Archive Interview - Don Barnes,
former Director Of Education, National Anti-Vivisection
Society:
As a former animal researcher and now a dedicated animal
rights activist, Donald Barnes brings a unique perspective
and valuable insight into the world of animal experimentation.
His clear and logical arguments are valuable tools of information
in discussing the ethical and scientific questions of animal
research...
Cool Green World: Until 1981 you were actively involved
in research on primates--
Don Barnes: That's correct--for 16 years.
CGW: What changed your mind?
Don: It's not a real simple answer to that question...I
had been ordered to do an experiment which required killing
4 trained rhesus monkeys, to determine what might happen
in the event they encountered radiation--the kind of radiation
that we'd expect in a nuclear explosion, a nuclear war.
I already knew the answer to the question. The dose of radiation
was too low to effect any behavioral change over the 10
hour post radiation period that we were interested in. Besides,
4 animals is not a large enough number to make up a statistically
significant group. So, I asked my peers--other psychologists,
and veterinarians and physicians, and physiologists and
the other scientists--what they thought about it and they
agreed with me that we could do this research by literature
review. We didn't need to sacrifice these animals. So, I
took it upstairs and said: "Look, let's not do this experiment."
And I was told: "Well, we promised it to the Strategic Air
Command. Our funding depends upon it. So, do the experiment."
And I was faced with a quandary--this was the first time
I had had to cause stress and pain and suffering and death
for a political reason. So I said: "No, I'm not going to
do it." That got me into a great deal of hot water. But,
it also gave me the opportunity to evaluate the efficiency
of all the research that my peers and I had been doing for
well over 25 years.
I had been in it some 15 1/2 years by that time but others
had been looking at the same parameters for years before
that. What I found was appalling and embarrassing, to tell
you the truth. The data that we had gathered was scientifically
credible but it really had no utility for human beings.
There was no way it could be used, and that was shocking
because I looked back on all of the dozens and dozens of
animals that I had seen suffer and die and said: "This isn't
justified." Then I made the "mistake"--really wasn't a mistake--of
reading Peter Singer's book. Peter raised some very interesting
questions. He asked what criteria do we use to differentiate
our species from other species? And why do we treat other
animals different than we treat human animals? Beginning
to answer those questions, to look at them for the first
time--which is surprising when you consider the background,
the training, the graduate school, and all the years of
research--I began to get really uncomfortable with the ethical
part of what I was doing. So, by the time this whole brouhaha
came to rest I had changed my mind about doing research
with non-human animals for the hypothetical sake of the
human being.
CGW: Do you feel animal experimentation is wrong for
ethical reasons only or also scientific reasons?
Don: Well I think it's WRONG. That's the ethical reason.
I think it's maladaptive. I think it's inefficient. I think
it doesn't work. So, scientifically, I disagree with the
premise that we can use non-human animals as models, as
surrogates for human beings. I read more journals today
than I ever did as a so-called scientist in the laboratory,
looking for those cases where I could not deny the efficacy
of animals, trying to say: "How could we have done this
in a better way? How could we have avoided causing the stress
and pain and suffering and death to other animals?" And
I'm convinced that we need to take those billions of dollars,
empty out the cages and study human beings. Not invasively,
certainly, but doing research on epidemiology, looking at
cell cultures, tissue cultures, computer-driven programs--whatever
it may take for us to understand about the human.
Many people say: "Well, what's the alternative to animal
research?" The alternative is to study what we're interested
in--and that's human beings. When you and I go the doctor
and we're diagnosed and treated, those data stay in our
file, they never go anywhere, and yet that's data on human
beings that's much more appropriate to look at than data
on mice and rats which make up the bulk of animals in research.
So do you think there are ANY experiments where you would
have to use non-human animals for invasive research? I don't
think any can be justified. I'm not opposed to learning
from animals, whether they're human or non-human, if we're
working on those beings for their sake. We have gained somewhat
in cancer therapy with Hodgkin's disease, childhood leukemia,
testicular cancer and a few forms of ovarian cancer--patients
have a higher expectation for a longer survival rate now
than they did 20 years ago.
But we didn't learn from non-human animals in this regard;
we learned from manipulating chemotherapeutic and radiotherapeutic
regimens within the human patients themselves. And essentially
the same paradigm obtains when you look at the AIDS research.
