The War on Animal Research

This is an edited excerpt from The Animal Research War by P. Michael Conn and James V. Parker, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in May 2008.

For more information please visit www.palgrave-usa.com.

"Excuse me," I said, cutting to the front of the line of passengers at the airport departure gate counter. "I have an emergency and need you to call the police right now!" Two airline agents stopped checking seating charts and looked at me. "I am a medical researcher and some people are protesting my visit to Tampa. They're not passengers," I explained. (This was in 2001, shortly before 9/11, when security measures allowed nonpassengers into boarding areas.)

One desk agent examined my boarding pass, and then looked at my pursuers. I knew what she saw: five people with T-shirts that read: "KEEP PRIMATE TESTER Dr. P.M. CONN OUT OF U.S.F." She let me through. Ten minutes later, when the pilot boarded and asked if I was okay, and I heard the outer doors close, my blood pressure and heart rate slowly began to sink into normal ranges.

I was en route from Tampa where I had been selected as a final candidate for the position of vice president for research at the University of South Florida (USF). The people following me were animal rights activists, who had learned of my visit on an animal rights listserv.

I currently don't use animals in my research, but I am associated with people who do. I was special assistant to the president of Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), and associate director of one of its Institutes, the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC). I also have a research program that has contributed to the development of treatments for breast and prostate cancer, endometriosis, and problems of infertility. ^1,2 I believe in the value of animal research in basic science. I have spoken and written about the importance of humane animal research and how it benefits both humans and animals.

Because of my position at the OHSU primate center, an animal rights activist had urged subscribers to an animal rights listserv to write letters to the University of South Florida administration and to my academic colleagues, protesting my candidacy. In Tampa, my plane was met by animal extremists who tried to engage and film me. Exercising their rights under a state open-meetings law, they were present at most of my scheduled meetings with university committees. Some stood outside meeting room doors to berate attendees and distribute fliers that made outlandish claims. At the end of the first day, I considered returning home to Portland for my safety, then decided to remain in this stressful situation for one more day. The university assigned an armed police officer to look after me. I received threatening calls at my hotel and knocks on the door in the middle of the night.

As the demonstrators hoped, drawing this much media attention suggested that I or my research program would be a liability. Needless to say, I didn't get the job.

What word other than "war" can we employ to describe what is happening to the enterprise of biomedical research? Attack? Assault? How else to describe the posting of pictures of researchers and inaccurate, inflammatory descriptions of their work on the Internet? What do we call the nighttime "visits" to our homes, the mailing of letters to scientists in envelopes armed with razor blades, and Internet postings that reveal an eerie and threatening knowledge of our personal lives and loved ones?

Some argue that animal extremists are a handful, at most. Scientists should ignore them, they say, and concentrate on their research. But consider this: All of the drama surrounding my trip to Tampa was achieved by, at most, 15 poorly informed and inarticulate people who successfully stirred up fear among the search committee, which had been highly supportive of me at first. A small group of extremists are more successful than their moderate colleagues in drawing public attention to their cause, and can exercise an influence wholly disproportionate to their numbers. They are chillingly effective in causing casualties, whether institutional or personal.

The metaphor of war can be self-defeating. We are confident that in any open and civilized public-policy debate, scientists, even though they tend to be poor communicators, would prevail over their challengers. But what will happen if researchers, convinced that they are encircled by belligerents, retreat behind barricades and remain incommunicado? Research and its beneficiaries - that is, all of us - stand to lose.

I never predicted that I would find myself, at age 50, a target of the animal rights community. I have been interested in the biological process of life as long as I can remember. By the time I was 12, I realized that cures for diseases required understanding how the body works when it is healthy. Even before that, I was a biology geek, crawling around on the ground to watch ants, and growing seeds under different colors of plastic film.

I had read a little bit about animal rights activities when I was in high school in the late 1960s. It was never front-page news, mostly distant and abstract grumblings from "antivivisection" groups in the UK. When I went to college at the University of Michigan, activism was directed towards ending the Vietnam War. I watched people of conscience, including a roommate, get arrested for demonstrating their views.

I never trained to go into primate research and, frankly, knew little about nonhuman primates until I came to Oregon in 1993. I spent the first part of my career at Duke University, working on rat-derived cell cultures. We used white rats and a handful of mice, all of them raised for the laboratory. We caused them no pain and killed them humanely to study their tissues. Six years later, when I became a department head at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, I made the transition to continuous cell-culture lines.^3,4

ONPRC, one of eight federally sponsored primate research centers, is a fully accredited institution that is responsible for the care of more than 3,500 monkeys. This is a serious responsibility that involves frequent, unannounced inspection visits by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). We support our animals with a veterinary and animal-care staff of 90 people, along with a separate psychological enrichment program that includes seven more people led by a doctoral level researcher. We also participate in a voluntary inspection program by an international professional organization, the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC). We are fully accredited by that program as well.

But that wasn't enough to satisfy the activists who set out to sabotage my trip to the University of Southern Florida. Several things struck me about this experience. For one, the communication among animal extremists was fast, and effective. I was also shocked by the accusations. These people charged me with "crimes" that I had never committed: torturing marmosets and obtaining huge quantities of monkey sperm by a process that they likened to genital electrocution. When I tried to tell them I didn't use sperm and my studies were all done in cell cultures, they shouted me down.

Some investigators at our center and elsewhere routinely collect monkey sperm by a process called electroejaculation. The USDA and the veterinary community approve this process, which isn't painful (despite its unfortunate name). A similar process is used for human paraplegics, otherwise unable to father children. In terms of torturing marmosets, 16 years ago, I collaborated with a British colleague in measuring hormone levels in some marmosets. For that contribution my name was added (as a middle author) to the scientific publication's author list. I had never seen the animals, since the serum was shipped to me on dry ice from England. ⁵

Courtesy of P. Michael Conn
Scenes of vandalism by animal rights activists against other researchers in Portland (not Conn).

The accusations lacked any basis in fact, and people who should have known better - the search committee, for example - accepted them as truth. The president of the university, who had disclosed to me the ironic detail that she had grown up in a family of meat packers, and who had been gracious and supportive during the interview process, refused to speak with me further afterwards. The extremists, of course, took credit. The university eventually filled the position with an animal researcher who works on a rat model of hypertension, but who isn't associated with a primate center and thus wasn't in the crosshairs.

I moved to Portland in 1993. At the time, I was unaware that the area is an incubator for the animal rights movement, which I considered distant and irrelevant, much as I had in high school. On May 3, 1996, that began to change.

That day, I arrived at work early in the morning to find two cars blocking the only entrance to our primate center. The drivers had fastened their necks to the steering column of each car using bicycle locks, and the keys to the cars and the locks were "lost." After firefighters sawed off the steering columns, found the keys, liberated the drivers, and towed the cars, ONPRC officials signed complaints for second-degree criminal trespass against Craig Rosebraugh and his associates, who identified themselves as members of the Liberation Collective.

Ineffective though it was, this event kindled my interest in the animal rights movement. In 1994, the primate center was approaching its 35th year of uninterrupted compliance with federal regulations for animal care. Nevertheless, we were being targeted by activists. I began monitoring animal rights Web sites, following their listservs, and gathering information from a handful of proresearch organizations operating on shoestring budgets, which provided e-mail summaries of animal rights activities.

One morning in October 1999, I saw a startling message on one of the listservs: A group calling itself the Justice Department said it had sent razor blades to about 80 animal researchers. The blades had been fastened near the top of each envelope so that opening them by inserting a thumb under the flap would result in a severe cut. The blades, the letter announced, had been armed with rat poison. The enclosed letter called on scientists to abandon their research within 12 months or "your violence will be turned back upon you."

