Further reading
- Centre for Animals and Society Justice.
- "Dan Lyons", PBS Frontline.
- Diaries of Despair website, Uncaged Campaigns.
- Lyons, Dan. "The animal-care regulatory system is a sham", Nature, 430, 399, 22 July 2004 (letter).
Dan Lyons | |
|---|---|
| Born | Daniel Louis Lyons |
| Education | Social and political studies, University of Sheffield, 1990–1993 PhD, politics, University of Sheffield, 2006 |
| Occupation(s) | CEO, Centre for Animals and Social Justice |
| Awards | Political Studies Association's Walter Bagehot Prize for Government and Public Administration, 2007 |
| Website | Dan Lyons University of Sheffield. |
Daniel Louis Lyons is the chief executive officer of the Centre for Animals and Social Justice, a British animal protection charity. He is an honorary research fellow at the University of Sheffield and the author of The Politics of Animal Experimentation (2013). [1]
Lyons specializes in the study of animal research, the philosophy of animal rights, and the political representation of animals' interests. [1] He is the former campaigns director of Uncaged Campaigns (1993–2012), a group that opposed animal experiments in the UK, in particular xenotransplantation. During his time with Uncaged, Lyons became known as the author of Diaries of Despair (2000), a report that reproduced and analysed leaked documents about pig-to-primate organ transplants. [2]
Lyons studied social and political studies as an undergraduate at the University of Sheffield from 1990 to 1993 and in 2006 obtained his PhD for a thesis entitled Protecting Animals Versus the Pursuit of Knowledge: The Evolution of the British Animal Research Policy Network. [1]
His work won the Department of Politics' Andrew Gamble Prize for the outstanding thesis of 2006–2007, and the Walter Bagehot Prize for Government and Public Administration, awarded by the Political Studies Association. [3] The thesis developed into a book, The Politics of Animal Experimentation, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013, with a foreword by Wyn Grant, Professor of Politics at the University of Warwick. [4]
After graduating from Sheffield in 1993, Lyons became campaigns director of Uncaged Campaigns, a group in the UK that opposed animal experimentation. He was the author in 2000 of a 157-page Uncaged Campaigns report into xenotransplantation, Diaries of Despair: The Secret History of Pig-to-Primate Organ Transplant. [2] The report analysed 1,274 leaked pages about research into transplants from pigs to nonhuman primates, conducted between 1994 and 2000 by Huntingdon Life Sciences on behalf of Imutran Ltd, a subsidiary of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis Pharma AG. [5] According to an RSPCA report, the research involved transplanting pigs' hearts, kidneys, pancreatic islets or bone into wild-caught baboons or cynomolgous macaques, or transplanting the macaques' hearts into the baboons. [6]
Material from the Diaries appeared in September 2000 in the Daily Express in the UK [7] before Imutran obtained an injunction preventing further publication. [5] Novartis closed Imutran shortly afterwards, but said it was unrelated to the leaks. [8] The Express journalists won a Genesis Award for the story. [9]
A key point of Lyons' report was that the animals' suffering was severe, but most of the procedures had been classed as "moderate" by the researchers. [10] The RSPCA obtained a court order in October 2000 to allow it to review the report, and published its own report in 2002. [11] Home Secretary Jack Straw asked the Home Office Chief Inspector to examine the evidence. [12] In 2003 Lyons obtained a court order allowing him to publish most of the Diaries, and the Observer was able to publish a summary of it. [2] Lyons subsequently used the leaked material to study animal research policy in the UK, an area not examined often by academics because of the difficulty of obtaining primary-source material. This formed the basis of his PhD thesis and subsequent book. [13]
In 2011 Lyons became a founding member of the Centre for Animals and Social Justice, along with political scientists Robert Garner of the University of Leicester, and Alasdair Cochrane of the University of Sheffield. Lyons was appointed as the centre's chief executive officer. The aim of the group is to develop expertise about the access of nonhuman animals to social and political justice, and to "embed animal protection as a core goal of public policy" in the UK. [14]
Lyons served from 2007 to 2011 as a Green Party councillor on Stocksbridge Town Council, Sheffield. [15] He stood unsuccessfully as a Green Party candidate for Sheffield City Council in the 2011 and 2012 elections. [16]
Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation, animal research, and in vivo testing, is the use of non-human animals in experiments that seek to control the variables that affect the behavior or biological system under study. This approach can be contrasted with field studies in which animals are observed in their natural environments or habitats. Experimental research with animals is usually conducted in universities, medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, defense establishments, and commercial facilities that provide animal-testing services to the industry. The focus of animal testing varies on a continuum from pure research, focusing on developing fundamental knowledge of an organism, to applied research, which may focus on answering some questions of great practical importance, such as finding a cure for a disease. Examples of applied research include testing disease treatments, breeding, defense research, and toxicology, including cosmetics testing. In education, animal testing is sometimes a component of biology or psychology courses. The practice is regulated to varying degrees in different countries.
Craig Rosebraugh is an American writer, filmmaker and activist advocating for political and social justice, and environmental and animal protection.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) is a charity operating in England and Wales which promotes animal welfare.
Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder is an English writer, psychologist, and animal rights advocate.
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was an international animal rights campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), Europe's largest contract animal-testing laboratory. HLS tests medical and non-medical substances on around 75,000 animals every year, from rats to primates. It has been the subject of several major leaks or undercover investigations by activists and reporters since 1989.
Xenotransplantation, or heterologous transplant, is the transplantation of living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another. Such cells, tissues or organs are called xenografts or xenotransplants. It is contrasted with allotransplantation, syngeneic transplantation or isotransplantation and autotransplantation. Xenotransplantation is an artificial method of creating an animal-human chimera, that is, a human with a subset of animal cells. In contrast, an individual where each cell contains genetic material from a human and an animal is called a human–animal hybrid.
Animal Aid is a British animal rights organisation, founded in 1977 by Jean Pink. The group campaigns peacefully against the consumption of animals as food and against animal cruelty such as their use for medical research—and promotes a cruelty-free lifestyle. It also investigates and exposes animal abuse.
Angela Christine Smith is a British former politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Penistone and Stocksbridge from 2010 to 2019 and MP for Sheffield Hillsborough from 2005 to 2010. A member of the Labour Party, she was previously an MP for the Labour Party and Change UK. She was also an Independent politician before joining the Liberal Democrats. Smith rejoined Labour in 2022.
The Justice Department (JD) was founded in the United Kingdom by animal rights activists who declared they were willing to use a diversity of tactics up to and including violence against their opponents. Initially calling for "abusers to have but a taste of the fear and anguish their victims suffer on a daily basis", activists established a separate idea from adhering to the Animal Liberation Front's (ALF) guidelines of non-violent resistance, similar to that of the Animal Rights Militia (ARM).
The Animal Procedures Committee advised the British Home Secretary on matters related to animal testing in the UK. The function of the committee was made a statutory requirement by the Animals Act 1986, which mandated that it should have at least 12 members, excluding the chair. The APC no longer exists as the ASPA has been revised in accordance with EU legislation. It was disbanded on 31 December 2012 and was replaced by the Animals in Science Committee in 2013.
Gillian Rose Langley is a British scientist and writer who specialises in alternatives to animal testing and animal rights. She was, from 1981 until 2009, the science director of the Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research, a medical research charity developing non-animal research techniques. She was an anti-vivisection member of the British government's Animal Procedures Committee for eight years, and has worked as a consultant on non-animal techniques for the European Commission, and for animal protection organizations in Europe and the United States. Between 2010 and 2016 she was a consultant for Humane Society International.
The Foundation for Biomedical Research (FBR) is an American nonprofit organization, 501(c)(3), located in Washington, DC. Established in 1981, the organization is dedicated to informing the news media, teachers, and other groups about the need for lab animals in medical and scientific research. The organization, together with its partner, the National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR), argues that promoting animal research leads to improved health for both humans and animals.
Experiments involving non-human primates (NHPs) include toxicity testing for medical and non-medical substances; studies of infectious disease, such as HIV and hepatitis; neurological studies; behavior and cognition; reproduction; genetics; and xenotransplantation. Around 65,000 NHPs are used every year in the United States, and around 7,000 across the European Union. Most are purpose-bred, while some are caught in the wild.
Nafovanny in Vietnam is the largest captive-breeding primate facility in the world, supplying long-tailed macaques to animal testing laboratories, including Huntingdon Life Sciences in the UK and Covance in Germany.
Uncaged Campaigns is a Sheffield, UK, based anti-vivisection, not-for-profit organisation and a registered company limited by guarantee.
Y Touring Theatre Company was a national touring theatre company which produced original plays and debates exploring contemporary issues. It was founded in 1989 by Nigel Townsend. The company was based in Kings Cross, London, England and was a former operation of Central YMCA.
Alasdair Cochrane is a British political theorist and ethicist who is currently Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield. He is known for his work on animal rights from the perspective of political theory, which is the subject of his two books: An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory and Animal Rights Without Liberation. His third book, Sentientist Politics, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. He is a founding member of the Centre for Animals and Social Justice, a UK-based think tank focused on furthering the social and political status of nonhuman animals. He joined the Department at Sheffield in 2012, having previously been a faculty member at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, London School of Economics. Cochrane is a Sentientist. Sentientism is a naturalistic worldview that grants moral consideration to all sentient beings.
The Centre for Animals and Social Justice (CASJ) is a British charity founded in 2011 to advance the social and political status of nonhuman animals. The CASJ aims to "embed animal protection as a core goal of public policy." Dan Lyons, former campaigns director of Uncaged Campaigns and an honorary research fellow at the University of Sheffield, is the chief executive officer. Angela Roberts, founder of Uncaged Campaigns is the MD.
Keith Reemtsma was an American transplant surgeon, best known for the cross-species kidney transplantation operation from chimpanzee to human in 1964. With only the early immunosuppressants and no long-term dialysis, the female recipient survived nine months, long enough to return to work.
