Bob and his wife made the donation, not the company
- He claims that they are passionate about improving health (evident in the products they sell)
- They intend to help OHSU establish a nutrition and wellness institute to focus on childhood obesity and chronic disease
- Their money is being directed towards nutrition studies, specifically womb development
- "I assure you that no part of our donation will be used to fund animal research"
- They discussed the public reaction with OHSU to make sure that this is the case
Some facts about animal testing (pulled from Thanking the Monkey by Karen Dawn):
- animal testing is done on many other creatures aside from mice, including monkeys, rabbits, pigs, sheep and even dogs
- "there are no federal legal requirements for any care to be taken to minimize pain caused to animals used in experiments"
- "no drug is allowed on the market until it has been put through a battery of animal tests"
- experiments on animals doesn't always assure that the same results will occur in human bodies
- there are many "copy cat" drugs on the marker that companies release to make money - an unnecessary tactic at the expense of animals
- if animals are not killed in the process, they are permanently damaged physiologically
- "the federal government grants millions of taxpayer dollars every year to animal research on obesity" (even more reason to switch to a whole foods plant-based diet!)
- "any method of killing people will first be tested on animals, who have no rights, and who, to the government, don't matter"
- animal testing is not required for cosmetics, and yet many companies do it anyways; "to test skin care cosmetics in the United States, immobilized animals are shaved and doused with products to see how much it takes to make their skin burn and blister"
- rats and mice are exempt from the Animal Welfare Act, which lays down basic cage requirements
- "animals are enough like us for experiments on their bodies to be truly useful, but so unlike us that we needn't worry about the plight of animals being used"
- "it is accepted that tests on humans would be more accurate than tests on other animals. But we don't test of humans because society feels it would be ethically unacceptable"
- Solutions: reduce the number of animals used, refine experiments to minimize suffering, and replace animals with alternatives when possible