ESEC Responds
Seattle
Post-Intelligencer's "Contributed Essays" Contribute
Little to Informing Public of Animal Experimentation Hazards
April 20, 2000
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
VIA EMAIL: Editpage@seattle-pi.com
To the Editor:
Installment #1 of the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer’s five-part series of "contributed
essays" contributes little to informing the trusting
and hopeful public of the hazards of applying the results
of animal experimentation to humans. Of course, since the
articles are written solely by "men and women who work
in the field [of animal experimentation]" – including
the President of the Washington Association for Biomedical
Research – it would be strange indeed if any of your paper’s
"contributors" detailed any hazards and harm caused
by their life’s work.
As the British Medical Journal
reported in 1999, when people are told that animal experiments
"might" hasten development of treatments for life-threatening
diseases, support for such slaughter increased by almost 20%.
It is for this reason that the animal experimentation industry
spends enormous amounts of money and effort to keep the "believing"
public focused on "someday" miracles rather than
on the all-too-real bad science and animal suffering that
the industry engenders every day.
For many years, animal organizations have
made compelling ethical and moral arguments that animals are
not ours to do with as we please. Increasingly today, organizations
such as the New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS),
and physicians, scientists, psychologists and veterinarians
themselves are speaking out against the medical harm that
can and often does result from using animal models.
The voices against the use of animals to
"try" to learn about human health and disease come
from persons known and respected in the fields of medicine,
psychology, veterinary medicine, law, teaching, writing and
research. Their numbers are growing daily. Yet, contrary to
this demonstrable fact, for more than a decade the American
Medical Association has advised its members: "The animal
activist movement must be shown to be not only anti-science
but also … against medical progress."
Your Associate Editor Samuel R. Sperry falls
neatly into the animal experimentation industry’s trap. He
allows those opposed to animal experimentation to be portrayed
as Luddites and terrorists, while at the same time, does not
allow the medical and scientific professionals opposed to
animal experimentation to be recognized and heard.
Even though the head of the government’s
"War on Cancer" announced in the New England
Journal of Medicine as long ago as 1986 that the
"war" that had cost taxpayers 20 billion dollars
and killed millions of animals since 1971 was "a qualified
failure," the animal research industry continues to assert
that its way is the only way.
There is an intricate pattern of half-truths
that underlie the major premises in your paper’s biased series.
For instance, Dr. Eschbach writes, "Growing pressure
by animal rights groups has recently caused some medical schools
to close their dog laboratories…. I am concerned about how
this will affect the future of [aspiring surgeons]."
The fuller truth is that medical schools that have eliminated
live animal laboratories include Columbia, Stanford and Yale.
Hardly fly-by-night institutions. Nor is there any mention
of the growing body of studies that prove to us that not harming
animals in this way has no negative consequences whatsoever
to the skills of physicians and veterinarians.
Surgeons themselves assert categorically
that they do not need to train on animals. For example, NEAVS
Advisory Board member, Marjorie Cramer, MD, FACS, is a highly
skilled plastic surgeon who did six years of general and plastic
surgery training without ever being taught on non-human animals.
Of course, while Dr. Eschbach assures us
that "Jackie" is getting a miraculous "’anti-viral’
antibiotic designed specifically to combat influenza,"
he might want to reflect on the millions of Americans harmed
by cigarette smoke, isoproterenol (used to treat breathing
problems), and arthritis drugs such as Opren and Flosint –
all "proven safe" in animal tests; all killing and
harming humans.
The animal experimentation industry has
given us half-truths and false promises. It has not given
us complete truths or cures. In fact, the bad science that
results from the flawed animal model has actually delayed
cures for many illnesses. As famed polio researcher Dr. Albert
Sabin testified before Congress in 1984, "… the work
on prevention [of polio] was long delayed by the erroneous
conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading
experimental models of the disease in monkeys." There
are ample additional examples from medicine and science that
underscore the lie – driven and perpetuated by economics –
that animal research works.
Your newspaper owes its readers better reporting,
an apology, and perhaps a warning label on future articles:
Animal research may be hazardous to your health.
Sincerely,
Theodora Capaldo, EdD
President
The Ethical Science and Education Coalition (ESEC)
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