We've learned a great deal about HIV-1 and HIV-2 but we've
learned that through looking at humans who have the disease.
We have no non-human animal models of AIDS.
CGW: What are your thoughts on such experiments as the
baboon bone marrow transplant into a human AIDS patient?
Don: Well, obviously I think it's wrong from an ethical
point of view to sacrifice a baboon with an actually zero
probability of success. Every zenotransplant that has ever
been done from non-human animal to human has ended in failure.
I think most virologists would have agreed with me that
the odds here were zero that this person was going to profit
from this kind of thing. But even if he were, I still think
it's wrong to look at non-humans as though they're totally
expendable for human health and longevity. The other problem
is that there's a negative side to this. Some of the diseases
that we're seeing today, including AIDS, E-bola, and even
herpes perhaps, have leapt the species barrier. And when
one starts putting animal organs, or in this case bone marrow,
into a human being there may be viruses there that are much
worse than AIDS. There are various strains of E-bola for
example--there's one that is airborne and in a primate colony
it will wipe out the whole colony.
Fortunately for us, that particular strain is not lethal
for human beings, although other forms of E-bola are immediately
lethal, as we know from reading the news. We can't know
about these viruses until they emerge and we identify them.
So we can't test for a virus that we don't know about. And
that becomes a real difficult thing. Can you imagine an
airborne AIDS? We would be in serious trouble. We'd all
be around in gas masks and protective suits, I suppose.
But there are a lot of people who believe that the virus,
or the prion in the case of mad cow disease, these little
teeny particles are going to be the undoing of humanity.
I see that as a very real possibility. So we're taking a
chance when we're taking organs particularly from another
primate and putting those organs into a human being.
CGW: Why do you think experiments like the zenotransplants
are perpetuated? What's the motivation behind it?
Don: We have come in the scientific community to regard
other animals as objects, as tools. We don't understand
they're sentients. We are taught to be objective, not to
empathize, certainly not to anthropomorphize--to imbue non-human
animals with human characteristics. And we're actually taught
to stand at arm's lengths and not to experience, not to
feel with these animals--so they become totally expendable.
SEVENTEEN TO 22 MILLION ANIMALS A YEAR are used in the United
States at a minimum and it may be a good deal more than
that--but they are just objects, just tools for research.
Seeing them that way, just as expendable as another screwdriver
or a pair of pliers--Why not? They have no relevance in
and of themselves. We don't respect them. Even though they
share our planet we accord them absolutely no rights and
we know that non-human animals have no rights, they're chattel,
they're to be bought and sold; in fact, that's where the
word cattle came from.
CGW: So you feel that the most effective research would
be to do non-invasive human studies?
Don: Yes, I think so--biochemical studies. We've gone a
long ways in genetic mapping--we're finding out what happens
to humans who have malfunction of various genetic traits
and so forth. But that hasn't helped us. We look in the
newspaper and there's a big breakthrough. We've identified
a gene that in 1% of Jewish women will probably lead to
breast cancer, for example. But what do we do with that?
It's like it's been years since the gene for sickle-cell
anemia has been located and people were saying that this
is wonderful. But if you can't manipulate that gene, if
there's not something you can do with it, the most you can
do is identify the person in danger and say: "You're in
danger of getting these kinds of diseases." Nonetheless,
we are starting to understand the human being in this regard
and I think something will come out of this. But to map
the genome of a mouse or a rat is a far cry from the information
that we want to know and yet 85% to 90% of all animals used
in biomedical research are mice or rats.
My opponents in this regard would say: "Well, we choose
the best animal as the best model for the human being. For
example, we use the armadillo to study leprosy." It's a
misleading statement because, as I said, the vast majority
are mice and rats because they're cheap, because they have
a short life span, because you can turn them over, and you
can turn out papers every few weeks because you can have
so many subjects. You couldn't do that with human beings.
It would take a much longer time to get a group of people
who are epidemiologically significant enough to show that
there is indeed an effect. I think smoking is a really wonderful
example of this. For years the tobacco companies have maintained
that there is no scientific evidence that smoking causes
lung cancer, and, if you count only as scientific evidence
the non-human animal models, they're absolutely correct.
