The article depicting the improving lot of laboratory animals is a good example of how rhetoric and reality are running at opposite directions in this controversy. The author’s contention that the ACUC (animal care and use committee), with their lay members, have “in effect opened the laboratory door” is nonsense. Anyone doing animal studies for longer than the last few years knows perfectly well that the number of locked doors has increased dramatically between the animals and anyone interested in what’s going on. This new physically locked doors policy is the foreseeable, if politically unastute, response to bands of “animal rights” felons roaming the country destroying public property.
MICHAEL STUART LOOP
University of Alabama
Birmingham, Ala. 35294R>