Once again, researchers who use animals in their research have been the targets of violence at the hands of animal rights activists.
As reported by the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
Category Archives: Research with animals
Scientists call for public action in support of research with animals.
For those who have been following the activities of “animal rights” activists, including their attacks of the homes of researchers — and the reticence of the public in the face of such violent attacks — a recent Commentary in Biological Psychiatry [1] will be of interest. In it, a number of scientists call on their scientific peers to actively engage in dialogue with the public about what scientific research with animals actually involves and why it is important.
From the commentary:
A tangle of controversy — and a plea to start untangling.
You’ve probably heard that UCLA scientist Edythe London, whose house was earlier vandalized to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars by animal rights activists, has once again been targeted. This time an incendiary device was left on her front door.
Abel and Mark weighed in on this appalling use of tactics to terrorize a scientist doing work on approved protocols — protocols that had to meet the stringent standards imposed by federal regulations. But while the NIH and the odd newspaper columnist stands up to make the case for animal use in medical research and against the violent intimidation of medical researchers, there seems not to be much in the way of public outcry.
Do people really feel like firebombing is a legitimate means of persuasion?
My guess is that they don’t. However, some of the details of the situation as described in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times may explain why the public is conflicted. Beyond animal use, the area of London’s research and the source of her funding seem to be raising discomfort, creating a tangled knot of controversy that’s begging to be untangled.
What people know about animal care at my university.
Likely, the throbbing mass of humanity at my university knows at least a little more than it did before last week, owing to an article in the student newspaper about the institutional animal care and use committee. (It was a front-page article, so the chances that it attracted eyeballs was reasonably good.)
A few things that jumped out at me:
How not to make the case for animal rights.
People with concerns about the use of animals in biomedical research should also be concerned about the actions of the Animal Liberation Front and other “animal rights” groups — at least if they want other people to take their concerns seriously.
It seems that ALF views actions like the attack of the home of UCLA scientist Edythe London last week as somehow advancing its cause. This in itself makes it pretty clear to me that they have set aside reasoned discourse as a tool and gone straight to violence and intimidation.
Discomfort with the gray areas in animal research.
Lately it’s struck me that when I post on the issue of research with animals, many of the comments I get on those posts see the issue as a black and white one. Mind you, these commenters don’t always agree about whether it is the scientists or the animal rights activists who are on the side of the angels. However, many of them feel quite confident in asserting that all animal research is immoral, or that ideally all the judgments about what is necessary and appropriate in research with animals would be left to the scientists doing the research.
I can’t help but think that there must be a lot of people who recognize gray areas between these two extreme positions. Does the fact that relatively fewer of them comment on the posts reflect their discomfort with the gray areas themselves, or with how those gray areas are treated in the debate between the extreme positions?
DVD review: Physicians – Speaking for Research.
The other day I received a DVD made by Americans for Medical Progress called Physicians – Speaking for Research. (They indicate on their site that the DVDs are free for the asking.)
This is a DVD aimed at physicians, rather than at research scientists or the general public. However, the aim of the DVD is to help physicians to be better at communicating with the general public (primarily their patients, but also their family members and neighbors) about the role animal research has played in medical advances upon which we depend today, and the continued importance animal research will continue to play in medical progress.
In other words, this is a resource prepared with the awareness that groups like PETA have spent a lot of time communicating their message directly to the public, while scientists and physicians haven’t made much of an organized effort to communicate their views on animal research to the public, nor even to think hard about precisely what that message might be or how to communicate it most clearly to laypeople. The DVD puts communication (dare I say it, framing) front and center.
Some light reading on animal research regulations.
As a quick follow-up to yesterday’s post about the suit filed against UCSF, I thought I’d point out some resources relevant to the federal regulations (in the U.S.) governing the use of animals in scientific research.
These are the regulations currently in place — whether you think they do too little to protect the welfare of animals or too much to restrict scientific research, they’re the rules of the game. If the feds are not satisfied that they are being met, the feds are within their rights to withdraw federal funding from the institution that is out of compliance.
UCSF sued by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine over treatment of lab animals.
Today a number of doctors affiliated with the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed suit against the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) alleging that state funds are paying for research that violates the Animal Welfare Act. Among the big concerns raised in the suit:
- Experiments that were “duplicative” — i.e., whose outcomes were essentially known before the experiment from experiments already conducted.
- Experiments where there was no documentation that the researchers had considered alternative that would minimize the animals’ distress.
- Experiments where the justification given for the animal distress (gaining insight into how to alleviate Alzheimer’s disease) is problematic, because the neural system under study in the animals is not involved in Alzheimer’s disease.
You can read the AP’s story here and the PCRM press release about the lawsuit here.
Studying the ubiquitous (a puzzle about experimental design).
One of the strengths of science is its systematic approach to getting reliable information about the world by comparing outcomes of experiments where one parameter is varied while the others are held constant. This experimental approach comes satisfyingly close to letting us compare different ways the world could be — at least on many occasions.
There are some questions, though, where good experimental design requires more cunning.