Because no matter how many beagles or baboons or other animals
were smoked, were forced to inhale carbon monoxide, there
was never a consistent model of lung cancer. It's only when
we took humans, smokers and non-smokers, and we compared
the longevity, the incidence of lung cancer or whatever,
that we can see that there's a definite correlation and,
therefore, a very probable relationship. So, that's the
kind of example that I'm talking about-until we know what
happens to the humans we don't know what happens at all.
CGW: Is a real effort being made by researchers to find
alternatives to the use of animals in experiments?
Don: There are a few individuals who are very concerned.
I was in Guelph, Canada at the veterinary school and those
professors, those faculty, have developed alternatives for
surgical techniques. They use a resusci-dog, a small model
dog that can be manipulated, to show typical resuscitation
techniques and so forth. They're looking at biochemical
tests and in-vitro procedures that would replace the use
of animals in research and they're critically aware of the
welfare of the animals in the laboratory itself. So the
mood is changing as they are trying to reflect the student's
concerns about what goes on in the laboratory.
There are other groups like the Scientists' Center For
Animal Welfare who are not interested in animal rights,
as I may be, but they're very interested in the welfare
of the animals in the laboratory. So, some of these scientists
will actually crawl into a chimpanzee cage (without the
chimpanzee) and spend hours in there understanding the noise
levels or what kind of environment that really is, trying
to get a feel for what the animal may experience in that
situation. So I see more of that happening. The Johns Hopkins
Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is the largest
single effort to try to find alternatives, and, frankly,
I think they're dragging their heels. They keep saying:
"Well, we don't have validation of these tests," but there's
no validation for animal tests either, and what they try
to do is validate these in-vitro procedures against animal
tests for which there is no validation! So, it's a very
difficult scientific procedure.
The organization I work for, The National Anti-Vivisection
Society, sponsors another group called the International
Foundation for Ethical Research (IFER) and what we do is
we fund scientists who are interested in finding alternatives
to the work that they're doing with non-human animals. So
we put, not a lot of money, but tens of thousands per year
into these kinds of efforts--with people who are actually
vivisectors on occasion, but who are uncomfortable with
what they're doing and are looking for better ways. Because,
in the long run, when we find a procedure that takes the
place of a non-human animal in the laboratory it will undoubtedly
be cheaper. It will be more efficient, and it will be more
accurate. So those are the kinds of things we are looking
for. Just a few years ago a rabbit had to die to tell whether
a human female is pregnant, that's not the case any more--we
can go down to the drugstore, get a piece of litmus paper,
do a urinalysis and boom, you know. And you know with a
high degree of probability and nobody has to die. We firmly
believe that these kinds of alternatives can be implemented
throughout science. We feel that we can learn a good deal
more about disease processes if we focus on looking at what
happens to human beings, biochemically, environmentally,
whatever, instead of trying to extrapolate from a non-human
animal to a human. There aren't any extrapolative coefficients.
There are no numbers that say the human is .8% or whatever
like the rat or the mouse. In fact, we can't even extrapolate
between mice and rats! What happens to a female mouse may
not happen to a male mouse. So these problems of jumping
across species, even though there are mammalian similarities,
and trying to say that they're identical, particularly in
the terms of how a virus is handled by the body, is a very
iffy proposition. Given that, it makes it even more immoral
in my mind to continue to use animals as though they're
totally expendable.
CGW: What are the major blocks to ending the use of
animals in experiments? Is it just too big of a business
for the people involved to be motivated to make changes?
Don: It's an industry! It's a bureaucracy and when bureaucracies
get developed, they don't slow down. They're like a cancer
themselves; they continue to grow. For the researcher--I
don't hold that biomedical researchers are fraudulent, or
that they don't believe in what they're doing, because,
during my tenure as a researcher I felt a moral imperative
to use non-human animals for the sake of human beings. I'd
been taught this anthropocentric position that said anything's
expendable if we're going to help a single human being.
While I no longer believe that, I believe many scientists
do, and they simply haven't questioned the viability of
other creatures. They haven't looked at it in such a way
as to say: "We all share this planet. We all have a right
to fulfill our ecological niche in that web of life that
sustains us all." I think when people look at that, and
look at it seriously, then they can no longer justify many
of the experiments that are going on today, no matter how
anthropocentric they may be.
CGW: Are the numbers of animals being used in research
increasing?
Don: The scientific community says: "No, No, it's decreasing."
In fact, there was a report from Tufts university that said:
"Gee, the use of non-human animals has probably fallen by
close to 50% over the last decade." I don't believe that!