I found four primate center investigators on the list of recipients. Being an early riser, I was able to warn them, and we recovered all four envelopes, unopened. These were transferred to law enforcement authorities, but to this day we have heard nothing about them. The 12-month deadline to abandon research programs came and went, without incident.

In recent years, I personally got to know some of the movement's most infamous members.

Craig Rosebraugh - I met Rosebraugh for the first time when his neck was attached to a steering wheel at the entrance to the primate center. In recent years, Rosebraugh ran the press office of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). He told mainstream media when seemingly random fires or other destructive acts were the result of the movement. He claimed to be uninvolved, and provided no names: Members of the ELF, and its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), don't carry identification cards or have meetings. No one knows who all the members are.

The FBI, armed with search warrants, had seen fit on two occasions to search Rosebraugh's home. On the first occasion, agents discovered a purple index card, duly reported in the local newspaper, containing my name and home address. Why this card was in his house, or what it might have portended, remains a mystery to this day. You can be assured that when I learned of the discovery, I felt not just the threat of violence, but something more: a violation of my person.

When subpoenaed to testify before Congress in February 2002 as part of an ecoterror investigation led by Senator James Inhofe, Rosebraugh answered only a portion of questions, but some caught my attention.

Q:Do you know who Michael Conn is?

A:Michael Conn is a researcher at the ONPRC in Beaverton (OR). Conn wastes hundreds of thousands of federal tax dollars torturing and killing monkeys, a practice which has in no way benefited human health.

Q:Why was there an index card with Mr. Conn's name and home address in your residence? Was either ELF or ALF planning to take 'direct action' against Mr. Conn or his property? If not, why was Mr. Conn's name and address in your possession?

A:See all objections, rights, and privileges asserted.

In all, Rosebraugh took the Fifth Amendment more than 50 times.

In October 2003, he announced and promoted his new, self-published manifesto, The Logic of Political Violence. The cover features an image of the burning World Trade Center towers, and the book contains this message: "Attack the financial centers of the country ... This can be done in a variety of ways from massive property destruction, to online sabotage, to physical occupation of buildings."

Matt Rossell - Matt Rossell is very good with people. He is clean and well groomed, and seems honest - in all, the kind of person that you might like your daughter to marry. All of this led us to hire him as an animal technician in 1998.

Rossell's subterfuge was so effective that when the local chapter of the Animal Legal Defense Fund announced a press conference to expose allegations (including videos) from a whistleblower about animal abuse at the primate center, we had no idea who the whistleblower might be. Even after we learned it was Rossell, we did not realize that he had been working at our facility as an informant.

Dealing with the public relations nightmare created by Rossell's video images was extremely difficult, to say the least. One of the videos showed a "hungry and filthy" monkey in an incubator. In reality, the infant had been given human baby food and had, like human babies, played with it and smeared the puree on the incubator window. The video had been made at an opportune moment before daily cleanup. From this same video clip came a still photo, frozen at the instant when the infant face looks anguished. This was puzzling until we went back to the video and noticed a rubber-gloved finger moving over the window of the incubator and toward the monkey. In expectation of food, the monkey moves toward the finger, pursing its lips and producing, for less than a second, the look that Rossell reduced to a still. The monkey was not upset or in pain, just caught in an unflattering pose.

Other images presented frightened animals living in what looks like crowded conditions and in the midst of feces covering the floor. The images were created before morning cleanup, so some of the material is likely feces, but most is Purina Monkey Chow biscuits photographed from a distance in the dim light of dawn before morning cleanup. The photographer, having entered their enclosure, had likely frightened the monkeys, causing them to huddle together and appear hemmed in.

Another clip showed a room of monkeys banging their cages. But, in this instance, Rossell's cropping wasn't careful enough: At the bottom right of the video image we can see the food cart, and any animal technician will tell you that monkeys bang their cages in excitement when they see food coming.

The center launched an Internet site to explain the truth behind each of Rossell's images. None of his allegations were supported by extensive federal investigations. Five federal investigators, all veterinarians, worked daily for two weeks but found no merit in Rossell's claims and found no signs of animal cruelty or federal noncompliance. Animal abuse would have been impossible to hide in this investigation or in the 10 unannounced inspections that extended our continuous USDA certification to over 40 years in a row. The primate center was cleared of any wrongdoing. But Rossell has used his images to elicit contributions to the California nonprofit In Defense of Animals, and Web sites and brochures continue to display the images.

No one could wish for new plagues to bring home to the public the need for animal research and put animal extremism to rest. Yet, with global warming, jet travel, avian flu, and AIDS, as well as threats of bioterrorism, diseases once unknown or thought to be conquered are arriving on our doorstep. It may be that exotic and resurgent viruses will swing public opinion in favor of animal research. Medical schools, scientific societies, physician organizations, and research institutions must get out and explain the connection between animal research and human and animal health. We cannot afford to keep it a dirty little secret.

I do not have a problem with PETA or anyone else doing undercover investigations. I do not have a problem with animal rights people pushing their agenda, and engaging in the political process. I consider what Rossell did, going undercover and providing documentary evidence, to be a completely legitimate tactic.

What I have a problem with is campaigns of terrorism against people. Crossing that line is one that justifies using lethal force to protect myself or others, as guaranteed by law. Crossing that line justifies restraining orders, criminal prosecutions, etcetera.

Researchers that use animals rarely make what they could make outside of academia. Most get into it because they want to help humanity. I know of nobody that likes harming animals, and particularly primates in the process. Yes, some researchers do, from time to time, propose and get funding for projects that are not strictly necessary. Yes, once on that research track, researchers can find it very difficult to change to another career.

But, monkeys and apes in the wild conduct warfare against each other, as Jane Goodall documented. They are also cruel to each other in the extreme, (by our lights) sometimes tearing each other apart. Monkey and ape mothers and fathers will slaughter and eat the infants of lower ranking mothers. Monkeys and apes commit horrific crimes of opportunity on each other. They are constantly fighting within the group to see who is dominant. In the wild, when these things happen, they are fatal. Death is so assured, that it took Jane Goodall most of her life to finally document a chimpanzee war that wiped out a nearby troop. As a consequence, in the wild we see only strong and healthy animals.

Weighing all of that, it is just not true that life in monkey colonies is worse than life in the wild.

Similar things are true for other animals, like cats. Read "The Tribe of Tiger" for a naturalists view into their world. One of the things she documents in her book is that animals in circuses generally live longer and are healthier psychologically than animals that live in other circumstances.

This issue is not black and white as it is ignorantly proposed by animal rights activists. I support their right to investigate, to do all that, but I do not support their right to terrorize us (scientists doing animal research). Nor do I support their right to push a "mother goose beautiful out in the woods" view of what the life of wild animals is like. "Nature, red in tooth and claw" is very accurate.

I love animals myself. It has broken my heart sometimes, what has occurred with them. But I also know that much of that heartbreak is just my own parental instinct making me anthropomorphize them. I have a running joke with my partner about adopting a monkey as a pet. I actually would like to, although I am getting old enough it might not be fair to such a long-lived animal. I am one of the few people qualified to actually have such a pet.

But, my partner won't hear of it. She knows as well as I do that monkeys can be incredibly destructive at the best of times. They are like living with a little gremlin that grows up to be a temperamental 2 year old and mostly stays there.

Honestly, I have cried sometimes about things I have authorized. And soon I will not be involved in such research anymore. But I remember when I have walked hospital wards doing grand rounds, with clinical MD's. I remember the cries and tears of children, adolescents and adults. I remember the deaths. And I remember that in America today, we have 3 times the infectious disease death rate that we did 20 years ago.

And that is why I do animal research. Yes, I do support making it more humane in every way possible. I also support making prisons more humane and focused on rehabilitation. But it is a necessary thing for us. Well, perhaps it is not absolutely necessary. But the alternative is, literally, millions of people dying. Life is not simple.

