The latest twist in the ongoing debate about the use of animals in biomedical research is Leland C. Clark's charge that, according to the headline over his article, The Animal Rights Movement Threatens To Make Scientists An Endangered Species (The Scientist, Sept. 3, 1990, page 11). Surely, Clark was referring to animal research-oriented scientists only.
Physicians and patients are increasingly aware that procedures and treatments developed through animal research the artificial heart comes to mind as a recent example don't work in humans. And these treatments are so prohibitively expensive that we as a society can no longer afford them to cure many of the major, often self-inflicted, illnesses. These realizations have finally led to the consideration of alternative ways.
At the time of his retirement, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was quoted as saying that he had brought a generation of Americans to realize that the...
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