I look around me, and I don't see laboratories closing.
I don't see them cutting back in the use of animals. On
the contrary, I see new laboratories opening. I see more
and more monies being given to breeding facilities. I see
animals being raised for research--monkeys and chimpanzees
and other animals that were not there just a very few years
ago. Part of the problem here is the accountability. The
animals that are used most in biomedical research, mice
and rats, are not even covered under the Animal Welfare
Act. So the researcher technically doesn't have to account
for those animals. As I put it, they don't care enough to
count. We don't know how many mice or rats are being used
and yet they comprise 85 to 90% of the total pool of animals
in biomedical research. So how can we say that we're using
less animals?
Chimpanzees have been used less in the last couple of years
because they were overbred within our NIH-supported primate
facilities around the country and after over 100 of them
were challenged with the HIV-1 virus and none of them ever
developed full blown AIDS people said: "Wait a minute we've
got a surplus of animals--it's costing us a great deal of
money to keep these animals what are we going to do with
them?" So the female chimps went on Norplant. Now that a
single chimpanzee at Yerkes laboratory in Atlanta has shown
characteristics of full blown AIDS, I suspect those Norplants
will be removed, even though it's still scientifically foolish.
You recall I said we've challenged over 100 chimpanzees--only
one, and that took over a decade, has finally begun to show
the classical symptoms of AIDS. One in 100 is not a good
probability in an animal model and we certainly couldn't
use this creature for vaccine development, because, if we
were to inject it with a vaccine and then challenge the
animal with AIDS, we wouldn't know if the vaccine had any
effect at all. So, I don't think this is a major breakthrough.
In fact, I think it just points to huge differences--even
though the chimpanzee is 98.6% identical to us in DNA structure,
he is a far cry from us in the way that his metabolism works,
the way the virus replicates in his system and all of those
kinds of important variables that cause us to see AIDS as
a distinctly human disease.
CGW: So, effective AIDS research would be....?
Don: With humans. And we'd have lots of humans out there
like Getty who said: "Go ahead and transplant the baboon
stem cells. I've got no choice. I'm going to die." There
are a great many people out there who're saying: "Let us
help. We're dying, and we have no choice--it's inexorable,
so let us help." Again, even with informed consent, I wouldn't
want to subject these people to severe kinds of pain and
suffering, but certainly in the testing of vaccines and
the testing of drugs that have a probability, no matter
how small, of helping these individuals--I would be one
of the first ones to volunteer were I in that same situation.
CGW: What is blocking such methods?
Don: Ethical considerations are made on the basis of human
beings, not on the basis of any other animals. ETHICS DO
NOT EXTEND TO COMPASSION FOR OTHER CREATURES. The crux is--nobody
wants to get sued. This whole thing is really in some ways
to protect yourself. Non-human animals are used in product
testing, and cosmetics research not because it protects
us, but because they're avoiding the liability issue--the
companies don't want to be sued and not be able to say:
"Look, we've done everything we can to show that it's toxic,
or not toxic, or safe or not safe." But just because we
pour bleach in the eyes of a rabbit doesn't mean it protects
us--we have bleach, or oven cleaner, or whatever it may
be, on our shelves--these are toxic elements and we know
it. We don't have to ruin the retina of a rabbit to be able
to say to our children: "Stay away from that stuff, it's
not something you drink or put in your eyes!"
CGW: More and more cosmetic products are labeled "not
tested on animals." Why are the ones NOT labeled like this
still tested on animals? Is testing required by law?
Don: No. If companies are developing pharmaceuticals, there
are places in which they are required to test on animals.
But if it's for cosmetics or household products, animal
testing is not required. The companies are required by the
FDA, for approval, to show that the product is safe for
human beings and that is a real dilemma. How do you do it?
They know traditionally that animal tests have been accepted.
It's a matter of money. They're not going to invest a million
dollars into the development of a new product and then take
any risk that it not be approved for consumption by the
American public. So, again, we're in a litigative society
and that's exactly what's driving this whole business of
testing.