If a short reprint from this book engenders this much in the way of comment, I am ordering a copy of Animal Research War. I understand that medical research is important, my daughter was a difficult delivery and the docs told me that the surgical delivery was developed in animals, but I would like to hear the case made and learn what is going on that is threatening the researchers. I see it in the news all the time.

Many of these postings have been from animal rights extremists or sympathizers with a single agenda. I urge all of you who want true, unbiased facts on animal research to visit the speaking of research site above.

Also, primate researchers (including myself) are starting to use new technologies (such as ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging - MRI - which, by the way, have been developed with animal testing as a component before they were used on humans!!) to non-invasively investigate normal and abnormal/treated organs. This is less stressful to the animal (which, by the way less stress gives better research results), but also allow us to follow animals out across time, which is not possible if you remove the organ/ or have to humanely euthanize the animal.

I can personally state that direct use of animals in my research projects is only 25% (and yes I am a researcher at the afore-mentioned ONPRC), the remaining 75% are molecular in nature, and involves cells and banked tissue samples.

Please try and educate yourselves on actual facts before you come out and bash animal research. Many of us are in-fact animal lovers, and got into research because of a love for working with animals. Look up actual research papers/clinical trials that have evolved from basic animal research on pubmed (www.pubmed.org), or google scholar, not just random google searches where anyone with a computer can post what they want to on the web.

However, I know if you are an animal extremist that I will probably never change your mind about animal research. I can only hope you put as much value into human lives as you do to animals.

One of the reasons why this post (and many others here) from researchers is anonymous is that I do not want to end up like 2 researchers in California that were a target of animal extremists - one who has their house flooded and then a home-invasion style attack, and the other who had a pipe-bomb on his neighbors lawn. If you are trying to make up your mind to follow these animal extremists: Take a good look at the people that are pushing the majority of these animal rights (not animal welfare - these are 2 different groups) agendas - some have even advocated killing researchers themselves to stop all animal research.

Personally, having lost a grandmother-in-law to the debilitating disease ALS and a grandmother to pancreatic cancer - both of which are currently being studied using animal-based and cell-based research; I would hate to think that in order to study these conditions to find a cure that I would have to choose if I wanted to lay down my life for it.

If you do want to have medical advancements, and emerging new life-saving treatments for diseases (both human AND animal), you should support us. If you are concerned about animal welfare, by all means join groups that support the USDA regulation of research and others (see LINK I would also say that animal research is by far the least cruel animal industry, if you want to really make a difference in animal cruelty go after the super-sized pig farms and chicken farms and make sure the pork and chicken you consume is humanely raised.

Did Goodall ever actually visit the place?

Or was this just her reaction to the faked films. Please post a link to show that she actually visited the place.

In trying to find ANY evidence of a visit, I found that they DO operate the Goodall program Roots and Shoots

LINK

This seems odd, if she doesn't approve, why does she allow that???? So--please post a link that she actually visited them-- not that you are just quoting a response to the films that are already hghly questionable.

Although it was definitely wrong from the Animal Rights activists to try to use violence and vandalism to get their message across, I agree with what they are protesting.
In this article, it is written that "We used white rats and a handful of mice, all of them raised for the laboratory. We caused them no pain and killed them humanely to study their tissues." This alone should not be excepted, especially since the author is using this information to try to prove that he did not do anything wrong to animals. However, making rats and mice, as low on the acceptance scale as they may be, live lives in confinement, away from their natural state in nature, just to be killed, and purely for human benefit comes as a shock to me that people would think this is okay. Animals are not human slaves, to be disposed of and treated according to human mercy.
Every organism on the planet descended from one or a couple of common ancestors. We are all equal in that we are living, but humans try to make it not so. Similar to people mistreating Jews or African-American because they feel they are better, humans are mistreating animals. Perhaps this is because we think we are better than animals, I can't honestly say I know, but we are putting animals under circumstances that humans would be horrified to live under. Just living your life confined in a labratory is bad enough, not to mention being a test subject for drugs which have the possibility of administering painful side effects and death.
One movie I thought disturbing, yet brilliant was one I had just watched named Fast Food Nation. Though this is about Fast Food production, it exemplifies cruelty to animals for human benefit (as well as cruelty to immigrants) and failure of inspectors to do their job in inspecting everything they are supposed to. It is great in that it is realistic, and perhaps subjects people to truths of animal treatment that have never been publicized before.

Jane Goodall?? That liar, what does she know about primates anyway??

Come on, who should we trust? Jane Goodall or some paid spokesperson?

And hey Anonymous, if Olson, et al. (2000) is the best evidence you have, your industry is in very deep doo-doo.

Dr. Jane Goodall, the USDA inspector at the time, and an independent primatologist, Carol Shivley, hired by OHSU to review their programs, all supported what I said, in addition to 2/3 of my co-workers. I would hardly say that I was lacking support.

Some anonymous posters obviously think repeating again and again that I had once worked for PETA should negate all that I witnessed for two years, but the animals and taxpayers are fortunate to have watchdog organizations willing to investigate what happens in labs.

What the public should really scrutinize are the so-called accredidations these labs get from multiple, research industry-created agencies, who save for the USDA, make scheduled visits. They are no more reliable than letting the fox watch the hen house.

I sat on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), where they are suppose make sure the animals are being properly cared for and not once did I hear a meaningful conversation about ethics or any challenge of a scientific proposal. It is a rubber stamp where all the members are OHSU employees save one carefully selected public member.

In the IACUC discussion regarding electroejaculation (straping down monkeys and shocking their penises to get semen samples)most on the committee thought the procedure was fine. The head vet challenged it, not because it was cruel and painful (which it clearly is) but said, "if someone were to make a video of this, we would be shut down tomorrow."

That is exactly why people need to get in these labs with video cameras.

When they do, things change for the better.

If the person who posted is actually my former co-worker, why not get back on this forum and honestly talk about what all changed after I left?

You are right, Anon. Using your info and Matt's current email address, his resume is:

1. PeTA worker
2. PeTA worker
3. PeTA worker
4. PeTA worker
5. Totally objective animal caretaker without an agenda
6. In Defense of Animals worker

Hmmmmmmmm.

riiiiight...totally objective (see below). congratulations on billing yourself as one of PeTA's top three!! Why does no one support your findings-- oh I forgot, the conspiracy thingy.

REF: LINK

Matt Rossell, one of PETA's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) top three undercover investigators of animal rights abuses, is scheduled to speak at 7 pm Wednesday, Feb. 21 at the EMU's Rogue Room at UO.

Rossell began his career as an undercover researcher while working as a security guard at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, Neb. ...The experience prompted him to contact the animal rights advocacy group, PETA. Mary Beth Sweetland, PETA's research head, asked him to go undercover. In 1995, armed with a video camera and notepad, he went back to Boys Town. Rossell collected enough information to file a complaint, alleging violations of the Animal Welfare Act. Although the employees at Boys Town were eventually cleared of allegations, Rossell succeeded in shutting down the laboratory for six months.

Between 1995 and 1997, Rossell did undercover research on illegal white tiger dealers in Arkansas, Walker Bros. Circus in Tennessee for mistreatment of elephants, and Aeschleman's Fur Company in Illinois for mistreatment of foxes. As quoted in Willamette Week (2/7), Sweetland says, "I wish I could clone him," and credits Rossell as one of PETA's best investigators in the organization's 21-year history.

Rossell told WW he became disenchanted with PETA after media rejected his research because of his association with the organization. But he continued spying on his own. In 1998, he accepted a job with the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. OHSU has been the subject of repeated protests of the center's use of 1,000 singly-caged rhesus monkeys. Rossell found evidence that the federally mandated "environmental-enrichment program" was not working and that the male rhesus monkeys were being subjected to a reportedly painful process known as "penile electro-ejaculation" for obtaining sperm samples. 4 JS

I am happy to discuss my former background as an abuse investigator, and in fact, I did in my previous comment regarding Boys Town, but I was not working for any animal group when I was at the primate center.

