Causecast

by JONATHAN HARRIS, Managing Editor

I’m going to come right out and say it. I’m in favor of animal testing. No, this does not mean I’m in favor of torturing animals, that I relish the inevitable loss of life of our world’s precious creatures, that I strategically ignore the pain of others and go through my days with a cold heart. I wish there was another solution and, one day, there may be, but for now, testing our drugs and medical theories on animals is the easiest and most effective way of preventing incalculable human suffering.

I’ll present a little background on why I, an ecstatic liberal whose primary social concerns are establishing universal health care, ending corporate greed and reforming the industrial food industry, am putting my foot down so vehemently in favor of a practice that, at first thought, most moral people don’t defend. In early March of this year, J. David Jentsch, a professor and scientist at UCLA whose lab conducts experiments on rodents and primates to potentially develop psychiatric drugs and treatments, witnessed his 2006 Volvo catch fire and burn outside of his West L.A. home. The terrorist group Animal Liberation Brigade took credit for the attack. I do not wish to openly link to this organization, but you can visit their site to see responses to various attacks at www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/.

Here is what they wrote the day after the attack on Jentsch’s property:

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On Friday night March sixth we burned a vehicle at the home of David Jentsch xxxx Beverly Glen Boulevard in Los Angeles. Jentsch is a peice of human shit who addicts monkeys to methamphetamines and other street drugs at the University of California at Los Angeles.

He associates with other peices of human shit like Edythe London who is addicting and experimenting on monkeys. The things you and others like you do to feeling sentient monkeys is so cruel and disgusting we can’t believe anyone would be able to live with themselves.

David, here’s a message just for you, we will come for you when you least expect it and do a lot more damanage than to your property. Where ever you go and what ever you do we’ll be watching you as long as you continue to do your disgusting experiments on monkeys.

And a special message for the FBI, the more legit activists you fuck with the more it inspires us since wer’re the people whom you least suspect and when we hit we hit hard.

Animal Liberation Brigade

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Obviously, I’m not trying to connect the largely non-violent animal rights movement to this group of extremists. However, I was inspired to investigate the experiments Jentsch’s office conducts, and the history of the western world’s practice of using animals in medical research. What I found was a severe misunderstanding of modern research by the animal rights movement at large.

MODERN ANIMAL RESEARCH

In a recent discussion with a UCLA medical researcher, I asked what regulations are in place to ensure the suffering of animals is minimized. He replied with great confidence. “Any experiment performed on an animal has to be approved by [UCLA’s] Animal Regulatory Committee. Any protocol we use has to go through a long approval process, ensuring the comfort of the animal.”

According to the researcher, the vast majority of conducted experiments involve simple cognitive tasks, such as hitting a button to receive a pellet. When I asked if the remaining experiments were more invasive, he told me the most pain his subjects ever experience are due to injections that last no more than a few seconds, a quick, fleeting burst of pain like you might experience when you stub your toe.

In addition, veterinary staff is always present in these laboratories, and the health and living conditions of the animals are consistently monitored. I’m not trying to paint the laboratory as some sort of rodent-primate utopia, but it’s far from the Inquisition-era torture chamber you’ll find in the Peta videos.

WHAT IS PAIN AND HOW IS IT TOLERATED?

It becomes important, I realize, to point out the distinction between pain and suffering. All mammals have the propensity to experience physical pain, and each living mammal undoubtedly will many times over the course of a lifetime. Pain can be momentary and unexpected as in the toe-stubbing example, momentary and expected as when one attempts to treat a burn with an anti-infectant, prolonged and unexpected in the case of deep wounds from a knife or bullet, or prolonged and expected as comes with the pain of a debilitating disease.

In the physical and even mental sense, I would characterize ‘suffering’ as a pain of the distinctly prolonged variety. If a young child is separated from its mother, the confusion and mental anguish it experiences is most assuredly a form of suffering, as is the pain an elderly Alzheimer’s patient endures on a daily basis.

It is with this distinction that we can begin to describe the experiences of laboratory animals. Based upon the small mountain of research I embarked upon to prepare for this article, the laboratory animals nearly exclusively experience pain for brief moments, and the utmost care is taken in keeping this pain brief and preventing it from developing into suffering, that more brutal of verbs.

UCLA’S DUAL PROTESTS

On April 22, I arrived at the corner of Westwood and Le Conte just a few minutes after 10:30 a.m. An animal rights protest was planned and a small but noticeable group began to form. These people, if misguided in knowledge, are certainly passionate. They brought with them a number of graphic posters with the Peta insignia at the bottom.

Far from being antagonistic right off the bat, I gently approached several attendees and struck up conversations. They all agreed that any level of animal research is reprehensible and that the people who perform the experiments must have the moral values of your average fascist dictator. I had the same question for all of them: what are the alternatives? They would look to each other with curious eyes, shuffle through their pamphlets or gesture to the photos on their posters, but none were able to give me a specific answer. One person told me “technology,” but that’s about as close as it got.

By the time 11:30 came around, another group began to form on the west side of Westwood Blvd., one that quickly dwarfed the size of the gathering across the street. UCLA Pro-Test is an impromptu organization formed after Jentsch’s car was set ablaze. This group, along with other Pro-Test organizations around the world, seeks to educate the public about animal research and quell the animal rights movement’s dissemination of false and misleading details.

As UCLA Pro-Test and its hundreds of supporters marched north toward the campus, and more honks from passing cards filled the air, I realized that I’m hardly on the losing end of this battle. In fact, the men dressed as monkeys one hundred yards behind seemed positively silly. I spoke with several researchers about the images Peta and others had brought with them. One pictured a cat wearing one of those electronic metal helmets and another showed, literally, a dog on a barbecue.

Jentsch’s studies almost exclusively involve rodents and primates and I was assured that they are never grilled on the barbie. In the United States, almost all research animals are rodents, reptiles or fish, with dogs, cats and monkeys comprising less than one percent of the total.

THE MORAL QUESTION

According to the British Royal Society, nearly every medical achievement in the 20th century is attributable to experiments conducted on animals. The following ailments would likely still be prevalent in the United States today without research conducted on the bodies of animals over the last 100 years: whooping cough, diphtheria and polio. The reason that you, your family, and everyone you know is free of polio is quite simply due to the research performed by Jonas Salk and others in the middle of the 20th century. This is easily the firmest argument of those who favor animal testing. Of course, this argument will not convince you if you object to animal testing on a moral basis, regardless of human benefit.

It’s quite fruitless, actually, to present human benefits when discussing this issue, as it really comes right down to a philosophical question. Is it moral to perform tests on animals that will cause the creature even the slightest amount of pain, if the results of those tests have the potential to alleviate the suffering of humans. If your answer to this question is no, then I can’t convince you. On a philosophical level, we simply disagree.

Unlike opposition to gay marriage, however, it is perfectly reasonable to oppose testing on animals on a moral basis. The animals are, after all, bred for this purpose, and they will eventually be put to sleep. I’ll admit that it’s not fun to think about, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for wanting there to be a better solution. That being said, animal research is an absolute necessity if humankind is going to make any further medical progress. Even as I write this article, more news has come out linking Parkinson’s disease to pesticides, a breakthrough which would not be possible without animal research.

Let’s also be perfectly clear: those who use violence and threats as a means to achieve their goals are terrorists, plain and simple. This illegal activity cannot be tolerated, and those who stood in solidarity with UCLA’s science department on April 22 showed their support for medical research and the ongoing prevention of human suffering.

Image by audrey_sel, flickr