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Sep 15, 2009 05:36 PM | 23
From polite petitions to fierce fires, activists opposed to animal research have made their position clear in the U.S. and abroad for many years. But now, medical researchers are being encouraged to press on—and speak out.
Two new commentaries, published online today in The Journal of Neuroscience, highlight recent threats that have befallen some researchers who perform research on animals. "We have seen our cars and homes firebombed or flooded, and we have received letters packed with poisoned razors and death threats via e-mail and voicemail," Dario Ringach of the David Geffen School of Medicine and J. David Jentsch of the University of California, Los Angeles, (U.C.L.A.) wrote in one of the papers.
"These threats do not endanger just these individuals alone, but also the scientific community at large and the health and well-being of millions affected by their research," Thomas Carew, president of The Society of Neuroscience (SfN), said in a prepared statement responding to the commentaries. "Today, it is unacceptable that in the pursiut of better health and understanding of disease, researchers, their families, and their communities face violence and intimidation by extremists."
"Responsible research has played a vital role in nearly every major medical advance of the last century, from heart disease to polio, and is essential to future advances," Carew continued. Animal rights groups, however, maintain that most drugs developed and tested on animals never pass human safety or efficacy trials and never make it to market.
More than half of Americans are in favor of animal testing for scientific research, according to a Pew Research Center survey earlier this year, but animal testing for research and product safety has come under considerable fire in the past several decades.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), which boasts more than two million members worldwide, asserts on its Web site that "animals should have the right to equal consideration of their interests…An animal's inability to understand and adhere to our rules is as irrelevant as a child's or that of a person with a severe developmental disability."
The medical research community has fired back by forming advocacy groups, such as Americans for Medical Progress (AMP), which "protects society's investment in research by nurturing public understanding of and support for the humane, necessary and valuable use of animals in medicine," according to its Web site. The group is careful to distinguish between animal welfare, which, it notes, should be guarded by research institutions, and animal rights, PETA's position, which places animals on par with humans and may come into conflict with medical research.
Another group, U.C.L.A.'s Pro-Test, founded by Jentsch, staged a Los Angeles rally in April, drawing support from the local research community and a counter-demonstration from animal-rights activists. "Now is the time to stand up and say, 'Enough is enough,'" Jentsch, a professor at U.C.L.A.'s Brain Research Institute, who had his car set on fire earlier this year, wrote on the non-profit's Web site.
Other countries have passed more stringent laws to curb the use of animals in medical research. Last year, a Swiss court ruled that two neuroscience studies that used primates should not be allowed because their practical applications for human benefit were deemed too tenuous and distant.
"It's antiscientific," Daniel Kiper, one of the embattled scientists, who wanted to study brain changes in learning new tasks with the goal of helping stroke victims, said in a September 2008 Scientific American article. "This reflects a lack of trust in science and a lack of respect for scientific progress in general."
To prevent further legal or institutional curtailment of animal research—which is already heavily overseen and regulated by universities, research boards and governments—the commentaries' authors recommend a three-pronged approach to ensuring continued and humane research: university support, increased security and improved communication.
Much of the research community has remained quiet on the issue of threatening or violent activism targeting animal research, however, Ringach and Jentsch assert that, "This attitude is no longer tenable…The time has come for the scientific community to make a concerted effort in condemning animal-rights extremism."
Image of a monkey secretly filmed at a lab's testing facility in 2005 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/PETA
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23 Comments
Add CommentWhat kind of a survey did you do when asking about how many americans favor animal testing?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should stop all testing on other animals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should test on PETA supporters.
If they really cared about the welfare of animals, they would volunteer themselves for testing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet the trials begin!
P ETA supporters
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfor
E xperimental
T esting
instead
of
A nimals
Many people have a conflict on this issue. We don't want animals tortured, but we are not blind to the fact that the research may save the life of a loved one some day, or our own. Sorry PETA, I come down on the side of reasonable research and admire those who conduct it. Humans must consider humans to be the most important species. It's sad, but it's only a matter of time until the extremists kill a scientist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSideswiper...google pew research center.
This was not a very informative article. Very little information was given about the research that was being protested. What were the benefits of the research? And, what were the animals subjected too? Many, many years ago a study was done where the paws of dogs were nailed down while their chests were cut open. The researchers then observed their hearts beating while they were alive and without anesthesia. Fortunately, such cruelty is not allowed today. But each study must be evaluated for each benefits and potential cruelties. This article, like most articles in the mass media, takes a very superficial look at the subject. Don't form an opinion from it. Most people have an opinion on a subject like animal research or nuclear energy or whatever when they really don't know enough about the subject to make a decision one way or another. I admit that I do it sometimes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnimal testing is 90% unnecessary - sure I agree that some research may require it...but I find it very hard to sympathize with people who delibrately torture animals on a day to day basis. And so if their lives are hard because of it, maybe they should do something else with their lives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe animals forced to participate in their for profit / prestige experiments, (sometimes for such pointless things as LD50 tests for new lipstick shades)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdon't get to "speak out" do they?
tlinget:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismost tests are mundane for profit commodity tests not necessary to humanity. By similar logic, if scientists really cared about their experiments, and truly consider things such as a new brand of lipgloss so vital to humanity, they should experiment on themselves. After all, human testing gives more accurate results. For example, Thalidomide animal tests were rather misleading weren't they? I suspect there would suddenly be far less necessity for such "capitalist" tests if this was the only option available. I am open to some research tests but most testing is for stupid duplicated consumer products. I'm sorry but those ones are ethically unjustifiable.
let the tests begin
Look at that poor animal with a serial number on him, which in our society, suggests he is a crimminal and did something wrong. How could anyone defend intentionally hurting him all for the sake of a new shampoo scent? The UK leads the world in non animal testing and has found this approach to be much more successful and beneficial.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.aboutanimaltesting.co.uk/replacement-of-animal-testing.html
Shame on anyone who is heartless enough to abuse innocent animals.. be it for finding cures to diseases or for trivial consumer products .