Most of my co-workers at the lab agreed there were serious problems with management leading to mistakes in research, violations of law, and that the monkeys were not getting the care they deserve. That is why about 2/3 of them signed a complaint I circulated saying just that at the time I resigned.

The so-called letter that "everyone" signed denouncing me that was printed in the Oregonian was in fact written by one technician and I know from conversations with coworkers after the fact, that is was a hurried effort and that it was not signed by everyone as the byline claimed.

That is not to say that many people I worked with thought of me as a traitor when I went beyond just complaining internally and I took my case to the public. But I've always been truthful about the conditions of the monkeys, both when I was advocating from inside the lab and since I've been speaking out against it publicly. I called all my coworkers afterward and many of them understood and supported my actions, and all of them and the monkeys benefited from any changes that came as a result.

OHSU went on to hire their own primate behavior specialist to review their programs, Carol Shively, who called the electro-ejaculation procedure ?inhumane? and criticized the lack of social housing?more than 1,200 monkeys were housed in isolation.

Dr. Shivley stated:

?The consensus of the scientific community is that these monkeys are dependent upon their social relationships for their physical and psychological well-being.?

She also stated that depriving primates of social housing causes pathological behavior such as pacing, self-aggression, and hair plucking to the point of nudity.

Despite attempts OHSU claims to have socially housed many more monkeys since I left, the sad truth is that, since the census has increased by more than 40%, still about the same number of monkeys remain, alone, in a cage.

To say that my previous undercover work for animals didn't stand up upon further investigation is not accurate. All my experiences working undercover had results. At Boys Town, the cat experiments were canceled. At a Illinois fur farm I worked four months during the pelting season, the State Agriculture department did an independent investigation and Dan Aeschelman was charged with and convicted of animal abuse, and at the Walker Brothers Circus where I worked for a month as a tent worker, the elephants Lota and Liz were finally stopped at the Florida border when state officials, based on our complaints, tested them and found them to be suffering from tuberculosis as we had reported.

I know there are hard feelings that I didn't disclose my previous undercover work experiences, but this standard practice for undercover investigations; law enforcement and news agencies included. When I went to the primate center I didn't have specific intentions, I just wanted to see for my own eyes what was happening there.

The very first thing I was shown during the interview was the room of baby monkeys crying out for their mothers having been prematurely weaned. What is different about this experience than all my others was that I stuck it out for two years trying to improve conditions from within, something investigators are trained never to do as they should just be the 'fly on the wall', observing only.

The best advantage I had from my previous work was that I was familiar with the Animal Welfare Act; laws purported to protect these animals in research. In contrast, my co-workers were never trained in the laws and therefore had no idea they were breaking them everyday as a result of poor husbandry practices.

If the previous anonymous coworker is just that, and not a public relations staff person making that claim, please contact me outside this venue so we can discuss these issues further. matt@idausa.org

Open discussion is what is needed when it comes to taxes being spent on such dubious research. Unfortunately, it took the organization I now work for, In Defense of Animals, eight years and a law suit simply to get public records from this institution that the court determined were clearly in our right to have free access to.

Hi Matt,

I worked with you when you did your expose about 10 years ago. Then you told all your fellow techs that you didn?t work for animal rights groups. That was a lie, as you confessed later. In fact you earned money going around the US ?exposing? these so-called horrors and faking support for your view. We were your third or fourth. None of these held up to independent investigation. Even if we believe your conspiracy theory about government regulators, please explain why all your fellow co-workers sent a letter to the editor of Oregonian (local paper) saying your ?information? was wrong. We were working in the same place. Its true: leopards don?t change their spots. Get a life.

There are certain levels of "truth" on both sides of the fence here.

If only 5% of animal studies' screened drugs make it to the market, then that is, in fact, a ringing endorsement for them, because it showed that they did work. The numbers stink, absolutely true, but there is, unfortunately, no substitute, no alternative, for the whole animal to see how the whole animal works. In the end, there are handful of drugs to help humans and animals alike.

The same alternative reasoning goes for medical devices, although the statistics are a whole lot better.

Some animal research is indeed cruel, with some sadistic people involved, but the vast, vast majority is not. That being said, there always needs to be intensive vigilance - non-violent, collaborative, and productive - on the part of the public, the IACUC's, and the USDA.

Absolutely true, there certainly are a lot of egos to go around on both sides.

Finally, I'm sick and tired of hearing about how all those "researchers" are in animal research "for the money." I have a Ph. D. and have been in the research field for over twenty years. So why am I driving around in a 2002 Chevy Prizm?

My mother-in-law was pleased to see me described as ?clean and well-groomed? in Michael Conn?s book, excerpted in ?The War on Animal Research? (The Scientist, 4/1/08), and agrees with Conn that I?m someone a mother might like her daughter to marry. So far so good, but if the author wishes his book to be categorized as nonfiction, he should correct inaccuracies regarding my two years of employment in the primate laboratory at OHSU.

I worked in the same lab as a primate technician and was often the direct target of his diatribe. For two years, 1998-2000, I doggedly tried?and failed? to change a system of assembly line-style research where experimental mistakes, animal abuse and violations of law were endemic. Fortunately for the 4,000+ macaques still captive in this federally funded Oregon lab, I secretly captured their plight on camera, although Conn prefers to cry ?extremist? rather than to address the facts honestly.

Video doesn?t lie, and neither does the world?s most renowned primatologist, Dr. Jane Goodall, who had this to say after viewing the film:
?I have heard that there are people at the Primate Center who have suggested that the images on your video had been faked. Well, the images that I saw - a baby monkey rolling up into a ball and sucking his penis, an infant monkey with [the disease] shigella crawling about in his own filth, an adult rhesus who was so crazy that he had bitten his arms, bitten off almost all the flesh, an individual capuchin who had been used in drug research sitting with staring eyes, clearly in the last stages of depression, a monkey strapped down and submitted to a horribly painful electro ejaculation process with electrodes strapped on his penis, just to get a semen sample - these things could not have been faked. There's no way they could have been faked. No, these monkeys were being tortured.?

Severe emotional damage is caused when you take any socially complex baby primate away from their mother when they are far too young, and keep them alone in a tiny cage for years on end. The psychological trauma these monkeys endure manifests into bizarre, abnormal behaviors including depression, aggression, circling, pacing, and in the worst cases, psychosis, including severe self-destructive mutilation. I witnessed monkeys so mentally damaged they routinely bit themselves up and down their limbs. In desperation, the staff tried to duct tape bandages on them to keep them from attacking themselves, but the behavior persisted.

Conn maintains that diligent inspections were conducted by USDA and other internal oversight committees. Compare Conn?s claim with the fact that the USDA inspector at the time, Dr. Isis Johnson Brown, was by my side at a press conference, having quit in frustration after her supervisors at the USDA failed to support her efforts to enforce the minimal requirements of the Animal Welfare Act. Every news agency in Portland was on hand, and the following is part of what she had to say:
?While working for the United States Department of Agriculture as the inspector in Oregon for the Federal Animal Welfare Act, I was dedicated to providing the animals the protections, minimal as they are, that are stipulated by law. This is no easy task. As Oregon?s only inspector, I was responsible for the oversight of over 120 facilities throughout the state. I barely had time to visit each facility as required, which for some facilities was no more than once every three years. If that wasn?t enough, I soon found out that my own supervisors were working against me at every turn.
The research institutions I visited, including the Oregon Primate Center, were not happy to see me coming once they realized that I was going to hold them to the law. This reaction I expected. What was surprising to me was my own supervisors were disappointed and unsupportive of my efforts to simply enforce the bare minimum standards in the Code of Federal Regulations. The USDA has a good ol? boy relationship with the research industry and the laws are nothing more than smoke and mirrors. More than once, I was instructed by a supervisor to make a personal list of violations of the law, cut that list in half, and then cut that list in half again before writing up my inspection reports. My willingness to uphold the law during my site visits at the Primate Center led to me being ?retrained? several times by higher-ups in the USDA.
Understand that the laws I was attempting to enforce require no more than minimum standards? food and water, shelter from the elements, a clean cage that protects from injury and ?adequate? veterinary care? that?s about it. At the Primate Center, the attending veterinarian tried to march me through as fast as he could. Only when I specifically asked to see a husbandry task, like cage washing, would he grudgingly show me. I would spot check records on paper but for the most part, I had to take the attending veterinarian on his word about procedures and veterinary care.?

Simply revealing the truth was what caused the ?public relations nightmare? Conn describes as being so difficult for the primate center to deal with.

Conn disputes the veracity of the videos I took. The baby monkey in the filthy incubator, Conn claims, ?was not upset or in pain, just caught in an unflattering pose.? I maintain that the baby was caught in a nightmare. She was a victim of a massive outbreak of shigella and listereosis, an epidemic that was sweeping through the outdoor colonies, rendering dozens if not hundreds of monkeys in severely painful persistent bloody diarrhea, and causing many pregnant mothers to miscarry. The monkeys who were warehoused outside had weakened immune systems from exposure to the harsh elements during an exceptionally wet and cold winter and spring. We were running out of places to put all the sick animals, and this baby was quarantined, alone, separated from her mother in an incubator with a broken glass lid. Other video footage that Conn chose to ignore a clip of another baby in a broken incubator with the words, ?no heat, no light? scribed on the glass with a marker.

Another clip Conn describes is one with a group of juvenile rhesus macaques, ?frightened ?in what looks like crowded conditions and in the midst of feces covering the floor. The images were created before morning cleanup, so some of the material is likely feces, but most is Purina Monkey Chow biscuits photographed from a distance in the dim light of dawn before morning cleanup. The photographer, having entered their enclosure, had likely frightened the monkeys, causing them to huddle together and appear hemmed in.?
In this case, Conn got it partly right, but you decide whether his omission qualifies as an untruth. What he didn?t tell you is why the monkeys were so scared. One reason was that they had been recently ripped from their mothers, and these frightened youngsters were clinging to one another for comfort, as they might cling their own mothers. Unlike puppies and kittens, primates spend years being intimately close to mom. This natural behavior is not afforded monkeys in labs that also double as monkey farms; I saw that mothers were impregnated again as soon as possible, and babies were taken away too young, when they were only six months old.

I was the technician who was assigned to clean the cages that day, and I videotaped to show an ongoing violation of the Animal Welfare Act. By law, primates are not allowed to be wetted or distressed during cage cleaning. From the moment the high pressured hose is turned on, before even beginning to clean, already these poor babies reacted anxiously. There is absolutely no physical way to clean this enclosure using the method in which I was trained, and not violate this law. And the only skill a cage-washer is rewarded for in a research lab, is going fast. What is not seen in the video is the young monkeys running this way and that, trying to get away from the spraying hose and inadvertently getting soaked in the process. This kind of callous protocol and the image of all these infants, desperately clutching each other, still haunts me to this day. I always did everything I could to try to minimize stress in my actions around the monkeys; I would give calming visual cues (called lip smacking) and divert my gaze to try to keep them calm. The crude, inescapable daily procedures are what frighten them.

Also working at the OHSU Primate Center, is Dr. Eliot Spindel, who has made a career of conducting nicotine experiments on macaque mothers and their infants for decades. Despite evidence, and the common knowledge shared by every school child, that nicotine is harmful to humans and their fetuses, NIH funding continues through 2012. And in spite of the dubious value of such research, the university?s IACUC continues to rubberstamp their approval as the grants come up for renewal; it?s a real moneymaker for the university. The cost to the taxpaying public is considerable, but the cost to the animals is much, much greater. I took these notes:
"Among the most horrifying things I witnessed at the lab were the times when baby monkeys were stolen away from their mothers. (Spindel's experiments require that babies be taken away when only just weeks or months old, and killed.) This was a chaotic, ugly, heart-wrenching scene. A worker wearing thick leather 'gauntlet' gloves, would reach into the cage where the baby clung to her mother's breast, and snatch the baby by one shoulder and arm and rip her from her mother, who was also screaming and desperately fighting to keep her baby safe. Once removed, the entire room of monkeys would erupt into total pandemonium?screaming, thrashing and crashing in their cages?some even reaching out through the bars in vain to get the baby back. Once outside the room, the screams of protest continued, echoing down the halls. The mother would never see that baby again, but would be bred again and again to produce more monkeys to feed the insatiable demand for research subjects."

This is reminiscent of Harry Harlow?s notorious experiments of the 1950?s, when the ghastly effects of deliberate removal of baby monkeys and substitution of monster-mother surrogates were called ?research.? When are we really going to learn?

If the public does not bridle at the fact that a hefty chunk of their tax dollars is given out to people like Spindel, then perhaps they will be outraged by the despicable abuse of animals in laboratories that still passes as acceptable protocol. I must mention that in my two years at the primate center, I never once saw Michael Conn step foot in an animal room. He is an administrator. His co-author, James Parker, is a public relations person, and is likewise primarily office bound. Unfortunately for the animals and the taxpayers who fund these experiments, they weren?t really there, as was I, to see what happens every single day.

One last note on Conn?s remarks about Edward Walsh?s experiments at Boys Town Research Hospital in Omaha, where I lived and worked part-time as a security guard. It?s the place where I was first called to undercover animal abuse investigations. When I heard kittens crying, I went behind the locked vivarium door to check out what was wrong. Over time I found out these kittens were part of an experiment purporting to help deaf children. Actually, Walsh was botching brain surgeries on otherwise healthy, very young kittens, sometimes only one or two days old; Walsh was cutting into a nerve bundle at the base of the kittens? brains, going for an auditory nerve, but apparently sometimes cutting the wrong ones, leaving the kittens walking in circles, unable to climb back into the nest box to nurse while the mother cat could only look on helplessly. Many didn?t survive; those were the lucky ones. I started documenting the abuse, and that?s how I became an undercover animal abuse investigator. Although Michael Conn chooses to crow about the USDA?s rejection of the evidence at Boys Town, activists campaigned and eventually succeeded in shutting down all the cat studies. The botched, crude experiments on kittens were decried by the deaf community and local people who?d associated Boys Town with helping orphans, not torturing kittens.

I?m glad that other undercover investigators continue to bear witness, videotape, collect evidence, show what really happens behind laboratory doors, and bring these issues to light. (Think of the book we could write.) It can?t be much longer before the public, funding agencies, and ethical scientists will respond to what they see, and take a good, hard look at the use and abuse of animals in laboratories.

or, Nikki, you could read the literature and see just the opposite. Animal research is quite a good, but not a perfect, predictor.

Olson, Harry, Graham Betton, Denise Robinson, Karluss Thomas, Alastair Monro, Gerald Kolaja, Patrick Lilly, James Sanders, Glenn Sipes, William Bracken, Michael Dorato, Koen Van Deun, Peter Smith, Bruce Berger, and Allen Heller. 2000. Concordance of the toxicity of pharmaceuticals in humans and in animals. Regulatory Toxicol. and Pharmacol. 32: 56?67.

Will you volunteer to have drugs tested on you first? Where did polio and smallpox go? Where did insulin come from as a drug: animal research.

Those who (really) work in animal research know the truth: it is heavily regulated by the USDA and other federal and voluntary agencies. No one who works with IACUCs would ever make the statement you made.

