This is the third of several stories exploring the contentious relationship between the scientific community, which insists animal research is essential to medical progresss, and the animal rights activists working to abolish animal experimentation. Earlier pieces included the effort to shift the debate from sidewalks to courtrooms, and efforts to establish the “personhood” of species like apes and whales. Daniel Andreas San Diego joined Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” watch list in 2009. Bin Laden is gone, but San Diego remains. Listed as “armed and ... Read More
Reducing the Use of Animals in Experiments
March 16, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
The U.S. is the only industrialized nation still using chimpanzees on a large scale for invasive experiments — which sticks in animal activists’ craws. More than 900 live in laboratories — most are warehoused, some for 50 years. The bipartisan Great Ape Protection & Cost Savings Act working its way through Congress would prohibit invasive research on chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos and ban breeding them for research. In September 2010, the European Union passed legislation that 27 member EU nations must find and use alternate research methods to reduce animals’ ... Read More
Five Orcas, Five Slaves or Five Persons?
February 2, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
In late December we asked the provocative question “Should Animals Be Considered People?” in exploring the philosophy of legal scholar Steven Wise. Since 1984, Wise has followed a 25-year plan to have animals declared “legal persons” and afforded basic common law rights. As we wrote then, “He hopes to bring the first lawsuit in 2012. A case, he says, will not be hard to find, although the exact plaintiff — circus elephant, research lab primate? — hasn’t been determined.” An adjunct professor at Oregon’s Lewis and Clark Law School, Wise is the founder and president ... Read More
Pets, Vets and Stalking Horses
December 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
It’s not just on campus research labs that some are feeling the heat brought by increasingly sophisticated efforts to enshrine animal rights. Veterinarians are right on the front lines of animal rights litigation, veterinary ethicist Jerrold Tannenbaum told attendees at a 2010 Society for Neuroscience panel titled “Conferring Legal Rights to Animals: Research in the Crosshairs.” That’s because of a trend that started in the 1990s to push for what lawyers would call “non-economic” damages like “emotional distress” or loss of companionship. Pepperdine University law ... Read More
Should Animals Be Considered People?
December 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
This is the second of several stories exploring the contentious relationship between the scientific community that insists animal research is essential to medical progress and the animal rights activists working to abolish animal experimentation. In part one, we examine pressure put on the biomedical research community by an increasingly savvy animal-rights effort. On December 19, 1994, animal protection lawyer Steven Wise — a deeply patient man — was frustrated. A decade into his 25-year plan to upend the fundamental legal principle that animals are property or “things” with no ... Read More