Please appeal to Tel-Aviv - Jaffa Academic College and ask them politely to prevent the opening of the lab.

Points you can refer to when you turn to the college:

  • There is no reason to cause pain and death to animals for tutorial purposes, while progressive and better methods exist, such as dummies, videos and more.
  • Animal experiments such as the ones that would be conducted in the college have already been carried out before. Their results are known and there is no reason to repeat them.
  • Alternative methods, which are better and more reliable than vivisection, exist also for experiments that are carried out for research purposes, such as: epidemiological studies, tissue cultures, computer simulations and more. Respectable institutions all over the world are using these methods.
  • In the psychology department compassion and empathy should be promoted - vivisection is the complete opposite of that.
  • You can present yourself as a potential student who is considering enrolling the college now or in the future, and sees the opening of the lab as a reason not to enroll.
  • The lab's unofficial name is "the pain lab", use that.
  • There is no moral justification to hurt those who are weaker than us.

Of course you can add ideas of your own, the more the merrier!

We ask that the letters would be polite and to the point, yet determined and unambiguous. The recipients of the letters are not necessarily aware to the suffering, pain and how inapplicable vivisection is. In addition, in order to put pressure on the college, the letters should be sent regularly (once a day, for instance) if possible.

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Contact details with the college by e-mail, fax, phone and letters

Professor Nechemia Friedland
President
Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo
School of Psychology and Behavior Studies
14 Rabenu Yerucham St.
Tel Aviv 68114
Israel
+ 972-3-680-2525
+ 972-3-680-2526(fax)
nehemia@mta.ac.il, bev@mta.ac.il

Registration Office
Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo
4 Antokolestky St.
Tel Aviv 61161
Israel
+ 972-3-521-1840
+ 972-3-521-1870 (fax)
mirsham@mta.ac.il

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Example letter

Hello,

A new building is being built these days in your institution's psychology facility, in which horrific animal experiments would take place. The animals that would be brought to this laboratory face suffering and offensiveness of different types such as pain, mutilations, burnings, intentional cause of shock and trauma conditions, starvation, drugging and brutal death. In addition to the suffering and pain involved with the experiments themselves, the animals locked in laboratories, who never in their lives experienced a hand of kindness from human beings, live in a constant state of fear and horror.

In the lab would operate, among others, Prof. Ronit Avitzur. Aviztur has been conducting cruel animal experiments for ten years, which their goal is to intentionally hurt animals physically and mentally in order to show something that is long time well known: that there is a link between emotional stress and the stability of the immunity system.

Scientific research can be conducted without hurting animals. There are alternative methods to vivisection which are more progressive and accurate: epidemiological testing, tissue cultures, molecular and computer simulations, autopsies and clinical researches attached to patients have proved to be reliable and efficient methods in medical research for a long time. These methods are being used by respected institutions worldwide.

It is my opinion, that in the psychology department compassion and empathy to the others should be promoted. Animal experiments achieve opposite results. In addition, there is no moral justification to hurt those who are weaker than us. Animals, sentient beings as ourselves, are sensitive to pain and suffering and have a right to live their lives in welfare and free from suffering.

The main motive to build the lab is the will of the college's position holders to present the college as a university (not meaning that one can live with peace with the equally immoral universities' pain labs). It is outrageous that in order to obtain this image and "academic prestige" you are willing to torture and kill hundreds of animals every year, while ignoring plenty of better existing methods. Please cancel the plan to open the lab and keep the college's good reputation as a respected, progressive and moral learning institution.

Sincerely yours,

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Things you could say over the phone:

  • Ask if it's true that they are opening a lab
  • Tell them that you heard they are opening a lab and you think it's cruel and not necessary
  • Tell them that animals are sensitive to pain and suffering
  • Ask them if they don't mind that their salaries are stained with blood
  • Remind them that in the psychology department compassion should be promoted, not cruelty
  • Tell them that there are alternative methods
  • LET THEM KNOW: THE LAB WILL NOT OPEN!