It is blatantly obvious that the majority of the posters here have not worked in an environment where animal testing is used. As pointed out earlier, there is very little correlation with animal study outcomes and human trial results when it comes to the pharmaceutical research. To the person who pasted about BIG PHARMA, just read the research and you will see what Patricia was talking about.

I have worked for over a decade in a biomedical research environment and the amount of absolutely useless and pointless research being conducted "in the name of science" at the expense of innocent animal's lives is astounding. A line has to be drawn as to what is absolutely necessary and what is being conducted out of pure ego-driven need. The next comment will be there are ethics committees for this, but I can tell you firsthand they let a lot more protocols pass through than the public would think.

Another observation I have made is a sort of complacency for the animals being used by the researchers themselves. There have been more times than I care to admit that I have observed mistreatment, neglect, and a hardened, callous view towards the animal's suffering after researchers have been in this environment for some time. The animals are a means to an end, and if this means skimping on anesthetics or cutting some corners at the sacrifice of the animal's safety and comfort, there is very little concern.

For those of you who truly feel comfortable with the idea of animal research for whatever purposed the researchers claim they need, take the time to visit a lab or a vivarium. See the cats, dogs, primates, rats, swine, rabbits in their 'living' environment, then take a look at what they have to endure.

If activists get sick and visit their doctor in help for a cure... then they preach what they do act upon! On the other hand, if they wish to end animals to be used as test subjects, the activists should be lining up at this very moment to be used as the test subjects instead.

Do activists truly think about all the options and alternatives they should? Or do they just believe it should not be done but reap the benefits of the research anyway? That is what I would personally like to know!

And this does not mean that I support research on animals but give the researchers an alternative before you open your mouth!

Below, Patricia Panitz wants to blame this on pharmaceutical lobbyists. That kind of logic is fatally flawed. If animals as a model for research had no utility, pharmaceuticals would be the biggest proponents of doing away with it. They spend how many billions of dollars a year doing animal research?

They are driven by the bottom line, and anything that is wasteful would be driven out and discarded.

The 'might makes right' ethics and 'supremacy' ideology that are the basis of experiments on other species for medical research should indeed be punished by law.

If you are interested in the ethics of animal research, there was a discussion on National Public Radio that is here (free podcast): LINK
I was especially interested in the comments quoted by the Dalai Lama who supports the humane use of animals in research. His comments are:
About animal research, "It is a difficult question, [as it] is a difficult [duty]. I will answer, as I do, to the question of many Tibetan Buddhists who are not vegetarians," he grinned. "I encourage the minimum use of experiments on animals, the absolute minimum amount of pain. Only perform highly necessary experiments, and as little pain as possible. If it must be done, [if that is your path, it is compassionate] to kill out of necessity, but only with empathy. Hold in you the sense of the compassionate. "I [acknowledge] that I exploit this animal to bring greater benefit to a great number of sentient beings." You must feel the sacrifice, in your heart. It is "never made lightly." It sounds like he supports the 3 R's: Replacement, Refinement and Reduction!!

I consider "apriori" priciples - as ethical and ideological ones - unacceptable. I don't believe in "sacrality of life" or in any other characteristic that cannot be experimentally observed and measured.
And I think that laws, rules and guide principles must be based on concrete terms and must exclude
any ideological approach. The violence suggested and perpetrated on the basis of ethical and ideological considerations is a crime and the law should punish it.

Researchers of course take it as a given that animal research is essential (their livelihoods depend on it),yet cures for diseases that have seen decades of effort using animal models remain elusive. This is supposed to be the primary reason for the use of animal models. Regarding drug development, over 90% of drugs that are developed through animal tests fail clinical ones, and of the remaining 10%, half are later recalled because of severe side effects, or effects not identified through testing. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the effectiveness of animal models.

That animal testing is cruel is beyond debate. Authors from Hans Reusch to Ray Greek have definitively established this fact. That researchers persist in describing their work as "humane" is either an effort to mislead the public, or blindness on their part to animals' abilities and capacities. Our knowledge of animal sentience and even awareness and self awareness has increased exponentially in the past 20 years, but researchers seem not to know the results of field research (which allows them to continue what they are doing).

If animal research is necessary and defensible, why do researchers refuse to debate in public with doctors and scientists who oppose it? More than anything this fact indicates that animal research has no solid foundation and continues based on the political influence of Big Pharma, with its enormous resources and clout, ceaseless propaganda about its benefits from those who benefit from it, and secrecy as to what exactly is done to animals. This secrecy is essential to medical experimentation because in the past when abuses have been revealed an outraged public has shut them down. Research institutions have responded by increasing security, not by improving conditions for the animals. And the fact that many protocols are no longer published on government websites heightens secrecy and furthers discourages confidence in researchers' claims.

Research was behind the effort that denied birds, rats, and mice (who make up 95% of research subjects) the limited protections of the Animal Welfare Act. It is behind current efforts to ban Class B dealers from supplying random source animals for research. Are these examples of "humane" research and concern for animals?

The "terrorism" that researchers supposedly suffer from animal activists is nothing compared to what some animals endure in labs. Researchers terrorize animals but see nothing wrong with that.

This book sounds like a Conn-job.

Jim newman wrote: "I assume that the USDA reviewed Dr. Johnson-Brown's statements during their investigation and examined their credibility in doing so."

(Like the US State Department reviewing our interrogation practices.)

USDA-APHIS Inspector Dr. Johnson-Brown stated publicly and in print: "More than once, I was instructed by a supervisor to make a personal list of violations of the law, cut that list in half, and then cut that list in half again before writing up my inspection reports."

As I said previously, if Conn mentioned all of this in his new book, then good for him for being honest. If he omitted it, and omitted mention of the other details I mentioned, like Casey's capuchins, then, well, he's dishonest.

On another note, Newman tries to claim that the monkeys only appear to be behaving abnormally in Matt's videos because of something going on off camera.

About 10 years ago, befor Matt was employed at the center, the local director of In Defense of Animals, Sheri Speede, DVM, learned that a researcher (I believe it was Martha Neuringer) had set up a camera to record individually caged monkeys in one of her studies. IDA requested copies of those videos.

The primate center resisted and argued that all they would show were "normally" behaving monkeys. It took about two years, but IDA won a law suit and got the tapes. What they showed were hours upon hours of monkeys spinning endlessly, looping repetitively, the "normal" behavior of singly housed monkeys. Nothing was happening off camera.

In any case. If Conn, as the excerpt from his book suggests, has not told the whole story, if he has told it in a way that plays mischief with the facts, then he is lying, exactly the charge he lays on the activists.

Frankly, I can't wait to read it. Look for my review on Amazon.

If the logic of the animal activists is correct, why haven't they stand out for "Plant Right"? They are also a form of highly evolved life and they are definitely eukaryotes. Even the so called vegitarians eat plants, torturing their body (leaves, roots), as well as their genitals and offsprings (flowers, fruits and seeds) every day. I use to be a plant scientists, and the plants have life too. If they also can vote, will they consent to be eaten too?

We, as a matter of fact, unfortunately, just a species of animal on this small planet, looking for survival and prosperity. If we should protect the rights of the other animals and plants, and we, human beings, should all have to starve and die. Should it be the correct logic, Mr. and Mrs. Activists?

Almost without fail, in threads like this, defenders of the status quo make certain claims.

They declare that oversight is rigorous and meaningful. But this is a faith-based claim. No published research verifies such a belief. Worse, especially if those making the claim also claim to be rational, is that the only rigorous look at the IACUC system found it to be less reliable than the flip of a coin. See: Plous S, Herzog H. Animal research. Reliability of protocol reviews for animal research. Science. 2001 Jul 27;293(5530):608-9. It's available on line.

Another assertion that one reads commonly is that animal rightists who avail themselves to medical care are hypocrites. Of course, this presumes, in the face of scant evidence, that animal experimentation has been key to most medical advancements.