Look at that poor animal with a serial number on him, which in our society, suggests he is a crimminal and did something wrong. How could anyone defend intentionally hurting him all for the sake of a new shampoo scent? The UK leads the world in non animal testing and has found this approach to be much more successful and beneficial.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.aboutanimaltesting.co.uk/replacement-of-animal-testing.html
Shame on anyone who is heartless enough to abuse innocent animals.. be it for finding cures to diseases or for trivial consumer products .
Drew - "Animal testing is 90% unnecessary"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisblah - "most tests are mundane for profit commodity tests not necessary to humanity."
If either of you care to provide links/evidence for these statements, then maybe I'll believe them. Certainly animal testing for cosmetics is abhorrent, and should be banned, but for the purposes of real medical research, with the potential to save lives and reduce pain and suffering amongst our own species, than it must be supported.
I see the PETA "Street Team" folks are hard at work this morning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDrew - "Animal testing is 90% unnecessary"
blah - "most tests are mundane for profit commodity tests not necessary to humanity."
Standard PETA rhetoric, I heard and read it time and again when I was contracting for them. Some testing can be replaced by other means, but this bears an additional cost passed to the consumer. *shrug*
For medical and pharmasutical testing there is no adequate substitute for the animals currently used as human analogs. The interactions are too complex. While its true sometimes things make it through all the testing and all the trials and still fail in people, but consider how much worse it would be without the testing done now. As far as the cited thaliomide debacle, wasn't that like 40 years ago ... I have no idea what protocols they followed for testing, but I'd bet they are nothing like they are now.
As far as testing on humans, they did that once too, or have you never heard of Tuskegee?
Heres an example of what can happen, even today, when human trials are carried out...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9734-mystery-over-drug-trial-debacle-deepens.html?full=true
I understand that the point of this article is to let the scientists speak out, as well as briefly presenting some anti-animal research groups. After all, this section is called "60-second science". But is this article really useful? There is no analysis of any sort, no scientific, official references on pros and cons of animal research. All one learns is that scientists got attacked. Additionally, the usage of "beast" is not exactly impartial. This text is much less informative and has a much worse structure than the following 60-second science article, for example: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=why-not-spend-21-billion-on-solar-p-2009-09-02
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese comments are a great example of rationality vs. emotionality. I really think the proper solution lies in the middle. Legal and ethical standards are fully capable of defining what testing is absolutely necessary and what is frivolous. I also believe that the death penalty should be replaced with "test subject for life" and should be mandatory for all convicted child molesters. At least we could accomplish something good with the worst of society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe research referenced in this article is in relation to neuroscience studies conducted at UCLA, not the personal hygiene department of Johnson and Johnson. These studies have passed an institutional review board that is: 1. anonymous to the researcher (not easily bribed) 2. comprises departments from the university not limited to the particular department requesting authorization (other interests represented). These studies are carefully planned and are not done willy nilly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis particular article is not so much about the research and more about the peril that the researchers are put in by militant opposition groups. From the comments posted (and I can never quite understand why I bother to read them) this seems to be quite difficult to apprehend. And really, what do you want out of the 60 second science articles?
I'm sympathetic to many of these animals. But PETA makes such absurd, hateful remarks as if they're the only Good and researchers are all Selfish and Evil. To top it off, they justify acts of terrorism to make their point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReading the comment about the tattooed monkey in the cage also made me realize that some people just make stuff up like that to manufacture sympathy. The monkey has no clue that its environment is unnatural, and is most certainly unable to link a tattoo to anything foreboding.
Transparency and oversight are the only ways to make these animals lives more humane. Terrorism only sets everyone back to more barbaric levels, and more secrecy and underhandedness.
PETA doesn't care about humans or there would be outrage at my suggestion of "Test subject for life" replacing the death penalty. Can I please get a "HELL, YES" from someone for this suggestion?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI feel that if scientists didn't have animals to test on, then they wouldn't be so hit and miss, so that means more progress made. Idk about all of you but in science class in school, during a lab, after I had attempted the lab and failed I would then move on and do the most mundane and pointless tests. I can't imagine real scientists are any different, and since they have animals, which can't defend themselves or speak out, they are prolly worse on the pointless testing. If they had to test on themselves, they would be sure their product worked before testing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHELL YEAH!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you Mr Cox. I have argued before appellate couts , but never before the U.S. Supreme Court. But I think I could make a compelling argument that such a sentence is not cruel, since it is already done on other animals, and not unusual, because it would benefit society. HELL YEAH!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a bunch of wussies. You can talk about how wonderful the cute little animals are. But when it comes to benefiting society by testing on the shit that society drops on us every day, child molesters, you puss out. Thank you Mr. Cox.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this