The Animal Rights Movement Threatens To Make Scientists An Endangered Species

The animal rights movement is devastating and destroying potentially life-saving basic research in physiology and biomedicine. It is also jeopardizing the future of science in the United States by propagandizing youngsters in elementary and high school and attacking teachers and students of science at the university level. It does so by harassing researchers and their families, picketing research institutions, and publicizing distorted information, even outright lies. Other tactics include breaking into buildings, stealing animals, smashing equipment, taking important data, and bombing laboratories. Among other accusations, animal rights activists have charged scientists with conspiring to repeat each other's experiments in order to gain enormous funds from government agencies, putting electrodes into animals' brains in order to needlessly shock them, and regulating animals' behavior by sadistically inflicting pain. Of course, all of this sounds like nonsense or worse to those of us who conduct research using live animals. But such are the claims of the animal rights activists, even those who--at a scientist's invitation--have toured spotless, well-lighted, air-conditioned, stainless steel and chrome facilities where animals live. After such visits, researchers are always surprised--it seems every scientist has to learn for himself or herself--that animal rights activists perceive it all quite differently. The fact that they visited the facilities, or saw the research, is used to bolster their claims of cruelty and unnecessary repetition of experiments. One electrode looks like another. A cage is a cage is a jail. PETA extends this to drawing an analogy between chicken farming and the Holocaust. In the words of the organization's director, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Animal researchers have generally spent many years in graduate or medical school studying how to conduct research in a meaningful and humane manner. They are well versed in the use of local and general anesthetics and analgesics. They know that doing research without the proper medication is not going to work because an animal that is struggling or in pain will not give reliable results. When these dedicated scientists and physicians are suddenly painted as monsters who steal pets out of people's yards and torture them, it is demoralizing. In the past, hard research work and intensive studies with animals have improved care and decreased suffering. Now the whole research process is made to seem like something shameful, or even macabre. PETA paints this picture for schoolchildren with printed propaganda, including a maze game in which children devise an escape route for a mouse trapped in a laboratory with a scientist holding a syringe and knife. Other literature suggests ways for schoolchildren to protest the use of animals in teaching. In Cincinnati, an hour-long television program, Dogs in Danger, suggested that most missing dogs end up victims of cruel laboratory experiments. The program included edited segments of an instructional physiology videotape that East Carolina University officials say was stolen from its School of Medicine and ended up in the hands of PETA. I question the propriety of PETA's and the National Anti-Vivisection Society's (NAVS) providing schoolchildren with anti-animal research kits, some containing coloring books, games, and postcards as well as petitions to be sent to Congress. In connection with an Animal Kingdom Defenders Campaign for Chimps, a NAVS bulletin urges each member or friend to buy packets for 30 elementary-school pupils. NAVS also held an art contest, the youngest eligible age group being 5-8. The first category was to "depict the tragedy and despair visited upon innocent victims of animal experi- mentation." It horrifies me to think that young children are being used to pressure Congress when they are too young to really understand what it's all about. What's happening now to humanity as a result of continuous attacks by animal rights activists is worse than the S&L scandal and the AIDS crisis combined. The dollar loss will be much greater, as will the negative effects on morbidity and health. This is because the activists' main targets--basic research in biology and potential future scientists--represent the future health of our citizens, and our nation. At a time when biomedical research laboratories go unfunded, when directorships of the National Institutes of Health and the FDA are unfilled, when science education is slipping, and only one in eight approved grants is funded, scientists are being maligned, slandered, and openly attacked. The spectacle of entire scientific careers going down the drain, together with their research, is not a happy one to be viewed by young people contemplating their own possible future in science. A number of unjustified and distorted attacks on highly qualified researchers quietly going about their business have occurred, and although the scientists are eventually cleared of wrongdoing after investigations of their work and facilities, I have never heard of an animal activist taking back these accusations. Material that has been proved to be distorted continues to be used in an attempt to prejudice young school-children against scientific research and to exert pressure on university students and researchers whose work involves animal experimentation. A case in point is the videotape mentioned earlier. The tape, which shows an anesthetized dog, was used to familiarize first-year medical students with anatomy and physiological functions via surgical procedures. After the tape was made, the dog was euthanized with an overdose of anesthetic. PETA's version of the tape, which deleted all references to anesthesia, was shown at a press conference held by the group on Aug. 18, 1987, in Washington, D.C. The group also filed complaints of inhumane treatment with the NIH and the Department of Agriculture. The university responded by calling its own press conference, in which it showed both tapes and demonstrated that the dog had been given anesthesia and that it showed no signs of pain. The university also asked NIH to examine its animal care and use procedures. NIH did so and found "East Carolina University policies and procedures appropriate in all respects." Later in 1987, however, the university decided to call a one-year moratorium--which is now a permanent moratorium--on this use of dogs. Despite this decision, PETA continues to distribute its own version of the tape (which is also listed in the group's educational library material), claiming that an inadequately anesthetized dog was used. The group also bragged that following its actions, the university had stopped using dogs for medical demonstrations. In another case, Robert Phalen, a University of California, Irvine, researcher studying the effect of air pollutants, had his outdoor kennels broken into and 13 beagles stolen. In his Feb. 8, 1990, testimony before Congressman Henry A. Waxman's congressional committee investigating animal abuse, Phalen described what happened next: "All the dogs were in very clean quarters and had been given excellent care, a fact which was soon established by records of a recent inspection and by a visit of community veterinarians. Despite the facts, a `press packet' from a group calling itself ALF (Animal Liberation Front) was in the hands of several local newspapers within a day of the theft. ALF's so-called press packet claimed that the animals had no water, that their teeth had been pulled to prevent them from chewing through their kennels, and that they were covered with sores. These claims were all quickly proven to be lies." Phalen further testified that not only did he and his family receive hate mail and harassing phone calls, but also his home was picketed by about 100 people, many of whom were said to have been from out of town. Neighbors were frightened by the insult-shouting crowd. The university administration supported him completely, but he also spent several months fighting back by appearing on radio and television shows and talking at schools and other universities. In his testimony, he stated that "young students have told me that they are afraid to pursue biomedical careers. College students I know are afraid to pursue research they know is needed. Faculty in medical schools and researchers in other institutions are fearful that they and their families will be personally attacked." Bright young people considering biomedical research as a career are understandably frightened by this abuse of scientists. Such abuse demonstrates to researchers and potential researchers that even if their work is exemplary in all respects, they can be singled out for persecution. It is my hope that in the long run young people will see through the transparent deceptions of PETA and instead, will be dramatically influenced by the sight of the dedicated men and women of bio- medicine being demeaned, smeared, profaned, defamed, and libeled in the name of animal rights. Leland C. Clark, Jr., is professor of pediatrics and director of the division of neurophysiology at the University of Cincinnati's Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati.

The Animal Rights Movement Threatens To Make Scientists An Endangered Species

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Leland Clark

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September 1990

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