The problem is that such claims are themselves rooted in an ignorance of the history of medical science. No one who understands the history of research on the poor, minorities, slaves, etc., would make such a claim. Unless, of course, those making the claim either don't themselves or don't allow their wives and daughters to visist the gynecologist for instance. I recommend reading about the research of Dr. J. Marian Simms. Better yet, read Harriet Washington's Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.(2006)

Defenders of animal research, like Conn, seem often to be uninformed or maybe just misled. The monied and other vested interests have a huge stake in villifying anyone who speaks up for the animals in the labs. The facts don't seem to matter to them.

Jim Newman here from ONPRC. I wanted to respond to a few of the comments posted by Rick Bogle of the Primate Freedom Project.

I too have watched hours of Matt Rossell footage and have clearly seen how the animals are often responding to the presence of a camera or other items - something which only becomes very clear when you see the video in it's unedited form. I say this as a former TV news photographer, editor, reporter and producer who is very familiar with the medium.

As for Dr. Johnson-Brown, I am sure it is quite hard for Dr. Conn to comment on her claims. Unlike Matt Rossell, she did not work for the primate center. However what is clear is that a two-month federal inspection occurred and the primate center was cleared. I assume that the USDA reviewed Dr. Johnson-Brown's statements during their investigation and examined their credibility in doing so.

As for your claims that we are silent, that simply isn't so. We conduct public tours. I myself have debated Mr. Rossell. We conduct a large amount of public outreach and inform the public of our progress. We are subject to records laws. In fact, Rossell's group recently received 113,000 pages or records from us. In short, we are highly transparent.

As for your claims about what happened seven years ago, it was widely covered in the press including the headline in Oregon's largest paper "Primate Research Center Cleared of Allegations of Animal Cruelty," The Oregonian, 1.13.2001. Another headline reads: "USDA Clears Primate center," Hillsboro Argus, 1.13.2001.

For those who want to obtain a clear, unbiased view of what happened at ONPRC, I advise that they review these articles from highly-regarded newspapers that do not have an agenda. I would also suggest that these records are much more credible than Google searches that lead to animal activist web sites.

Lab animals are treated better. Who pickets fine restaurants? Who pickets grocery stores? Yet there is more suffering represented in a month flowing through a grocery store than occurs in a year in all the primate research centers.

How many anti-medical activists have kitty-cats? How many of them feed their cats from products of animal origin? (I hope they do. Cats need it.) I could go on.

Yes, it is hypocrisy. It is a rare scientist who doesn't think about what he or she is doing. I don't like it either. I never have. But I'm not a hypocrite.

I understand the frustration behind Dr. Conn?s writing. Unfortunately he is right, at least to some extent. I can easily believe that the demonstrations in connection with his job interview swayed the board to pick another candidate for the job. On the other hand, I still believe that a great majority in the country realizes that there is no replacement for animal models in medical research. I will not dwell on the reasons why animal models are necessary, but conclusions from modeling on computers or cell-, tissue culture can only serve as partial replacements. Any biological, physiological or medical knowledge have to pass the whole animal tests before they can be applied to the human.
So what can be done?
First, university regents, presidents, boards, deans and basically everybody in administration have to stand up for the people who use animals in research on the institution. Too many are prepared to throw researchers who in their job have to use animals through the window, as shortsighted solutions of a PR problem.
Solution: Presidents and Deans et al. don?t be so damned political. Stand up for the people working under you!
Second, everybody in the above group governing a university has to be on an educational level that includes a fair knowledge of the natural sciences. A legal education, business degree or knowledge in English literature do not give enough knowledge to understand what medical research is about and no incentive to stand up in situations as described by Dr. Conn. You can not defend something you don?t know.
Solution: Appoint more top administrators from the Life Science and Natural Science area.
Third, the educational level of the public has to keep up with the progress of knowledge in sciences. This is not the case, as shown by the fact that a vast majority (9/10) of the original republican presidential candidates ?believe? in creationism! And this did not disqualify them in the eye of the voters?!
Solution: Raise the level of basic knowledge in USA. Can be done, by hiring PhDs to teach at high schools, throw out of the curriculum driver?s ed and similar programs that used to be something the kids learnt outside school. Spend the time on knowledge that will last throughout life.
Fourth, PR campaigns on the value of animal research, no matter how well funded they are, cannot replace the lack of education in biology and related topics. For example, lab chemistry in high school nowadays is mostly instruction on the importance of goggles and safety, according to my 16 year old son! In veterinary school a student can graduate without ever having done any surgery in a live animal. In Medical schools computer animations, models and human dolls replace reality, and the only educational improvement the Dean can think of is WEB based learning. In graduate school laboratories with live tissue or animals, such as frogs, fish etc, are replaced with theoretical discussions or educational computer programs resulting in less and less understanding that no substitute can replace real life specimens. No wonder that the public thinks that a mouse thinks and feels like Mickey Mouse on TV!
Solution: reintroduce hands-on laboratories, real specimens and live or dead animals in biological teaching at all levels.
Fifth, every veterinarian appointed as overseer of animal use in research, should have at least one year of research using animals behind before hired permanently. As it is now, many come fresh out of Veterinary schools, have no hands-on knowledge on how hard it is to do science and have at best only theoretical knowledge of the many species used in research. The veterinary education is focused on dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs and chicken, and very few dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs and chicken are used as animal models.
Solution: Veterinarians should work/participate in a laboratory that uses animals in research for a substantial time period as part of their position at the institution. Their name should be on at least one scientific publication as the result. A direct experience on how it is to be on the writing side of an animal protocol would be an eye opener.

I am somewhat 'in-between' in the sense that I am neither purely a supporter animal research nor an animal activist, who opposes it no matter what. I believe in the value of animal research for the greater good, but do wonder sometimes whether those animals would consent to the procedures if they had a choice, even assuming the rules for the humane use of animals are strictly adhered to.

More context to my above beliefs comes from being a scientist that has used animal research methods in the past and at the same time vegetarian. While some may disagree, my justification for the former is that it is for the greater benefit of the human (and in some cases animal) community and the latter stems for one, from my sentiment that killing animals merely to eat their meat is unethical and selfish.

I could probably sleep well if scientists absolutely adhered to the various rules that make animal research more humane. It is so easy for complacency to set in when dealing with a helpless animal.

Not that I am forcing vegetarian ideals on everyone, but are animal activists really vegetarian? They have no business disrupting science if in reality they don't mind reaping the benefit of past animal research, as someone above mentioned AND/OR are okay to kill animals to eat meat. Ignoring that meat that comes neatly packaged in a plastic wrap came from a helpless animal that was possibly not treated humanely is mere hypocrisy!

"all researchers should probably take a long, hard gander at the writings of Princeton ethicist Peter Singer, perhaps starting with his "Animal Liberation" (1975)."

No, people with too much time on their hands looking for evil scientist conspiracies need to spend more time studying what they want to criticize to find out why animal models are absolutely necessary. Then they have to take a critical look at Singer's book. The animal "rights" philosophy is a house of cards based on the assertion that ill defined "sentience" is the basis for awarding animals legal human rights. The term "animal rights" is naively used by most people when what they're actually referring to is "animal welfare", a misconception that organizations like PETA can capitilize on. If the majority misusing the term "animal rights" understood what it meant they wouldn't use it. If those who promote the mistaken concept actually examined the foundations and motivations of their anxious belief they wouldn't use it either.

No, there's nothing sympathetic about animal terrorism. Its just adolescents with testosterone induced paranoia problems who've found someone they can bully. The researchers they victimize have dedicated they lives to helping other people, usually at income levels far lower than they could get in another line of work. Animal terrorists are dangerously delusional people who can, under no circumstances, be encouraged.

I think that we can all agree that using live primates or other mammals for research is a last resort, and even so still appalling considering we know that these primates and other mammals suffer in exactly the same way as we do.

