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A Voice for All Animals

NEAVS Responds to Boston Globe Article on Ethics and Animals

by Theodora Capaldo, EdD, and Marjorie Cramer, MD

BOSTON, MA — (NOVEMBER, 1999) — The debate over animal research requires fair and balanced editing and reporting. By focusing on misleading and disingenuous statements from the research industry and on extremist acts by so-called animal rights activists, the media is doing the public a disservice.

The Boston Globe's editorial (Ethics and animals, 11/4/99) and Karen Hsu's article (Primate research defended: animal tests often the only option, scientists say, 11/6/99), come down heavily on the side of researchers. As with most media coverage, animal researchers are portrayed 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."

Such reports are inflammatory and over simplified. The research establishment works diligently to portray animal activists as deluded and "hazardous to everyone's health." And the media falls into this "there's no other way" trap by failing to do its homework.

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. The public is subjected to the research community's onslaught of pro-vivisectionist propaganda and is denied the opportunity to hear the story's other side -- how animal research may actually be hurting or killing someone they love.

The news media perpetuates these inaccuracies by reporting researchers' half-truths as if they were the truth about animal research and human health. The recent Globe article suggested that the New England Regional Primate Research Center's Dr. Bertha Madras used the brains of only two squirrel monkeys to help in early detection of Parkinson's disease. The fuller truth is that Dr. Madras' research, dating back more than 30 years, has helped Harvard alone receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding, and is based on extensive and invasive experimentation on different species including dogs, calves, rats and nonhuman primates.

The Center's multiple experiments on nonhuman primates were not -- as reported -- groundbreaking work that led to the discovery of "... proof that AIDS is caused by a virus, and ... that nicotine is addictive." Instead, these animal models only served to dramatize what was already known through human observation. In fact, the cigarette industry used animal studies to prove the safety of smoking and nicotine. Dependence on the results of this animal research alone accounts for hundreds of thousands of human deaths and years of suffering.

As physician Ray Greek writes, "Compare the track record of safety testing of medications for humans on nonhuman primates. Primates have been very disappointing with regards to their ability to predict dangerous side effects of medications ..." (Primates do not make good human models, Boulder Daily Camera, 8/15/99) Dr. Greek gives numerous examples: approved medications which cause birth defects in humans but not in many nonhuman primates; drugs such as PCP/"angel dust" which sedates chimpanzees but drives some humans to a paranoid frenzy; and a host of human diseases including AIDS, atherosclerosis, and Hepatitis B which are asymptomatic or produce vastly different reactions in human and nonhuman primates.

Even the much-touted benefits of addiction research on primates must be questioned. As the Committee on Animals in Biomedical Research, a group favoring animal experiments, states, "It is impossible to reproduce human cocaine abuse in the laboratory ... because drug use reflects psychological factors that do not have laboratory correlates." Similarly, the use of animal models cannot recreate the important psycho-social variables associated with anorexia nervosa, a potentially deadly illness.

Your readers should be aware that numerous well-funded groups exist to promote and defend animal research and discredit animal advocates. The American Medical Association's 1989 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 b) a threat to the public's freedom of choice."

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

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. The public needs better science, not science stuck in a research methodology conceived of more than 150 years ago. The media must report fully and accurately on this important issue since human and animal lives are at stake.

Marjorie Cramer, MD, is a plastic surgeon who participated in animal experiments during her training. She is Vice President of NEAVS and also sits on the Committee on Legal Issues Pertaining to Animals of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

For further information, contact Melinda Everett, APR, Director of Media and Public Relations: 617-523-6020 x17 or meverett@ma.neavs.com.