World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week: Protests Fail To Weaken Scientists' Resolve

Biomedical researchers vow to go on using animal subjects in their labs, despite acts of personal intimidation Researchers targeted by a wave of protests from animal rights supporters late last month vow that the hunger strikes, sit-ins, candlelight vigils, and even some acts of vandalism by the activists will not deter them from continuing their work. The demonstrations were staged as a part of a national week of protests against the use of animals in biomedical research called World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week (WLALW). Animal rights activists have sponsored the week annually for the past five years--this year from April 24 through May 1. The 1993 WLALW featured 36 separate demonstrations at universities and medical centers throughout the United States. Departing slightly from the tactics of previous years, many activists observed the 1993 WLALW by focusing their complaints not on an entire school or institution, but against a single researcher or lab. One such subject of attention was Larry Cunnick, president of BIOCON Inc., a Rockville, Md.-based contract research laboratory engaged in animal-related technical services. On his white garage door "Animal Killer!" was written in red spray paint; on his driveway was scrawled "Leave Animals Alone"; and in his front yard was affixed a 12-inch-high cross with a purple flower and a purple bow. Cunnick says he is undaunted by such actions. "This is an attempt to intimidate individuals and families, but the animal rights people are not an intimidating lot," Cunnick asserts. "In fact, they're quite comical. These attacks on the research community are causing them to lose support nationwide at a fast rate.... "The attitude I've been getting from the general public is that these folks are just plain kooks." Cunnick was one of five scientists singled out for protest by animal rights supporters in Montgomery County and Prince George's County, Md., The activists covered homes with graffiti and, in one case, broke a car windshield. A group calling itself Animal Avengers claimed responsibility for the damage and told the Associated Press: "We speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. We don't think those [researchers] should be allowed to hide behind doors at night. We want the neighbors to know who they are." Cunnick says he has confronted animal rights supporters many times in the state capital as legislative committee chairman for the Montgomery County High Technology Council, a group of citizens supporting the area's biomedical research firms. "Well, I've fought animal rights-sponsored legislation trying to stop the use of research animals for seven years now," he says, "and this is their payback." Though no members of the Animal Avengers have been identified, the Arlington, Va.-based Americans for Medical Progress (AMP), a privately funded pro-animal research group, is offering a $5,000 cash reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators. Explaining both the purpose of WLALW and the rationale for identifying and targeting individual researchers, Michael Budkie, a former animal health technician and now national director of Milford, Ohio-based Last Chance for Animals, says: "The goal of World Week is to expose vivisection as something that is scientifically invalid and wastes our tax dollars, raise public awareness, and, in some cities, try to shut down specific research projects. "And that is easier to do when you talk about specific research projects than when talking in abstract terms." WLALW has often been a time of increased activism by animal rightists; for the past few years, vandalism and illegal sit-ins that block building entrances have occurred during the week. During the 1991 WLALW, the house and car of Douglas Bowden, director of the Regional Primate Research Center at the University of Washington in Seattle, was spraypainted in numerous places with "Animal Killer!" Bowden says he feels that "there's something more insidious or threatening about [vandalism] than just a simple protest." Animal rights activists may not always engage in vandalism to agitate individual researchers, but rather to attract some additional media coverage that a news conference cannot, says Cres Vellucci, public affairs director for Last Chance for Animals and a former spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), an underground animal rights group that for the past decade has claimed responsibility for numerous laboratory break- ins in the United States. "The ALF and people who act like them, such as Animal Avengers, have always been nonviolent," he says. "They destroy property, but it's difficult to do violence to an inanimate object, vs. the animals who are sentient and are tortured and killed in the labs in great numbers. What they're trying to do is call attention to who these individuals are." However, despite the vandalism that occurred in Maryland, most of this year's WLALW protests ended without incident. They included a demonstration in Lexington against University of Kentucky researcher William R. Martin's use of beagles for studies in drug dependence as well as a candlelight march at the University of California, Berkeley, to protest Russell DeValois's vision research using cats. Another rally was held in Philadelphia against University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Thomas Gennarelli's use of mini-pigs in his Head Injury Research Center. The organizer was the American Anti-Vivisection Society from Jenkintown, Pa., which said in a press statement that "nearly 100 mini-pigs will have their heads placed in a head-acceleration device to produce severe brain damage and simulate traumatic coma." Aiming dissent at individual scientists worries Adrian Morrison, a veterinary school professor at the University of Pennsylvania on leave as director of the Office of Animal Research Issues at the National Institutes of Mental Health. "It's a typical terrorist tactic," he says. "Concentrate your efforts on one person as an example and thereby hope to frighten many more people. They try to intimidate and create a climate where scientists wonder, `Well, maybe my research will be attacked next.' " Activists staged a candlelight vigil April 21 outside the home of University of California, Irvine, neuroscientist Edward G. Jones. Jones studies the mechanisms of sensory perception in the thalamus and cerebral cortex using cats, monkeys, and rodents. "What they did was stand outside the house and hand out leaflets of various sorts," he explains. "What they said was a total distortion of the truth. They said things that if I were guilty of, I'd probably be in jail. "I would hesitate to call them animal rights supporters," Jones says, "because in my opinion, they're much more concerned with stopping the conduct of legitimate biological research rather than having any profound interest in the rights of animals." Orange County People for Animals in Santa Ana, Calif., organized the vigil in front of Jones's house. The pamphlets they handed out say they are against "these cruel, wasteful, and pointless experiments" in which, the pamphlets maintain, Jones and four colleagues blind and then kill animals. Ava Park, the group's director, says Jones has not responded to their main plea, which is to hold a public debate on the validity of his work. "We don't consider any animal experimentation to be legitimate biological research--period," she says. "We think true research does not depend on veterinary medicine, which is what we think Edward Jones is practicing." A sit-in was held May 1 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to protest the work in the laboratory of James Woods and Gail Win-ger, who study medicines used to treat drug addiction. Woods has a colony of more than 100 rhesus monkeys raised for experimental purposes. The general objection to Woods's lab, according to literature from Last Chance for Animals, is that not only are animal models in medical experimentation not applicable to humans, but also "the money used in these experiments to addict primates to drugs could treat approximately 700 human victims of substance abuse annually." "I don't think anyone who takes their science seriously would even consider not using animal models," Woods says. "We're providing a public health service for the United States and the world. The information I gain in studying narcotics in my rhesus monkeys is used by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It's not trivial. It's not a waste of money." A demonstration with nearly 100 participants was conducted at Emory University in Atlanta opposing the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center on April 24. The previous day, two demonstrators staged a 24-hour hunger strike at the university's main entrance. At a news conference prior to the hunger strike, Frederick A. King, director of Yerkes, said he does "not feel frustrated about being required to respond to the animal rightists... because if we do not tell them the facts and the truth about the benefits that occur from animal research, then perhaps no one will do it."

World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week: Protests Fail To Weaken Scientists' Resolve

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