Animal Liberation Movement

Nevertheless, during the decade of the 1980’s, there was a growing sentiment against the use of animals in research. Today that sentiment has been translated into a worldwide network of active organizations that continue to grow in strength and numbers. They are very vocal in demanding total abolition of the use of all animals for medical or laboratory experimentation.

Animal-rights activists are making their voices heard through street-corner demonstrations, political lobbying, magazines and newspapers, radio and television, and, most notably, militant and violent tactics. Said one prominent Canadian activist regarding the liberation movement: “It’s spreading rapidly through Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The States are becoming stronger. There’s phenomenal growth in Canada. There’s a group of networks spread world-wide and the trend globally is for support of the more aggressive animal rights movements.”

Some of these ‘aggressive networks’ are willing to use violence in support of their cause. During the last few years, at least 25 research laboratories in the United States have been vandalized by animal-rights groups. University laboratories have been bombed. These raids have caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage. Important records and valuable data have been destroyed. Research animals have been stolen and released. In one such act, valuable research on infant blindness was destroyed. Expensive equipment valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars has been smashed.

In an open letter to university officials and the news media, one militant group boasted that destroying a $10,000 microscope in about 12 seconds with a $5 steel bar was “a pretty good return on our investment.” In other places of research, doctors and scientists found blood poured on files and research materials and liberationist slogans spray-painted on walls. One report speaks of “harassment, including death threats, of scientists and their families.” In the United States, animal liberationists have issued more than a dozen threats of death or violence to individual scientists. In a 1986 London BBC broadcast, one commentator said: “What unites the activists is the conviction that direct action​—the destruction of property, and even life—​is morally justified in a war to free the animals.”

Said one animal-liberation leader: “There hasn’t been anybody hurt but that’s a dangerous threat . . . Sooner or later someone will strike back and there might be injuries to humans.” In 1986, in the same interview, the liberation leader predicted violence in Britain and West Germany. Events in the form of firebombings and violence have confirmed her prediction. In the United States, attempts have already been made on the life of one man whose company experiments with animals. Quick action on the part of the police saved him from being bombed. However, not all animal liberationists agree with these violent, illegal tactics.

Why Their Opposition?

According to The Journal of the American Medical Association, “most individuals concerned with the use of animals in biomedical research can be divided into two general categories: (1) those concerned with animal welfare who are not opposed to biomedical research but want assurance that animals are treated as humanely as possible, that the number of animals used are the absolute minimum required, and that animals are used only when necessary.” This group, according to recent surveys, makes up the less vocal majority.

The second group, according to the same source, are “those concerned with animal rights who take a more radical position and totally oppose the use of animals in biomedical research.” “Animals have fundamental inalienable rights,” said the codirector of one such group. “If an animal is capable of perceiving pain or feeling fear, then it has a right not to have those things inflicted upon it.” “There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights,” said another spokesperson. “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all mammals.”

[Box on page 9]

Differing Viewpoints

“I BELIEVE that animals have rights which, although different from our own, are just as inalienable. I believe animals have the right not to have pain, fear or physical deprivation inflicted upon them by us. . . . They have the right not to be brutalized in any way as food resources, for entertainment or any other purpose.”​—Naturalist Roger Caras, ABC-TV News, U.S.A. (Newsweek, December 26, 1988).