Help | Logout Search by keyword... Advanced Search 1991 - present HOME BROWSE TOPICS BROWSE REPORTS USING CQR LIBRARIAN ACCOUNT ABOUT Email a link back to... Print... Save to Favorite Documents CiteNow! FULL REPORT Animal Rights May 24, 1991 • Volume 1 Introduction After recent gains, activists are now under attack Overview By Marc Leepson, Marc Leepson Background Introduction ISSUE TRACKER for Related Reports Current Situation Wildlife and Endangered Species The 1980s saw a new kind of activism in the animal rights movement. Groups such as People for Feb. 17, 2012 Invasive Species Outlook the Ethical Treatment of Animals borrowed tactics from other protest movements to publicize their Oct. 2010 Wildlife Smuggling concerns, including the use of animals in research and product testing. The number of animals used in cosmetics testing has been reduced significantly and the conditions of animals used in Jun. 03, 2005 Endangered Species Act Chronology biomedical research have improved. But now the scientific community is mounting an aggressive counterattack against the animal rights movement. The AMA, the National Academy of Sciences Sep. 15, 2000 Mass Extinction Short Features and federal officials have condemned the over zealousness of animal rights activists and accused Oct. 01, 1999 Endangered Species them of hindering much-needed medical research. If current trends continue, they warn, advances Act Bibliography in fighting cancer and AIDS could be hindered. Apr. 19, 1996 Protecting Endangered Species The Next Step Go to top Aug. 28, 1992 Marine Mammals Vs. Fish Overview Footnotes Jun. 21, 1991 Endangered Species Every year in laboratories in the United States and around the world, tens of millions of animals are May 24, 1991 Animal Rights used in scientific experiments to test everything from suspected carcinogens to the toxicity of anti- Comments per spirants. Scientists and animal researchers concede that some animals suffer physical or BROWSE RELATED TOPICS: mental pain in the course of this research, but they defend experiments of this kind as essential to Civil Rights and Civil Liberty Issues Permissions human health. Many of the medical breakthroughs of the past century resulted from research using laboratory animals. READER COMMENTS (2) Most Americans accept the use of animals in scientific research as a necessary, if unfortunate, "" consequence of society's need to experiment on non-humans for society's sake. But an Lorenuh, salinas- hartnell college increasingly vocal minority wants to ban most, and in some cases all, animal research. They say many experiments are needlessly repetitive, inflict unnecessary pain and do not promote human "I am doing a research paper on health and safety. how Animal Testing is wrong, and this article helped me greatly focus These individuals are members of the so-called “animal rights” movement, which uses a variety of my thoughts. thank you for your tactics to promote the humane treatment and well-being of animals. Their far-ranging concerns amazing article and views on the include not only the use and abuse of animals in biomedical experimentation, but also animal topic. It helped me better testing of cosmetics and other non-medical products, animal trapping for fur, the dissection of understand. ." animals in high school and college biology classes and the eating of meat and dairy products. Mackenzie , Centerville High School The animal rights issue is not new. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the Humane Society of the United States and other animal welfare groups have been View All Comments around for over 100 years. But in the past decade, the animal rights movement has taken on a more militant posture. Groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have borrowed the tactics of earlier protest movements to help publicize their cause. These range from public demonstrations, media campaigns and boycotts to raids on medical laboratories to “liberate” research animals. These tactics have brought unprecedented public attention to the issue of animal rights. In the past few years, the number of animals used in cosmetics testing has been significantly reduced and the conditions of laboratory animals used in biomedical research have greatly improved. There also is evidence that the animal rights movement's aggressive campaign against the fur industry has led to a drop in sales. Groups such as the American Medical Association and the National Academy of Sciences and government officials such as Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan and former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop have accused animal rights activists of misleading the public and using terrorist tactics to further their agenda. They say federal and state laws now ensure that animals are used humanely in research. They also say animal rights activists are hampering much-needed medical research. If this trend continues, they say, advances in fighting many diseases, including cancer and AIDS, could be drastically slowed. Such concerns have led the research and. scientific communities to launch an aggressive counteroffensive against the animal rights movement. The two sides are now using many of the same tactics to win the hearts and minds of the American public. Through this emotional climate some fundamental questions have emerged. Do animals have the same fundamental rights as humans? Much of the opposition to the use of animals in research stems from the philosophical/ethical position known as “animal rights.” Some, but not all, animal rights activists believe that animals have inherent legal and human rights, just as humans do. According to this viewpoint, humans do not have the right to use animals for any reason, including research, recreation or food. “We don't believe animals are on earth to do whatever we want them to do,” says Amy Bertsch, a special projects assistant and spokesperson for PETA. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's co-founder and national director, points to Charles Darwin's observation “that the only difference between humans and other animals [is] a difference of degree, not kind.” Newkirk adds: “If you ground any concept of human rights in a particular attribute, then animals will have to be included. Animals have rights.” The vast majority of animal welfare activists are much more concerned about the humane treatment of animals than in the philosophical debate over animal rights. They take the position that researchers have a responsibility to minimize the pain and distress of laboratory animals. They also say researchers should (1) only use animals when there are no other reliable testing alternatives, (2) eliminate unnecessary, or unnecessarily painful, experiments and (3) provide society with an accounting of their treatment of animals. Although they disagree on many issues, animal welfare groups and the more militant animal rights groups have a common goal. Both are working for “the protection of animals, seeing that animals are not mistreated,” says John Gleiber, executive secretary of the Animal Welfare Institute. “It's basically a question of degree.” Some members of the medical and scientific communities have been trying to wrest the ethical high ground from the animal rights movement. They take the position that it's unethical not to use animals in research because animal experiments can lead to medical discoveries that improve the health and well-being of both humans and animals. It would be “immoral and selfish not to use animals in research today given the harm that could accrue to future generations if such research were halted,” the National Academy of Science's Committee on the Use of Animals in Research concluded in a recent report. A committee set up by the American Medical Association to look into the issue of animal research reached a similar conclusion. Depriving “humans (and even animals) of advances in medicine that result from research with animals is inhumane and fundamentally unethical,” the committee concluded. Frederick K. Goodwin, administrator of the Department of Health and Human Services' Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration, which funds biomedical research, accuses the more militant animal rights groups of having a hidden agenda. He says they focus a lot of attention on abuses of animals in research laboratories to try to win public support. But in his view, they are less interested in protecting individual animals from abuse than in promoting their extreme philosophy of animal rights, which Goodwin says includes the belief that “animals have a right, in effect, not to be cared for at all by humans. They are co-equal species.” Goodwin claims animal rights activists are focusing on the biomedical issue because scientific experiments are a relatively easy target. “Very few people have a real direct stake in research and very few people understand research or why animals are important and why they are the critical linchpin between the test tube and the patient,” he says. “It's a political decision that this is one of the most vulnerable uses of animals.” Animal rights activists “figure that if they can knock [medical use] off, then the [other parts of their agenda] would be easy.” Franklin Loew, dean of the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, has another explanation for the public's response to the animal rights movement. He says a lot of it has to do with the way Americans view animals. The only animals most Americans come into contact with are their pets, he says, which “are literally members of the family.” As a result, Americans tend to anthropomorphize animals of all sorts—giving them human characteristics and thinking of them as if they were human. “[F]ewer than 2 percent of us live on farms,” Loew says. “The rest of us live in cities or towns. That has created an ‘urban prism’ from which we now view animals.… As a result, I think their moral status has been elevated.” Loew says this has colored people's perceptions of the animal rights issue.