Animal Research—Violent Reactions
IF THE precise number of four-legged creatures used in laboratory experiments and as models for medical research could be tabulated, the yearly sum total worldwide would be staggering. It is estimated that at least 17 million animals—dogs, cats, primates, guinea pigs, and rabbits—are used each year in the United States alone. Rats and mice account for 85 percent of this number. Since there are no accurate records of where these animals are used or how many, these numbers are considered by some experts to be poor estimates at best. Some sources place the total for the United States closer to a hundred million. Do you find these figures shocking?
Although the sacrifice of these furry creatures has not been without purpose, do you recoil at the mere thought of it? Do you consider this slaughter immoral? Millions of people abhor the use of animals in research. Some argue that the abuse of animals is speciesism. A speciesist is one who is “biased toward the interests of his own species and against the interests of another species.” (Point/Counterpoint Responses to Typical pro-Vivisection Arguments) According to animal liberationists, speciesists “believe that the end justifies the means, and that evil must be done [to animals] to achieve good [for humans].”
On the other hand, the scientific point of view is summed up in the following questions: Do you resent a system that advocates the killing of animals so that doctors may learn new techniques in performing operations on humans or preventing the spread of deadly diseases? Are you prepared to forgo new lifesaving drugs and medicine because you know that they were first tested on animals? Would you be willing, yes prefer, to have your live but brain-dead child or parent used in surgical experimentation rather than an animal? And finally, there is this: If research on an animal could save you or a loved one from an excruciating disease or death, would you refuse it with the view that to sacrifice an animal to save a human is immoral? Some would say that the dilemma is not so easy to resolve.
Animal Liberation Movement
Nevertheless, during the decade of the 1980’s, there was a growing sentiment against the use of animals in research. Today that sentiment has been translated into a worldwide network of active organizations that continue to grow in strength and numbers. They are very vocal in demanding total abolition of the use of all animals for medical or laboratory experimentation.
Animal-rights activists are making their voices heard through street-corner demonstrations, political lobbying, magazines and newspapers, radio and television, and, most notably, militant and violent tactics. Said one prominent Canadian activist regarding the liberation movement: “It’s spreading rapidly through Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The States are becoming stronger. There’s phenomenal growth in Canada. There’s a group of networks spread world-wide and the trend globally is for support of the more aggressive animal rights movements.”
Some of these ‘aggressive networks’ are willing to use violence in support of their cause. During the last few years, at least 25 research laboratories in the United States have been vandalized by animal-rights groups. University laboratories have been bombed. These raids have caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage. Important records and valuable data have been destroyed. Research animals have been stolen and released. In one such act, valuable research on infant blindness was destroyed. Expensive equipment valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars has been smashed.
In an open letter to university officials and the news media, one militant group boasted that destroying a $10,000 microscope in about 12 seconds with a $5 steel bar was “a pretty good return on our investment.” In other places of research, doctors and scientists found blood poured on files and research materials and liberationist slogans spray-painted on walls. One report speaks of “harassment, including death threats, of scientists and their families.” In the United States, animal liberationists have issued more than a dozen threats of death or violence to individual scientists. In a 1986 London BBC broadcast, one commentator said: “What unites the activists is the conviction that direct action—the destruction of property, and even life—is morally justified in a war to free the animals.”
Said one animal-liberation leader: “There hasn’t been anybody hurt but that’s a dangerous threat . . . Sooner or later someone will strike back and there might be injuries to humans.” In 1986, in the same interview, the liberation leader predicted violence in Britain and West Germany. Events in the form of firebombings and violence have confirmed her prediction. In the United States, attempts have already been made on the life of one man whose company experiments with animals. Quick action on the part of the police saved him from being bombed. However, not all animal liberationists agree with these violent, illegal tactics.
Why Their Opposition?
According to The Journal of the American Medical Association, “most individuals concerned with the use of animals in biomedical research can be divided into two general categories: (1) those concerned with animal welfare who are not opposed to biomedical research but want assurance that animals are treated as humanely as possible, that the number of animals used are the absolute minimum required, and that animals are used only when necessary.” This group, according to recent surveys, makes up the less vocal majority.
