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A Voice for All Animals

Boston Herald Columnist Focuses on Radical Headlines, not Facts

Dear Don Feder,

The debate over animal rights requires fair and balanced editing and reporting. It should also begin with the recognition that there are many in the animal advocacy community who do not, never have and never will, condone violence. By focusing on the headline grabbing tactics of a few groups and on extremist acts by so-called animal rights activists, you and other members of the media are doing the public a disservice.

Herald reporter Mark Murphy ("Fur flies over radical animal rights tactics," 11/7/99) did a commendable job of putting a complex debate into perspective. Would that you would do the same in your columns!

As with most media coverage, your column portrays animal researchers as dedicated heroes. Animal advocates are depicted as violent, anti-scientific rabble rousers who care more about dogs, primates and rats than about their "own kind."

The research establishment works diligently to portray animal activists as deluded and "hazardous to everyone’s health." Your readers should be aware that numerous well-funded groups exist to promote and defend animal research and discredit animal advocates. For example, as far back as 1989, 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."

Studies show that people believe that animal experimentation is wrong. However, if told that it is the "only" way to find cures for human ills, then the trusting public reluctantly endorses animal research. And the media falls into this "there’s no other way" trap by failing to do its homework and by reporting researchers’ half-truths as if they were the truth about animal research and human health.

For instance, you make the sweeping and misinformed generalization that "Without such [animal] research, there would have been no polio vaccine." In 1984, one of the polio vaccine’s inventors, Dr. Albert Sabin said under oath before Congress, "… the work of prevention [of polio] was long delayed by an erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of the disease in monkeys."

The medical research community has a long history of curing cancer in rats and mice. But, as 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 smoke did not cause cancer in dogs.

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, inhumane 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 solely in bringing enormous economic gains to laboratories, universities and the pharmaceutical industry.

The public needs better science – and better reporting. Human and animal lives are at stake.

Sincerely,

Theodora Capaldo, Ed.D.
President/Executive Director

For further information, contact NEAVS at: 617-523-6020 or info@neavs.org.