Threat against science

Medical animal testing is necessary

A group against the use of animals for medical testing sent threatening letters to several campus research labs across the country, including the University, last week. The FBI has yet to determine if the group taking credit is affiliated with the internationally notorious Animal Liberation Front. This organization uses illegal and violent means to "save" animals from what they deem cruel testing.

Animal testing has been used for centuries to test procedures and medicine that could save human lives. Anyone willing to risk or take a single human life for the sake of animals has a distorted sense of priorities.

Using animals to save human lives was once as simple as sending a bird into a mine to determine if there was enough air to breath, but now includes the searches to cure cancer, AIDS and various other disorders and diseases that have long eluded doctors. While the Daily does not approve of animals used in cosmetic testing, it recognizes the importance of animals in medical research. Cosmetic research on animals is frivolous thanks to new technologies that allow all cosmetic research to be conducted without harming animals.

Animal research must be well-documented, but it already is at the University and at many institutions nationwide. Medical research has led to such breakthroughs as vaccines and antibiotics, using insulin to treat diabetes and countless advances in leukemia treatment. Animal testing also can be recognized for producing such medical technologies as the heart-lung machine, blood transfusions and kidney dialysis.

"If we were not to make these trials on animals, we would have to make them on humans instead - or else give up the hope of devising new drugs and new treatments," philosophy Prof. Carl Cohen said.

While the ALF is associated with violent means of rescuing animals, any method of freeing medical research animals risks human lives. Current research could be the cure for a disease that plagues millions of people - such as cancer. Losing such data could lead to the unnecessary suffering of countless humans by allowing patients to die while a cure may already have been at hand.

Activists against animal testing will argue for animal rights, Cohen said.

"The justification commonly used for the refusal to use animals - that it is an invasion of their rights - is a profound philosophical mistake," he said. "It is a misapplication of the concept of right."

The idea of animals having the same rights as humans is absurd, as the Constitution begins, "We the People." While lobbying for better treatment of animals is a worthy cause, giving them the same rights as humans would ruin the country. How long ago would Social Security have dried up if Fido's paw was in the pot along with the rest of the country?

Not only is medical research on animals justified, but it is also necessary. Yes, saving animals is a warm and fuzzy thought. But at what price? There is a distinct line between risking research that may one day save your life and adopting a pet. Those who cannot recognize the difference need to take a close look at human suffering before they threaten the research that will one day eliminate it.

11-01-99