Programs & Campaigns
A Voice for All Animals
NEAVS Responds to USA Today's Inflammatory Reports
on AV Movement
December 10, 1999
Brian Gallagher, Editorial Page Editor
USA Today
1000 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22229
The recent 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 b) 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
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 tofurther
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, Ed.D.
President/Executive Director
For further information, contact NEAVS at: 617-523-6020
or info@neavs.org.
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