The second group, according to the same source, are “those concerned with animal rights who take a more radical position and totally oppose the use of animals in biomedical research.” “Animals have fundamental inalienable rights,” said the codirector of one such group. “If an animal is capable of perceiving pain or feeling fear, then it has a right not to have those things inflicted upon it.” “There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights,” said another spokesperson. “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all mammals.”
Many deeply convinced animal liberationists are opposed to the use of animals for food, clothing, sports, and even pets. Fishermen have been pushed into the water by those opposed to catching and eating fish. People wearing fur coats and animal-skin apparel have been verbally abused on the streets. Stores have been broken into and expensive fur coats destroyed by those with a more radical view of animal use and abuse. “I will not eat eggs for breakfast or wear leather goods,” voiced one. “Behind virtually every slice of bacon and every innocuous looking egg,” warned a newsletter of the Humane Society of the United States, “lurks a long, hidden history of unbearable suffering.” Complete with photos of sows and chickens confined in small pens and cages, the newsletter charged that these conditions, widespread in the pork and poultry industry, make a “plate of bacon and eggs nothing less than ‘the breakfast of cruelty.’” Obviously, there are strong and sincere feelings involved in the defense of animal rights.
Horror Stories
Many people believe that opposition to animal research is fully justified. One of the more infamous cases involved the Head Injury Laboratory of a prestigious American university. Stolen videotapes taken during an animal-liberation raid revealed “monkeys getting their heads slammed in a smacking machine, with researchers laughing at the spasmodic behavior of the brain-damaged creatures,” reported the Kiwanis magazine of September 1988. This led to the withdrawal of government funding for the laboratory.
There is also the infamous Draize test, all too familiar to the cosmetic, shampoo, detergent, and lye industries. This test is used to measure the irritancy of products that might get into a person’s eyes. Typically, from six to nine albino rabbits are placed in stocks that allow only their heads and necks to protrude. This prevents them from clawing at their eyes after the chemical substance has been poured into them. It is reported that the rabbits scream in pain. Even many researchers bitterly oppose this form of testing and are trying to stop its use. Animal-rights movements have documented many horror stories born in animal research laboratories.
Animal liberationists do not have a high opinion of the previously quoted Dr. Robert White. The American Anti-Vivisection Society wrote that he “is the infamous vivisector from Cleveland who has transplanted the heads of monkeys and has kept monkey brains alive in fluid, outside the body.”
As in many controversies, there are two extremes, and then there is a middle way that tries to take the best and eliminate the worst of the effects. For example, are there any practical alternatives to experimentation with animals? Is total rejection of animal research the only viable, balanced answer? Our next article will consider these questions.
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Differing Viewpoints
“I BELIEVE that animals have rights which, although different from our own, are just as inalienable. I believe animals have the right not to have pain, fear or physical deprivation inflicted upon them by us. . . . They have the right not to be brutalized in any way as food resources, for entertainment or any other purpose.”—Naturalist Roger Caras, ABC-TV News, U.S.A. (Newsweek, December 26, 1988).
“Looking at the broad picture, I cannot ignore the vast amount of good that has resulted from research. Vaccines, treatments, surgical techniques, and procedures developed in laboratories have increased life expectancies dramatically in the past century . . . In this light, not using animals for research could be seen as the inhumane choice: We had the way to learn how to alleviate disease but didn’t use it.”—Marcia Kelly, Health Sciences, Fall 1989, University of Minnesota.
“I say ‘No’ to animal experimentation. Not only for ethical, but mainly for scientific reasons. It has been demonstrated that results from animal experiments are in no way applicable to human beings. There is a natural law connected with metabolism . . . according to which a biochemical reaction, that has been established for one species, is valid only for that particular species and for no other. . . . Animal experimentation is fallacious, useless, expensive and furthermore cruel.”—Gianni Tamino, researcher at the University of Padua, Italy’s principal medical school.
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Rabbits in stocks used for Draize tests on the eyes
[Credit Line]
PETA
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UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos