In addition to electronic surveillance, code cards, high-tech security and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, the animal-research industry has another way of evading scrutiny: the public can't judge their 'high level' science.
MARTHA ROSENBERG: ‘If you are like most people, you know a lot more about how farm animals are treated on factory farms than dogs, primates and other animals are treated in US labs… There is probably no industry more afraid of transparency than animal research. Ever since Alex Pacheco exposed treatment of the Silver Spring monkeys in 1981, animal researchers have been reduced to uttering “it’s not how it looks” or “let us explain” when unwanted images surface…
And, expectedly, animal researchers turn nasty when their deeds are exposed and career security threatened. For example, when a group called Progress for Science dared to question taxpayer-funded primate research conducted at UCLA in 2014, they were met by an angry mob of as many as 40 UCLA researchers and their supporters who yelled obscenities. Some pro-animal-research protesters became so livid they had to be restrained by police. It was hard to believe the mob was, by day, men and women of “science” dedicated to advancing human medicine. It was reminiscent of Northwestern University medical students who jeered protestors of their “dog labs” outside their medical building in 1988–future healers.
In the 1980s, the animal-research industry tried to spin negative public opinion with campaigns like “your daughter or your dog” implying your child would die if the dog or chimp didn’t. Then researchers replaced dog labs with pig labs, a less loved animal. But by the 2000s, the animal-research industry, running scared, pushed through the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which criminalizes interference with “the operations of an animal enterprise”, a precursor to “Ag-Gag” laws covering farm operations…
In addition to underground vivariums, electronic surveillance, code cards, high-tech security and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, the animal-research industry has another way of evading scrutiny: the public can’t judge their “high level” science. Yet revealing that maternal deprivation causes harm in babies or maternal cocaine use affects the fetus is not “high level” science–it is a waste of taxpayer dollars, cruelty to animals and an insult to our intelligence. The animal-research industry is a vast, macabre enterprise richly supporting medical centers and individual researchers with almost no transparency or accountability’. SOURCE…
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