While searching Lexis for a related story, I happened to run across this well-written letter to the editor from a former animal researcher defending the importance of medical research. This originally appeared in the May 17, 2003 edition of the Columbus Dispatch (Ohio), and is reproduced here by permission of the author:
Shelley Finley’s May 3 letter, headlined “News of better treatment of lab animals is exaggerated,” contained the same nonsense that resulted in the funding cutbacks that cost me my career.
I don’t know of Finley’s qualifications for commenting on the evils of animal research, but as a former animal researcher at Ohio State University, I certainly feel qualified to offer a rebuttal.
Finley claims that thousands of primates are “often victims of the cruelest experiments.” But primates are valuable animals. Why would a researcher want to torture them?
Finley contends, “There are no real restrictions on what can be done to an animal during an experiment.” On the contrary, there are probably more rules and regulations governing the care and use of laboratory animals than governing my own health care. There are countless review and approval procedures that researchers must undergo here in the United States, and animal research in most European countries has nearly been brought to a halt because of similar regulations.
Finley then launches into a graphic description of brain mapping on conscious animals, which have portions of their skulls removed and are “forced” to respond to stimuli via brain electrodes. I once did that in bats, and I admit it initially sounds awful. My research concerned mechanisms of ear directionality. I would prepare small holes in the bats’ skulls under anesthesia, then record from brain cells with microscopic electrodes, which are considered painless. It was my intent to do all of my recordings under anesthesia, as it is hard to keep an electrode stationary in a squirming animal.
However, a few times my animals came out of anesthesia, unbeknownst to me. They would calmly listen to the soft beeps and whistles as I continued mapping their auditory systems, apparently comfortable enough that they had no reason to move. What the animal-liberation activists don’t tell people is that there are no pain receptors in the brain. They also don’t tell people that brain mapping is also done in conscious humans, for instance to locate epileptic foci.
Antivivisectionists such as Finley are well-meaning but deluded, and they consciously distort the truth of what researchers do, in order to make it sound as shocking and macabre as possible. In the real world, I have not once heard a scientist express pleasure at seeing an animal suffer, which is something I can’t say about much of humanity. Researchers do care about the welfare of their research animals, particularly when activists raid their laboratories at night, torture their animals for photo ops, and “liberate” them into environments where they cannot survive.
Finally, Finley bemoans that $23 million of tax money has been allocated for university research involving animals. This figure, if accurate, amounts to less than a dime per year per American citizen. If animal-rights activists believe even a dime is too much to pay for advances in medical technology, then surely their true objective is to shut down biomedical research entirely.
They are winning their campaign, and our biomedical infrastructure is indeed crumbling. Researchers such as myself are either teaching or finding other lines of work. Laboratories are closing their doors. Meanwhile, diseases such as SARS, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, cancer and heart disease threaten our well-being. Until Americans can muster enough common sense to see through these extremists’ distortions and lies, our future will be bleak indeed.
Sarah Fox
Columbus