversed by a central urogenital canal. There is no external vagina. The female spotted hyena urinates, copulates and gives birth through her clitoris."

From a November 2005 Animal Care and Use Committee document detailing Stephen Glickman's so-called research on female hyenas:

"The project studies sexual differentiation in the spotted hyena. A captive-breeding colony of hyenas is maintained for this research and currently consists of 34 animals. One aspect of the project involves terminating pregnancies at various times to study the sexual differentiation process and its hormonal correlates. Since there are a limited number of breeding females, the investigator has received permission from the ACUC to carry out multiple Cesarean sections (C-sections) on individual females to acheive the minimum sample sizes for statistical validity. The minimum interval between surgeries is 6 months... During this reporting period, 3 hyenas (that previously had a C-section) underwent an additional Cesarean section."

Ralph Freeman's invasive experiments on cats: kittens bolted down in stereotaxic devices (pictured) and electrodes inserted into their brains



Home:
Ralph Freeman
2340 Vine ST.
Berkeley, CA 94708

Office:
Professor Ralph Freeman
589 Minor Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Office Phone: 510-642-6341
Lab Phone: 510-642-6440
Lab Fax: (510) 642-3323
Email: freeman@neurovision.berkeley.edu

From a 2005 paper of Freeman's: "Data were obtained from ten young cats (age 2.5 - 6 months) bred in a closed laboratory setting. ...Briefly, anesthesia was induced with an intramuscular injection of ketamine...and xylazine. ...During recording, the animal was paralyzed with continuous intravenous infusion of gallarmine triethiodide in glucose saline. The pupils were dilated with atropine hydrochloride... ...Animals were refracted, and gas-permeable contact lenses with 3.5mm artificial pupils were fitted to correct focus for a viewing distance of 50cm. A trepanation (hole drilled into the skull) was made above area 17 of one or both cortical hemispheres and the dura (the tough and inflexible outermost of the three layers of the meninges surrounding the brain and spinal cord) was removed. Animals viewed, via front-silvered mirrors, a 21 inch monitor positioned at a distance of 50cm on which stimuli were presented independently in the two eyes. ...In the majority of experiments, neuronal activity was recorded with glass-insulated tungsten micro-electrodes."

From another 2005 paper of Freeman's: A total of 14 cats were used in this study. Animals were anesthetized with thiopental sodium (Pentothal) through a venous catheter at a continuous infusion rate determined individually for each animal. ...After a tracheostomy, each animal was placed into a sterotaxic frame and artificially ventilated... ...A craniotomy was performed over each hemisphere...for recordings in visual cortex. ...After craniotomy, the dura (tough and inflexible outermost of the three layers of the meninges surrounding the brain and spinal cord) was reflected to expose the cortex. During recording, eye movements were blocked with a continuous intravenous infusion of pancuronium bromide. Hydration was maintained by a continuous infusion of lactated Ringer's solution. ...Rigid contact lenses with 4mm artificial pupils covered the eyes during recording. After the micro-electrode sensor was positioned over the target brain location, the craniotomy was sealed with agar and a wax coating. Each animal was positioned in front of a system of mirrors that directs the field of view of each eye to separate halves of a cathode ray tube display.