Fw: [animal_net] animal experimentation

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hecal_2000

animal_net

Thursday, September 30, 2004 3:13 PM

[animal_net] animal experimentation

 

 

 

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" BEKOFF MARC " <Marc.Bekoff

 

Thursday, September 30, 2004 4:41 AM

MRMC update: Newsday series on animal experimentation, part 2

 

Christian Vegetarian Association

BY BRYN NELSON STAFF WRITER

September 27, 2004

 

On Feb. 4, 1966, Life magazine published a photo essay, " Concentration

Camps for Dogs, " that detailed animal cruelty by a Maryland dealer

suspected of stealing dogs from their owners and selling them to

researchers. Six months later, the exposé and public outcry had

spurred the passage of the federal Laboratory Animal Welfare Act.

 

In the nearly 40 years since then, the federal law and three major

amendments have been widely credited with improving the lives of dogs

and many other warm-blooded laboratory animals in the United States.

 

Other questions have been brewing, not only of how research should be

conducted, but also of whether some should be conducted at all.

Questions of whether animals have rights precluding their use as

guinea pigs.

 

And despite the accords of the past, ethicists and welfare advocates

say the scientific community is ill-prepared to deal with an evolving

debate that is generating new questions and becoming increasingly

inflammatory.

 

" The polarization in this country is most regrettable, " said Barbara

Orlans,founder of the Scientists Center for Animal Welfare and an

affiliate at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

At the extremes, " it's just a closed book, " she said, citing the

" ridiculous " allegation that all animal research is worthless, while

also faulting the opposing view that " it's wonderful, and we're lily

white. "

 

Bernie Rollin, a Colorado State University ethicist and architect of

the Animal Welfare Act's 1985 amendment, said the regulations have

" done wonders " for animal welfare in most institutions.

 

Debating the merits

 

Studies on the use of pain medication in animals have skyrocketed, and

ever-more attention is being paid to living conditions - even for

mice. The Journal of Animal Behavior has even established an ethics

committee and welfare guidelines, and has rejected scientific papers

not on their scientific merits but on their ethical merits.

 

But as some old questions about animal research are finding

resolution, new ones are starting to emerge. " And what I think is

happening is people are beginning to ask, 'Should it be done at all?'

" Rollin said.

 

In 1976, a few protesters asked that very question in picketing the

American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan over sexual behavior

experiments on cats, helping to launch the early animal rights

movement. More than a quarter-century later, the same question has

figured prominently in a noisy dispute over baboon- based stroke

studies and other primate experiments at Columbia University, and in

other recent battles pitting activist groups like People for the

Ethical Treatment of Animals against the research community.

 

At the extreme ends of the debate, a 2003 Gallup poll found that only

3 percent of Americans believed " animals don't need much protection

from harm and exploitation since they are just animals, " while 25

percent thought they deserve " the exact same rights as people to be

free from harm and exploitation, " a view more likely to be held among

women and Democrats.

 

Mary Beth Sweetland, PETA's director of research and investigations,

said her organization has grown every year as more people question

animal-based experiments. For the fiscal year ending July 31, 2003,

PETA reported raising $23.3 million in contributions and helping to

organize 921 demonstrations.

 

" I personally hear a lot of people saying that we simply don't have

the right to do this to animals, " Sweetland said.

 

Notoriety led to reform

 

Several ethicists and researchers said the often theatrical actions of

PETA and other animal rights groups have helped uncover ethical abuses

and advance regulations - often in spite of the initial objections of

researchers. But animal research advocates contend that the

well-reasoned objections of some activists are being lost amid the

edgier statements of others who liken the research to torture.

 

" If the question is, 'Are you for or against animal suffering,' what

are you going to say? " said Frankie Trull, president of the Foundation

for Biomedical Research. In response, the foundation and other

pro-research groups have launched ad campaigns describing how

animal-based medical advances have alleviated death and suffering not

only in humans, but also in pet dogs and cats.

 

Trull said she's pleaded with animal researchers to speak openly about

why their work matters and how they're pursuing humane animal care,

only to have the approach backfire.

