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Mobilization for Animals

By Catherine Podojil

On Thursday evening, February 24, in a meeting room at Euclid Square Mall, several people were signing up for a bus trip to Madison, Wisconsin to attend a protest demonstration April 24. The scene was reminiscent of other preparations both past and present-people readying for a rally in favor of civil rights, women's rights, rights for gay and lesbian people, demonstrations for Native Americans, farm workers and poor people, anti-war and disarmament rallies. But while the content of the rally is similar-several specific demands leading to justice the subjects of the protest are different from all previous protests.

Cleveland demonstrators are going to Madison to speak for animals, those brother and sister species with whom we share the earth and whose oppression is ancient and unceasing. Specifically we are going to protest the imprisonment, suffering and death yearly of hundreds of millions of laboratory animals in the United States and other countries around the world (an estimated 70 million in the U.S.).

Madison, Wisconsin is the site of one of four regional Primate Research Centers funded by the National Institute of Health. Three others are in Davis, California, Boston and Atlanta, where there will also be protests on April 24. Support demonstrations will be held in several European countries, ten at last count.

This coordinated action is the work of a group called Mobilization for Animals, a coalition of several dozen animal rights groups nationwide, which was formed in October of 1981 by Dr Richard Morgan, an English professor and former anti-war and farm worker activist. There are now chapters in most major U.S. cities; the Cleveland chapter is about five months old.

Several speakers at recent meetings have educated a growing audience as to what goes on in laboratories and why most of it is unnecessary from a scientific standpoint; let alone from the moral and ethical perspective. Billions of dollars of funds, our taxes, are granted each year to duplicate the same experiments over and over in a largely unregulated and inaccessible arena. There literally is no public access to these laboratories, apart from infiltration.

Many active animal rights workers are themselves

Together we can make a difference.

former researchers whose work ultimately became morally repugnant to them as well as scientifically untenable. As one of them says, "I worked with primates; I shocked them, I irradiated them, and I euthanized them. Then I changed my mind and I'm on the other side."

It is not pleasant to read about the variety of atrocious experiments performed on animals for the

"good of mankind" [sic], but it is a necessary process in order to know what we are fighting. Some of the experiments defy all reason, apart from their cruelty. They tell us nothing that common sense and our own experience have not already taught us.

One of the most infamous of all experimenters was a Dr. Harry Harlow, who plied his trade at the University of Wisconsin. For twenty years plus, Harlow did experiment after experiment to see if he could induce severe psychosis in baby monkeys by taking them from their mothers and substituting surrogate "mothers" made of wire. As the baby embraced the wire "mother," the surrogate could do a number of things-give the baby a shock, freeze it, stick sharp spikes into it, or blow air on it with such force that the baby's skin was sheared off. Harlow also sought to see if he could create depression in baby monkeys by raising them in total isolation in

If Only

The Public Knew, If They Were Allowed To See, These Activities Would Be Stopped

what he termed a "pit of despair," totally cut off from touch and hearing of either humans or other monkeys. Harlow was most successful, in producing psychosis and depression, that is. Can you think of any beneficial use this knowledge could have for anyone, human or primate?

Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History gave cats electric shocks and blinded them to see if the cats' sexual desire and performance would be affected. What do you think they learned?

Another project involved blowtorching all the skin off a pig to see if the animal would lose body fluids more quickly. What do you suppose they found out? It is important to say that these examples are not atypical.

At the end of his career, Dr. Harlow admitted two things. First, he didn't like monkeys, which should have surprised no one. And second, surprising his colleagues and others, he said that 80 to 90 percent of the experiments done on animals are useless and the other 10 to 20 percent could be done without causing suffering to the animals. Harry Harlow is dead now, but his research lab is re-funded every year and the experiments he created, with slight variations, are going on right now.

And why do the animals suffer? Haven't most of us been taught that researchers always make sure that animals are given anaesthesia and painkillers when they are experimented on? This is unfortunately a public relations myth, one of many that we need to expose. There are no laws governing the use of anaesthetics and analgesics in experiments on animals, just as there are no laws specifying what can or cannot be done in the laboratory as an experiment. Dr. John McArdle, a former researcher who now works for the Humane Society of the United States, gives a good example: "If you stand out in the street beating a dog with a hammer, you will likely be arrested for cruelty. But if you take the dog into a lab and beat it to death, saying you want to measure how many blows of a hammer it takes to kill a dog, you are perfectly within the law." The only protection given by law covers the transport of lab animals and

their care (food, water, space, etc.) before the experi-

ment.

Why are primates being chosen as the first major international action? Certainly thousands of monkeys, baboons, gorillas and other apes perish in laboratories each year. But so do millions of cats, dogs, pigs, rats, mice, rabbits, reptiles, frogs, toads, birds, marine animals, and others-all sentient, all capable of suffering, all without the power to consent or dissent.

"We've chosen the primate centers," says Don Barnes, a former researcher with the Army and current director of the National Anti-Vivisection Society, "because they show an enormous waste of money for the results they're supposed to be producing, because much of their research is redundant, the centers are not well supervised, and the mortality rate is very high." Even a number of scientists who believe in research find the primate centers an embarrassment. Mobilization for Animals' demands include closing down two primate research facilities immediately, one in Louisiana and another in Oregon. Other demands include immediate implementation of anacsthetics and analgesics for all animals in all parts of the experimental process, the establishment of an overseer group made up of MFA and other animal rights people to monitor the labs, and an emphasis on phasing out redundant experiments and experiments for which there are already clear alternatives to live animal use.

An important related event, though coincidental to the choice of primates, has to do with a recent court case involving monkeys. Dr. Edward Taub, the director of the Institute for Behavioral Research in Maryland, was convicted last summer of cruelty to animals for failing to provide veterinary care for one of the monkeys in his lab (Maryland is one of the few states that does not exclude rescarchers from the cruelty statues). He had originally been found guilty on six counts of cruelty, but during the appeal the prosecution was severely limited in the evidence it could present (where have we heard that story before?), so five of the convictions were dismissed. Taub also lost his 1982 National Institute of Health grant for continued work on the monkeys. Animal activist Alex Pacheco, who was instrumental in gathering the evidence of cruelty in Taub's laboratory, and his organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, are in the process of suing for custody of the monkeys, who are currently being cared for at NIH. Taub is also suing to get them back and to have his research grant reinstated. The outcome of this case will be crucial. If Pacheco and PETA win, an important precedent will be set on which to build and develop a legal system for the protection of laboratory animals.

Although mass activity on behalf of animal rights is fairly recent, the roll call of respected members of our own species who have held vivisection and other animal abuse in contempt is a long one. Included are Lucy Stone, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Robert Browning. Mark Twain cut through to the heart of the matter, as was his wont. (continued on page 15)

Mobilization for Animals is a national coalition of groups and individuals dedicated to initiating direct action campaigns on behalf of animal rights.

The Primate Center Mass Mobilization, demonstrations of public outrage, will be held April 24, 1983 at the primate research centers in Boston, MA; Davis, CA; and Madison, WI.

Join us.

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