ju s t o u t T July 9 . 1 9 9 6 T 9
WEAR
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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.”
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