ESEC Responds
USA Today
Depicts Animal Advocates as "Lunatic Science-Hating Fringe"
December 10, 1999
Brian Gallagher, Editorial Page Editor
USA Today
1000 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22229
The editorial (Beastly behavior, 12/9/99)
and Tim Friend’s report (Violence escalates over
animal research, 12/8/99) and countless other media
coverage portray animal researchers as dedicated heroes, while
depicting animal advocates as the lunatic science-hating fringe
who care more about rats, chickens and dogs than about their
"own kind."
Such reports are inflammatory and over-simplified. There is
a clear, concerted effort by the deep-pocketed medical research
establishment to portray all animal activists as either terrorists
or naïve "animal lovers" with no understanding
of research and medicine. Fortunately, many animal advocacy
organizations, including the 104-year-old Boston-based New
England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS) are committed to
finding a better way to cure human disease without relying
on unsound and misleading animal models. NEAVS Board and Advisory
Board include physicians, veterinarians, psychologists, professors,
authors, attorneys and researchers. As professionals, we know
that animal experimentation fails. Its real success lies in
bringing enormous economic gains to laboratories, universities
and the pharmaceutical industry.
More than a decade ago, the American Medical Association’s
Research Action Plan stated: "The animal activist movement
must be shown to be not only anti-science but also 1) responsible
for violent and illegal acts that endanger life and property,
and 2) a threat to the public’s freedom of choice." Today,
well-funded organizations such as Americans for Medical Progress,
Inc., exist solely to promote and defend the use of animals
in research.
Your editorial stated, "Serious science truly needs research animals. The polio vaccine was developed on monkeys." However, many prominent members of the scientific community itself have spoken out against animal research and, although rarely reported in the media, have stated that cures have been delayed and overlooked based on the results of animal research. Noted polio researcher Dr. Albert Sabin, in Congressional testimony said, "the work on prevention [of polio] was long delayed by the erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading models of the disease in monkeys."
The medical research community also has
a long history of curing cancer in rats and mice. But, as
[now former] Dr. Richard Klausner, Director of the National
Cancer Institute, said in May 1998, "We have cured cancer
in mice for decades – and it simply didn’t work in humans."
As increasing numbers of scientists themselves acknowledge,
animal models are not good human disease models. Witness the
cigarette industry: for years, cigarettes were promoted as
safe for humans – because cigarette smoking did not cause
cancer in dogs.
For more than a century, animal experimentation has not delivered on its promises. This, clearly, is not because of so-called terrorism or lack of financial support. The public deserves to learn that there are better ways to achieve the cures that are falsely promised through the sacrifice of millions of animals each year. What the media should portray are the major efforts of animal advocacy groups to further scientific research by supporting non-animal methods. Only when the media begin to thoroughly research the topics they seem so ready to report on, will the public truly understand the issues and the unproductive and often dangerous paths taken by using animal models for human disease and treatment.
Sincerely,
Theodora Capaldo, EdD
President
The Ethical Science and Education Coalition (ESEC)
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