The Monkey WarsThe controversy over the use of primates in research admits of no easy answers. We have all benefited from the medical discoveries of primate research--vaccines for polio, rubella, and hepatitis B are just a few. But we have also learned more in recent years about how intelligent apes and monkeys really are: they can speak to us with sign language, they can even play video games (and are as obsessed with the games as any human teenager). And activists have also uncovered widespread and unnecessarily callous treatment of animals by researchers (in 1982, a Silver Spring lab was charged with 17 counts of animal cruelty). It is a complex issue, made more difficult by the combative stance of both researchers and animal activists. In The Monkey Wars, Deborah Blum gives a human face to this often caustic debate--and an all-but-human face to the subjects of the struggle, the chimpanzees and monkeys themselves. Blum criss-crosses America to show us first hand the issues and personalities involved. She offers a wide-ranging, informative look at animal rights activists, now numbering some twelve million, from the moderate Animal Welfare Institute to the highly radical Animal Liberation Front (a group destructive enough to be placed on the FBI's terrorist list). And she interviews a wide variety of researchers, many forced to conduct their work protected by barbed wire and alarm systems, men and women for whom death threats and hate mail are common. She takes us to Roger Fouts's research center in Ellensburg, Washington, where we meet five chimpanzees trained in human sign language, and we visit LEMSIP, a research facility in New York State that has no barbed wire, no alarms--and no protesters chanting outside--because its director, Jan Moor-Jankowski, listens to activists with respect and treats his animals humanely. And along the way, Blum offers us insights into the many side-issues involved: the intense battle to win over school kids fought by both sides, and the danger of transplanting animal organs into humans. "As it stands now," Blum concludes, "the research community and its activist critics are like two different nations, nations locked in a long, bitter, seemingly intractable political standoff....But if you listen hard, there really are people on both sides willing to accept and work within the complex middle. When they can be freely heard, then we will have progressed to another place, beyond this time of hostilities." In The Monkey Wars, Deborah Blum gives these people their voice. |
Contents
3 | |
Of Street Toughs and Target Practice | 31 |
The Black Box | 55 |
The Trap | 79 |
The Face of Evil | 105 |
The Pegleg Pig | 133 |
Hear No Evil | 153 |
The Salt in the Soup | 181 |
Not a Nice Death | 201 |
Just Another Jerk Scientist | 221 |
The Last Mangabeys | 243 |
One Nation | 261 |
Notes | 277 |
Index | 295 |
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Common terms and phrases
Africa AIDS Alex Pacheco Allan American animal activists animal advocates animal models animal research animal rights Animal Welfare apes asked baboon baby began believe Biomedical Research Block blood brain cage California cells chimpanzees chimps Christine Stevens crab-eating macaques Deborah Fouts disease dogs drugs Duane Rumbaugh Ebola experiments federal foamy viruses Foundation for Biomedical Gerone going Gormus Harlow Harry Harlow heart Henrickson hippocampus human immune infection Institute isolation issue laboratory LEMSIP leprosy Lerche letter Levine live liver look mangabeys memory Moor-Jankowski mothers NABR orangutan organization Pacheco PETA pigtail macaques polio primate center Primate Research Center Primatology rats Regional Primate Research rhesus macaques Roger Fouts says scientists Shirley McGreal Silver Spring monkeys sooty mangabeys species Starzl surgery talk Taub tests There's thought tion transplant trying Tulane University USDA vaccine veterinarian virologist virus Washoe wild Yerkes Zola-Morgan
Popular passages
Page 92 - I care about is whether the monkey will turn out a property I can publish. I don't have any love for them. Never have. I really don't like animals. I despise cats. I hate dogs. How could you like monkeys?
Page 280 - Stereotaxic lesions of the hippocampus in monkeys: Determination of surgical coordinates and analysis of lesions using magnetic resonance imaging.
Page 142 - When it comes to having a central nervous system and the ability to experience pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.
Page 282 - A nonhuman primate model for studying causes and effects of poor pregnancy outcomes.
Page 118 - Friends! Romans! Countrymen! (laughter) Look, he wants to shake hands. Come on. ... He says, 'You're gonna rescue me from this, aren't you? Aren't you?
Page 142 - A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy: the debate over animal rights is full of equations that don't add up.
Page 267 - These are animals that teach each other negotiating skills, learn to operate computers, recognize their kinfolk from a photograph. They are intelligent, capable, quick learners. They are, like us, complex beings. Once we recognize that, we must also recognize that the choices we make in using them are complex, too. It might once have been easy to toss a monkey into a research project, taking no particular thought. Today, the reverse is true. We should hesitate and we should think.
Page 101 - How far are we justified here in regarding monkeys and apes as useful substitutes for man? The hard fact — as we all know — is that, for most of the important psychological questions confronting man today, we search the crowded ranks of the non-human primates in vain for an acceptable human model. Our frailties, as well as our accomplishments, set us apart from the animal community.
Page 112 - The kittens had lesions around their necks and many had metal tags with identification tags imbedded in the flesh of their necks. These injuries apparently resulted from chains being placed around the kittens' necks when they were young and not being replaced or lengthened as they grew older.