New Group Joins Animal Research Public Relations War

Amid the advertisements for bras, baby clothes, and low-rate mortgages cluttering the first section of the April 21 New York Times appeared a photo of a big, fat, white rat. A full-page ad featuring the rodent was headlined, "Some People Just See a Rat. We See a Cure for Cancer." Text running beneath the striking photo attacked "animal rights activists [who] use disinformation, pressure tactics and active terrorism.... "Society cannot allow itself to be manipulated by a handful of zealots who would equate the life of a rat with that of a child," the copy went on. At the bottom of the ad was a membership/contribution coupon for a group called Americans for Medical Progress (AMP). The ad--placed at a cost to the organization of $17,000, according to the Times--also ran in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Advertisements like this are only one facet of a new campaign started by AMP, a one-year-old, nonprofit public relations organization based in Arlington, Va. The group, whose board is made up of researchers, physicians, clergy, and some national business leaders, supports the continued use of lab animals in scientific research. A second advertisement, which ran concurrently with the rat ad, featured a photo of two men grieving next to the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt with the caption: "How Many More Will Die Before You Say No To The Animal Rights Movement?" AMP later pulled the ad following threats of litigation from the NAMES Project for unauthorized use of the photo of the quilt. This type of advertising campaign targets the public, who generally hold no opinion concerning animal research, says Susan Paris, the group's executive director. She says the campaign is part of AMP's planned nationwide full frontal assault on the antivivisectionist ideology of some animal rights organizations. In the near future, AMP will try to achieve its aim of educating the public about both the benefit and the necessity of animal laboratory experimentation through development of a one-minute television ad; a half-hour, magazine-style television program; a bimonthly newsletter; and a biweekly newspaper column entitled "Medical Milestones." The group appears to mean business and evidently has the bankroll needed to carry out this ambitious agenda. According to Paris, at some point in the future, when membership is sufficiently large, it even plans on making its voice heard on Capitol Hill. The rat advertisement, Paris claims, drew 600 members in four weeks last month. Normally this type of public relations blitz is staged by those who are opposed to animal research; animal rights groups' ads usually show a furry, pink-eyed bunny or a sad-faced, droopy-eared dog to capture the public's attention. AMP's goal, as explained in one of the group's brochures, is to stop the "growing movement of animal rights radicals who oppose any use of animals in biomedical research." "This is a very emotional issue. But we are telling the American public that a lab animal is not a pet--that these animals are vitally necessary to advance the search for medical cures," says Paris. She says that for the past decade, animal rights groups have assaulted the public with lies and misinformation. For example, Paris says, they suggest that computers and cell cultures can replace animal testing in all cases--which she claims is impossible--or that animal research did not contribute to many of today's life-saving medicines and surgical procedures, most of which were first tried on animals. Paris asserts that animal rights groups only succeed in fostering "public hysteria over animal research which, in time, causes legislatures to take notice and enact unnecessary restrictions which affect research. "All they end up doing is creating public distrust for the scientific community." The Other Side Steven Simmons, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), based in Washington D.C., says the goal of his organization is not to harm research, which he feels can be done with computer models or cell cultures, but to liberate the laboratory animals currently confined in metal cages. "Our philosophy," says Simmons, "is that animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment. We shouldn't be exploiting them for our own purposes." AMP's board of directors includes a minister; a priest; a rabbi; the senior vice president of the Travelers Health Companies of Hartford, Conn.; the president of Boston University; two lawyers; and several biomedical industry heads. One board member, Leon Hirsch, president and chief executive officer of United States Surgical Corp. of Norwalk, Conn., has been lambasted by animal rights groups. Hirsch's company, according to the Humane Society of the United States, has been using live dogs in demonstrations to promote the sale of surgical staplers. The senior director for corporate affairs at U.S. Surgical, Anneliz Hannan, says the company does train surgeons to use its staplers by having them practice on dogs. However, she claims the dogs are sedated and feel nothing. The only alternative, according to Hannan, would be to train physicians on humans. Michael Goldberg, a member of AMP's board of directors and a neurologist for the National Eye Institute, does experiments on the brains of rhesus monkeys to discover how the individual neurons fire under selected conditions. He says AMP will serve a vital function in educating the public. "I do exactly the type of research the animal activists want to stop," he explains. "But the public tends to be shortsighted. Science is not instantaneous, and I hope that in 100 years, data from my experiments will help cure brain disease--the least treatable and least curable infliction one can have. You can cure a liver, or replace a kidney or heart, but I can't transplant your brain." Goldberg says the general public possesses a "lack of sophistication" about the scientific process and few people have the ability to understand complicated research questions. "Basically, they see a biologist as the guy that cuts up E.T.," he says. This Victor Frankenstien-like image, says Paris, is something that American researchers must overcome. "Animal rights groups try to make researchers out as sadistic, twisted scientists," she explains. "But the truth is that these scientists like their animals and take very good care of them. Yet they still have their labs destroyed, have their animals stolen, and have themselves, their families, and their homes targeted." A group called the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) has been linked with laboratory raids in seven states in addition to the car bombings of two veterinary surgeons in England. And figures given by the American Medical Association show that between 1988 and 1990, a total of more than 35 laboratories were vandalized and more than 2,000 animals were stolen in the United States. Attackers in January 1990 ransacked the laboratory of Adrian Morrison, a professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania and a board member of AMP. Most of his files were stolen, some equipment was destroyed, and the walls were spray-painted. He acknowledges that he does not know who was responsible for the attack, but says the initials "ALF" were scrawled on the walls. Morrison, who does sleep research on cats, is a outspoken supporter of using lab animals and says animal rights groups prey on the public's ignorance of science to get their message heard. He says many of these activist groups ignore the natural hierarchy of species--bigger animals eat smaller animals, and so on. "Putting humans equal with any other animal goes against the laws of nature," Morrison says. "Even some plants use animals for their own survival, like the Venus flytrap; it eats small insects." In contrast, a large part of PETA's philosophy centers on the equality of human beings with the rest of the animal kingdom. The group's founder, Ingrid Newkirk, was quoted in the September 1989 issue of Vogue as saying, "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all mammals." And later in that same issue, she's reported to have said, "Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it." She was also quoted in Washingtonian Magazine in August 1986 as saying, "Even painless research is fascism, supremacism, because the act of confinement is traumatizing in itself." Simmons says these statements are justified because animals are oppressed by humans. "Animals are sentient beings. We can all relate to their experience of pain," says Simmons. Martin Stephens, vice president for lab animals at the Humane Society of the United States, says that the raging public relations battles may eventually end up clouding the important middle ground in the animal welfare debate--that a balance can be struck so society can have both strong medical research and animals that are treated with benevolence. "The ads presented on both sides are unfortunate," he says. "They encourage people to choose a position by stacking the deck on one side. You are either for sick children or for the welfare of rats."

New Group Joins Animal Research Public Relations War

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