 

" The minute the scientists raise their hands to say what they do,

they're [verbally] attacked, " she said. " And what's happened is that

there's this tremendous bunker mentality that has developed,

unfortunately for a legitimate reason. "

 

Perceptions are created

 

Some ethicists say the " circling of the wagons " approach adopted by

scientists who feel beleaguered may create the perception that they

have something to hide, furthering the cycle of mutual distrust.

 

Beyond an increase in the intimidation of researchers, the FBI has

documented another trend. Phil Celestini, a supervisory special agent

for the FBI's domestic terrorism unit, said cumulative property damage

attributed to environmental and animal rights extremists has roughly

doubled within the last three years.

 

Groups like the Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal

Cruelty are at the top of the FBI's watch list. Both are active in the

New York region and Celestini said both are adopting " European

tactics, " a euphemism for targeting individuals instead of institutions.

 

" You have university professors, either getting out of certain

animal-based research, or losing very highly qualified people because,

frankly, they don't want to deal with the possibility of being

hassled, " he said, noting that he has heard anecdotes from " a great

many people " in the biological and pharmacological fields. " There is a

definite chilling effect. "

 

Industry feels the impact

 

The biomedical industry has likewise felt the impact, especially

Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British-based animal testing company with

a lab in East Millstone, N.J. In February of 2001, three masked men

wielding pickax handles attacked Huntingdon Managing Director Brian

Cass outside his home in England, leaving him with a head wound. A

neighbor who came to his aid was sprayed with CS gas.

 

Five months later, animal rights activists on Long Island claimed

responsibility for drilling holes into a Sands Point yacht owned by a

Bank of New York executive to protest the bank's ties to Huntingdon.

Since then, activists have vandalized homes in Long Island and New

York City belonging to executives from at least three other companies

tied to the animal research company.

 

Trull's Foundation for Biomedical Research is so worried by the trend

that it has begun distributing an ad picturing three ski mask-clad

activists, one of them wielding an ax. " Some people think the best way

to protect animal life is to make scientists fear for theirs, " reads

the ad copy.

 

Eric Kandel, a Nobel Prize- winning neurologist at Columbia University

whose early studies on memory and learning processes relied on sea

slugs, cited two main failures of animal researchers in winning over

their detractors. " I think that there was a period in which certain

laboratories were not terribly sensitive to the needs of certain

animals, and they did not take proper assurances to make sure that

animals were taken care of in humane ways, " he said. " It occurred

occasionally, and it should occur never. "

 

" Two: the scientific community is not good at getting out its

message, " he said. A big part of that message is explaining why animal

research is " key to biological science, " he said. Of his own field, he

added, " it is the key, at the moment, of understanding neurological

and psychiatry research. It is not the only key, but it is a key.

There's no reason why it cannot be sensitive to animal care and

beneficial to mankind. "

 

But several ethicists have pointed to a third failure, contending that

scientists have been unwilling or unable to engage the growing

philosophical debate over whether animals deserve rights, and

therefore, greater protections. Although condemning the violence of

animal rights extremists, Rollins contended that anyone who raises

questions is likewise dismissed as a radical.

 

Debate fueled by studies

 

Ironically, part of the ammunition for the debate has come from

scientific studies themselves. Research on whether animals feel pain

has moved from human newborns in the early 1980s (they do) to, in the

past few years, fish (a split decision). And with every new story

suggesting that monkeys excel at certain video games, or that a

gorilla has mastered sign language, or that a border collie

understands an unusually large " vocabulary, " researchers are

discovering that some animals may be able to think in ways once

considered the sole territory of the human mind.

 

" It's hard to argue that bacteria have rights, but it's not too hard

these days to argue that chimps or bonobos have rights, " said Kenneth

Pimple, an ethicist at Indiana University in Bloomington. " If you

discovered that a cockroach thinks about the Buddha, you'd probably

be a little bit reluctant to step on it, " said John Gluck, a

bioethicist at the University of New Mexico.

 

Trull and other research advocates have taken pains to distinguish

between traditional animal welfare advocates - those with whom they

believe they can reason - and animal rights activists, or those who

they consider on the fringes. But as the old labels begin to blur, the

common ground once shared by bargaining partners is proving hostile

territory.

 

" The old animal welfarists, who I always distinguish from animals

rights,are gone, " Trull said. In fact, she said, " We view ourselves as

animal welfarists. Frankly, I think the research community has seized

the middle ground. "

 

Tomorrow: Using mice in research