The animal research war

If you work with animals, or even work for an institution that works with animals, you know the feeling—you’re at a party and, after proper introductions, someone asks you what you do for a living. You tell him that you’re a scientist studying hormone regulation in several animal species. Awkward silence ensues for a second or two that seems like minutes. Time enough for you to hear in your head his accusation of animal cruelty and to rehearse your defense about IACUCs, about the time you spend justifying the value of each study, about the care that is taken to prevent pain and suffering in biomedical laboratories. He is speaking now, and you are snapped back into real time. “Well, let’s not talk about that at dinner time.” What can you say? You are at loss for words that won’t sound defensive. Fortunately, another guest cuts in to get his reaction to the sale of the local NBA team franchise. What a relief! As a scientist perhaps you’ve already done the experiment that inspired us: we went to the local bookstore and found 34 inches of books (measured across the spines) on animal rights—a lucrative topic for publishers . . . but not one book that was supportive of animal research! It’s not just that the stories about good things coming from research don’t sell too well, but that we scientists have difficulty in explaining what we do to the general public. Animal right activists do not share our difficulty in communicating. They have made people laugh by putting up billboards encouraging children to drink beer instead of milk; they pose near-naked women with body parts that are marked like a beef cow; and they promote contraception to keep the deer population low. They even gained media attention by writing to convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh urging him to stop the killing at his dinner plate by requesting a vegetarian dinner for his last meal. They attract news coverage with their poor taste when equating the Holocaust of World War II with raising broiler chickens and suggesting that circus animals are comparable to human slaves. Then there is this curious candor from a “Senior Scholar” of the Humane Society of the United States, “The life of an ant and that of my child should be granted equal consideration.” It isn’t hard to wave that silliness away. But we are at risk for personal safety, if we choose to ignore these statements from animal extremists: