Once, in 1999, 87 primate vivisectors in the United States received razor blades in the mail along with a written threat. No one was hurt. But since that one case, nearly every published bashing of the animal rights movement, particularly in Madison, claims that activists send razor blades to scientists.
Columnist Jessica Sprang's Nov. 1 attack on the animal rights movement, ""Animal rights activists must respect research,"" makes the broad indictment that ""most [activists] maintain the uneducated belief that acts of vandalism and criminal trespassing are the only way to petition for change.""
A tiny minority of activists endorses vandalism or criminal trespassing. This is a matter of fact—one among many that elude Sprang. Sprang claims that, ""Professors and researchers at UW-Madison...endure harassment in the form of phone calls, a surplus of unwanted mail-order paraphernalia, demonstrations at their homes and criminal damage to?property.""?
Approximately eight public demonstrations have been held in front of the homes of UW-Madison's primate researchers in the past seven years. I participated in all of them. Police were almost always present; they were lawful, peaceful and generally quiet.
As far as I am aware, no one has ever been questioned by police concerning any of the above allegations, all of which seem to have come from a single researcher. ""Professors and researchers at UW-Madison"" are enduring nothing. Sprang is woefully uneducated about the animal rights issue and the situation locally.
Animal researchers at the UW have consistently refused to participate in public debate with medical experts critical of animal models of human disease or drug response.
The university's willingness to lie about its use of animals was established during the Vilas Zoo monkey scandal; its animal care record, as documented by the USDA, is filled with instances of neglect, violations and incompetence.
Sprang should have consulted the public record prior to waxing so ignorantly. A better story for Sprang to investigate would be the recent destruction of?60 boxes of videotapes of experiments on monkeys at the university.
These tapes, completely irreplaceable, apparently not reviewed, and now lost to science and humanity forever, were destroyed after a single tape was requested under Wisconsin's open records statute.
Rick Bogle
www.primatefreedom.com?