If we lived in a society where no one cared that other living creatures very similar in many ways to ourselves suffered terrible fates in labs across the world, what sort of a society would we have?

I empathize with the researchers unfairly targeted, they are the collateral damage in this war, but at least people do care, strongly, and hopefully with the improving understanding of cellular systems, and the development of fundamental mathematical biology, there is strong hope that a maturing science will one day no longer need to use live primates to test our drugs.

"Medical schools, scientific societies, physician organizations, and research institutions must get out and explain the connection between animal research and human and animal health. We cannot afford to keep it a dirty little secret."

I'm not the first to call the gulf between the understanding of the general public and the scientific community The Ivory Tower Syndrome. The lack of concern about communicating science to the public has produced a range of policy problems where urban legends, misinformation, and out right lies have filled the vacuum instead. Animal terrorists are just one result. You can add to that such things as the success of the anti-evolution campaign (yes, court decisions have not slowed secondary teachers supporting "weaknesses in evolution"), the anti-immunization campaign, misrepresentation of biology by the anti-abortion movement, etc. We've been told that disincentives to spending time educating the public is the culprit. We've also seen in the last few decades several rounds of self-interested department head activism promoting a false crisis in lack of graduate students (cheap labor) that's resulted in lots of unemployed PhDs. The scientific community is perfectly capable of getting the word out, when they believe something is going to effect them directly. The fact that waves of ignorance are crippling US research just shows that the scientific community isn't as smart as we think it is. Evolution in action?

while there may be some researchers who do not exercise due caution, having before used animals in my own work, and having also had too many conversations with "animal rights activists" on the high street, let me say this: If you dont approve of animal experimentation, then please refuse any and all medical treatments that have been developed using animal models; for the sake of the rest of us.
Its smacks of hypocrisy when someone arrives and tells everyone that medical advances made through animal testing are wrong and yet when challenged with the suggestion to refuse ANY treatment derived from such models, they give the response that if the testing has already been done why shouldnt one benefit.

> The issue for me ... "dual use" biotechnolgy research do not practice public disclosure ... All animal research facilities including ONPRC should be contacted in accordance with NIH guidelines ... <
They are in compliance or they do not operate. Google IACUC. Example: LINK

> The pathogens and viruses these facilities work with in the wrong hands are bioweapons and could potentially do more harm than good. <
Three times as many Americans died of influenza alone (~1.5 million) in the years from 1950 until today, as died in all wars since 1900. (524,000)
The low point for infectious disease deaths in the USA was in 1980 at ~20 per 100,000 people. We are now at 3X the 1980 rate of death. HIV is a minor contributor overall in the USA.
All select agents are available in nature. Most of them are endemic and periodically kill people and animals in the USA. All the others are not hard to obtain in the modern world of jet travel.

> The sole purpose of the BWC in 1975 ... "designer bugs" ... viruses ... modified are more dangerous than in their naive state. <
They certainly can be, though it is harder than it sounds. The sole results of the BWC were: A. that the USSR wrote follow-up biological attack by ICBM into their nuclear warfare doctrine, created the largest (known) bioweapons program ever, and systematically lied about it for military advantage. (They created smallpox-ebola, not the USA.) B. That the USA abandoned such research, including defensive, so that we had no idea that what the USSR could do was even plausible.
An underlying assumption to the BWC is that Americans are the only ones capable of creating bioweapons. Designer bugs are cheap, and they can be done all over the world. Go to a fatwa web site and search for genetic engineering. You will find approvals. Molecular biology is in virtually every university in the world. Methods are textbook, practiced by high school kids and artists. "Dual use" and ?designer bugs? is a horse that is 30 years down the road. It is never going back in the barn. Locking the barn door is worse than useless. It prevents us from understanding it as well as those that are embracing it.

If people that want to be useful watchdogs would do their homework, they would be agitating for much more BSL-4 research, NOT less, for more BSL-3 research, not less.

Sorry, but I completely agree with the sentiment of animal rights activists: there's no real reason to conduct experiments on animals.

Oh, we say that we do it for the benefit or protection of humans, though it is often the case that animal experiments and tests have little, if any, practical value. If a product, be it a medical treatment or a new brand of shampoo, is ultimately intended for human use, then human test subjects should be used to develop and test its safety and usefulness.

(As an slight aside, all researchers should probably take a long, hard gander at the writings of Princeton ethicist Peter Singer, perhaps starting with his "Animal Liberation" (1975).)

It really is as simple as that, regardless of what excuses the apologists for animal research may come up with to the contrary.

The issue for me the the simple fact that too many animal research facilities using "dual use" biotechnolgy research do not practice public disclosure nor do they follow the "Fink report's" ,"seven experiments of concern". All animal research facilities including ONPRC should be contacted in accordance with NIH guidelines and make public their Intsitutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) minutes. The pathogens and viruses these facilities work with in the wrong hands are bioweapons and could potenially do more harm than good. The sole purpose of the BWC in 1975 was to prevent the possible widespread contamination possible by "designer bugs" if you will. The viruses once genetically modified are for more dangerous than in their naive state. There is currently no federal oversight on this research. The NSABB only makes recommendations it is up to the indivdiual IBC to follow protocol and if you do your homework 90% fall the grade, Plum Island and the Texas A&M are good examples of the IBC failures. Researchers should take note of the public concerns instead of running from the realities of their research. If you have nothing to hide you would opt for disclosure.

I've just finished reading Susan E. Lederer's article Political Animals: The shaping of biomedical research literature in twentieth-century America(1992) in The Scientific Enterprise in America: Readings from ISIS (1996.)

Lederer explains that beginning in the 1920s, in response to antivivisectionist literature quoting scientific papers, editors began actively hiding the details of animal experimentation by doing things like removing references to animals' names, eliminating descriptions of their struggles and cries, altering numbers used, carefully editing drawings and photos to eliminate animals' faces and retraint methods, and changing plain language like "dog" into "animal" or "subject."

Lederer notes that some subsequent confused claims by antivivisectionists were at least partly due to intentionally misleading papers.

This tradition appears to be alive and well as an informed reading of Conn's accounts of Matt Rossell's undercover investigation readily demonstrates. Having personally viewed hours of Matt's video footage, it is clear to me that there was no editing done between the raw footage and the footage that made it into the USDA complaint.

Conn himself appears to carefully edit or crop certain facts from his audience's attention. The most obvious one is the fact that joining Matt at the conference and speaking of her own observations of the primate center over a period of time was USDA APHIS inspector Dr. Isis Johnson-Brown. Dr. Johnson-Brown's public statements concerning the conditions at the Oregon primate center can be found easily with a simple Google search.

Among other things, Conn also fails to mention that the immediate goal of the Portland-based Liberation Collective had long been public forums with participation by researchers at the primate center.

Primate center scientists (and their colleagues across the country) refused for years to speak in public with the public about their experiments and research. This silence remains the status quo today.

I have yet to read Conn's book, maybe it comes clean about the outrage among even other Oregon center vivisectors at seeing Matt's footage of Daniel Casey's dyskinesic capuchin monkeys and their demand that they be sent to a sanctuary. Maybe it comes clean about the burns to the monkeys' penises. Maybe it comes clean about Dr. Isis Johnson-Brown's battle with APHIS over basic enforcement of the AWA.

But if it doesn't, I won't be surprised. The primate labs are a dirty and secretive business.

I'd like to congratulate Michael Conn and James Parker for standing up to the AR extremists, and for exposing the tactics of terror and harassment the extremists use and the distortions and half-truths that pervade anti-vivisectionist propaganda.

I would encourage scientists, students, and other citizens who support scientific research to join "Speaking of Research", a campaign that has just been launched by Americans for Medical Progress in cooperation with the UK based Pro-Test campaign.

LINK

Together we can defend those threatened by extremists and stand up for science!