Asher Smith, PETA Sues Tom Vilsack Over Owls At Johns Hopkins

PETA legal eagle Asher Smith, who previously helped rescue 25 big cats from roadside zoos featured on the Netflix series. King of tigers – champion in animal litigation. These days, you will find that he uses a somewhat unexpected tool in his work to free 30 sensitive barn owls from the Johns Hopkins University laboratory: US Constitution…

Asher Smith and PETA’s lawsuit to rescue owls at Johns Hopkins

As Litigation Manager of the PETA Foundation, Smith is suing US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. PETA and Smith’s lawsuit targets a 2002 law initiated by the late Senator Jesse Helms that prevents Vilsack from upholding the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) protecting birds born in laboratories, including those currently afflicted at Johns Hopkins Hospital in during crude and meaningless sensory tests. Our lawsuit claims the owls are protected by the Constitution, and PETA is calling for an immediate end to cruel experiments.

IN The SeaWorld Case This creates a legal precedent

In the landmark event of 2011 13^th The abolition of slavery amendment was used to prove that killer whales in the Sea World are enslaved individuals. Although they and their human defenders did not win the case, the court found that “fundamental constitutional concepts” may be applies to animals in other situations. The ruling left the door open for future cases – such as Smith’s new lawsuit on behalf of owls at Johns Hopkins – to argue that the Constitution legally protects the interests of other species, even if some people are still unwilling to acknowledge that fact.

As with SeaWorld, Smith’s lawsuit is based on a concept that originally applied to humans: property law.

What is a waybill? How can this help the owls at Johns Hopkins?

Promissory note refers to any piece of legislation that unjustly singles out a person or group of persons and imposes penalties for them without trial. In Smith’s case, it is argued that the 2002 Helms Amendment to the AWA, which completely excluded animals, including birds, rats and mice, born in laboratories, from the already meager protection of existing legislation, constitutes illegal ownership law. In this case, he sentences the barn owls at Johns Hopkins to death and torture without trial.

Today, even inanimate corporations can take legal action to avoid prosecution. Smith believes that these owls – living and sensitive people with complex needs – are afforded similar protection under the Constitution.

Learn more about the case from Asher Smith at PETA Podcast:

Regardless of the outcome of the case, the lawsuit will raise public awareness about the plight of animals used in experiments. While the idea of ​​extending basic legal protections to other species may be met with skepticism by some, it is important to remember that not too long ago full rights were only granted to white, cisgender, heterosexual men in this country. Through perseverance, committed activists have been able to use their words, their knowledge of the law and their vision of an ethical world to create a fairer society for women, people of color, the queer community and more. We must include other species in our circle of compassion.

What can you do for owls at Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins experimenter Shrish Mysore, funded by taxpayer money through the National Institutes of Health, carves out barn owl skulls, inserts electrodes into their brains, makes them stare at screens for hours a day, and bombards them with noise and light.

This owl is one of many imprisoned in Shrish Mysore’s laboratory, where he crashes into their skulls and screws metal devices onto their heads in experiments driven by curiosity, unrelated to human health.

Barn owls – night hunters who can fly long distances in their natural habitat, mate for life and show empathy – are held in jackets or placed in plastic tubes so tight they cannot move their wings while experimenters measure their activity. brain. For some experiments, Mysore keeps fully conscious owls for up to 12 hours… In the course of these experiments, he eventually damages the brain tissue of the birds so badly that they become “unusable” for him, at which point he kills them.

Mysore claims that his experiments could help people with attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but unlike us, the owl has well-developed auditory and visual systems that specialize in targeting. Treating these animals with artificial stimulation, while their brain activity is measured in a depressing and completely unnatural situation, is not only cruel, but also does not contribute in any way to our understanding of ADHD in humans. PETA scientists have denied Johns Hopkins’ excuses for continuing these futile experiments.

Hundreds of thousands of conscientious people have already called on the university to put an end to this horrendously brutal, admittedly useless and clearly illegal brain experiment on barn owls. It only takes a minute to connect from your phone or computer, so what are you waiting for?

Act for the owls now!