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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (July 5, 1996)
ju s t o u t T July 9 . 1 9 9 6 T 9 WEAR forward, IT SHARE OR IT NEVER Clash of priorities straight AIDS activists challenge animal rights activists: Is the life o f a rat equal to the life of a human being? Change BIKES, CLOTHING, & OUTRÉ by Bob Roehr nimal rights extremists have placed the lives of animals above those of me and my friends,” Jeff Getty told re porters at a June 18 news conference in Washington, D.C. The AIDS treat ment activist received an experimental baboon bone marrow transplant earlier this year. “The AIDS community has woken up and realized there can be no more silence on this issue,” Getty said, “because silence equals death. And we will not go quietly to our graves.” The event was part of an unprecedented coa lition of scientists and patient advocates united to denounce the animal rights movement as imped ing vital, life-saving medical research. The weeklong series of education and protest activi ties will surround an international gathering of animal rights advocates. “For too long, ani mal rights activists have tried to stand in the way of medical progress for human life,” Frankie Trull had told a news conference the previous day. She heads up the Foundation for B io medical Research. “We are united because the devastation, delay and outright intim idation that animal rights groups are imposing on crucial m edical research is greater today than at any time in the history of scientific inquiry.” Mike Shriver, pub lic policy director for the National Association of People with AIDS, rep resented 34 AIDS orga- a q T UP’ s Steve Michael nizations which have signed a statement on the use of laboratory ani mals in HIV/AIDS research and treatment. Their statement read in part, “Certainly, the members of the HIV/AIDS community support the compassionate treatment of animals. We also demand that humane care of animals be used in all research, including full enforcement of appli cable federal, state and local laws. However, one fact is undeniable: The swiftest and most certain route to a cure for HIV/AIDS is intensive re search— including the use of laboratory animals— and from that route we will not waver. “We believe that animal studies are a neces sary complement to clinical studies in humans. In fact, every drug presently employed to treat HIV infection and the opportunistic infections that kill most people with HIV were developed using animals. And many other compounds which seemed extremely promising in computer models and in vitro, were proved in animal models to be extremely toxic. “For the foreseeable future, animal research is essential to progress in the study, treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, including the develop ment of new approaches that may ultimately lead to a cure.” ACT UP Washington’s Steve Michael re called a 1989 attack on an Arizona State Univer sity lab studying Cryptosporidium, a waterborne parasite deadly to people with compromised im mune systems. The Animal Liberation Front de stroyed the long-term research, released 1,200 A rats, mice and rabbits used in the study, and burned the building to the ground. “I can’t help but think of a friend of mine, Chris Fons, from ACT UP Milwaukee, one of more than a hundred people killed by an outbreak of Crypto in Milwaukee.” Michael wonders if the destroyed research might have been able to prevent those deaths. Christine Buffleben, of ACT UP Golden Gate’s Breast Cancer Committee, told of her own mother’s nine-year struggle with the disease. “When it metastasized to her lungs, her bones, her liver, her spleen and her bone marrow, our family did not have time to use drugs that had not already shown some indication of beneficial results.... Let’s end breast cancer, AIDS and other diseases, not animal research.” Zora Kram er Brown, who founded the Breast Cancer Re source Committee in 1989, survived the dis ease herself. African American women have “the highest mortality, the highest rate o f death” from breast can cer, she said. It has struck four generations of her family. “No longer can we afford complacency in the patient community, among our elected offi cials, in the media or among researchers,” said Brown. “Our com bined voices to educate the American public will be heard. The stakes are much too high to be ignored and for us to be silent.” Getty dismissed the assertion by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that most ani mal research can be done on computer simula tions. “We do not have a computer that can possibly emulate the human immune system, the tens of billions of cells, each with 27 to 35 differ ent reaction options that we know of, and prob ably a hundred more that we don’t. If we had such a computer we would have already found the cure for AIDS.” “We as scientists must stand up and speak up for what we do,” said spinal cord injury specialist Dr. Wise Young, a medical advisor to actor Chris topher Reeve. “I do experiments on animals be cause I believe this is the only way to achieve advances in spinal cord injury research.” “Every time I meet somebody like Christo pher Reeve, the urgency of what we have to do to get therapies for him comes through over and over again. This man cannot move. He’s trapped. If we, by doing some experiments on animals, can provide him with the oppoitunity for a therapy, we are obligated as human beings to do this.” To Michael, PETA is “saying that a rat is as valuable as a gay man with AIDS, a poor African American woman with breast cancer...that is unacceptable. They are marginalizing the lives of a majority of people in this country and around the world.” Shriver put it succinctly, “The logical conclu sion of discontinuing animal research, for me as a person with HIV disease, is death.” 1429 SE H a w t h o r n e P o r t l a n d , Or e g o n 97214 p h / f a x ( 503) 2 3 6 - 2 2 0 1 XPs t F a c t o @ a o l . c o m S k i d m o r e F o un ta i n Market ACCESSORIES BIANCHI CANNONDALC DIAMONDBACK SCOTT The Experts In Cycling Filli! Bik** F°r BI CYCLES 7 DAYS A WE E K 706 SE MLK JR BLVD / 503 233.5973 925 SW 10TH 91 S STATE PORTLAND LAKE OSWKGO 227-3535 636-3521 V Don't be left out in the cold! 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