Just because you can show that a product hurts a non-human
animal doesn't mean that it's going to hurt us. Aspirin
will kill your cat and yet you can give a small amount of
aspirin to your dog with no problem and it will have pretty
much the same effect it has with us. Penicillin doesn't
actually kill guinea pigs unless you give it at a dose that's
akin to the kind of dose that we would take and then it
kills guinea pigs--it's very toxic. So, IF WE HAD TESTED
PENICILLIN ON GUINEA PIGS EARLY ON, WE PROBABLY WOULDN'T
HAVE IT TODAY and you can imagine what that would mean to
the number of people who have been helped or cured by the
antibiotics of yesterday as well as of today. So this kind
of testing is simply not efficient, and it doesn't make
me feel better to know that a cosmetic I may use, an after
shave lotion or whatever, has been splashed into the eyes
of New Zealand rabbits. I just would avoid that and buy
products that are not tested on animals. But let me be perfectly
honest about that--a lot of companies like Avon and Revlon
and Benetton and some of the other smaller companies say:
"We no longer test on animals," but that doesn't mean that
the ingredients for those products haven't been, at some
time in the past, tested on animals.
In all fairness, the cosmetic companies have a rough time
just getting rid of all of the ingredients that may have
some time in the past been tested on animals. So we feel
that at least they're not testing the final product now,
that they're making a step away from the repetitive, redundant
kind of testing and so we applaud them for that. Procter
and Gamble, as I understand it, has put literally millions
of dollars into trying to find alternatives because they
too want a more efficient and cheaper way of testing their
products. So even the companies that continue to do it,
they are trying in some way to get beyond this anachronistic
way of testing products.
CGW: What regulations are there governing how animals
can be used in research?
Don: Essentially none. In 1966, we passed the Animal Welfare
Act. It's been amended a few times since then and many people
believe this is a law that protects animals in the laboratory.
It doesn't protect them from any invasive procedure. It
says what size their cage must be, what the walls of the
cage should be made out of to avoid bacterial build up.
It says how often they should be fed; it says they should
have water, this kind of thing, housekeeping things--but
WHEN IT COMES TO SHOCKING OR BURNING OR POISONING OR SUTURING
OR CUTTING ON AN ANIMAL IT SAYS NOTHING. So, as a researcher,
particularly as a psychologist if I want to go in and do
pain research, if I want to shock an animal with electric
shock to force that animal to do something distinctly non-monkey,
non-dog, or whatever, in nature, all I have to do is say
the use of anesthesia or analgesics will interfere with
my experiment. You cannot do behavioral research on an animal
if that animal is anesthetized or if that animal is under
a heavy dose of tranquilizers or another form of analgesic
and so the waiver is given and I am free to do whatever
I want to the animal, even if it means causing severe pain
and suffering and death to the animal. So they're really
not protected at all.
CGW: Are even these minimal regulations enforced?
Don: No. The enforcement is up to APHIS (The Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service) which is a sub-division
of USDA. These are primarily large animal vets who are assigned
to go and look at the labs, and often they don't inspect
these labs more than once every year and a half or 2 years.
In the interim, anything can be done to the animals. Also
the visits are announced. They're saying: "We're going to
come out in 6 weeks to inspect your lab." Well, that tells
you nothing because in the meantime there's a scurry to
get everything up to par. So it's not a good system at all.
There's another private group that goes in and certifies
the labs and they go in and look at the kinds of materials
used in floors and walls; they look at the size of the cages;
they look at all these variables and then they give the
lab accreditation or they do not and that's a valuable sort
of thing if you're thinking just about animal welfare.
But from my point of view, and the point of view of most
animal rights activists, it really doesn't matter how clean
the cage is, and in many ways it doesn't matter how big
it is. It doesn't matter if they get monkey chow twice a
day. What matters is that these animals are imprisoned in
small cages away from their conspecifics, and the stress
levels for these animals are very much what they would be
for you and me if we had to go to the county jail--that
in itself we consider inhumane. So we're not into arguing
the size of cage. We're asking them to open the cages and
find another way of doing it, so that we can all feel like
we're living in a more moral society.
CGW: Is there any way the public can know what is going
on in the laboratories?
Don: Not unless they're extremely tenacious. I was debating
a researcher from the University of Colorado Medical School
and when the radio host said: "How would I know what's going
on, isn't it secret?" The researcher said: "Oh no, it's
available to anyone under the Freedom Of Information Act."
The host said: "I don't want have to go through the Freedom
of Information Act to find out what's going on" and the
researcher had no reply. Because if you or I, or any other
citizen, wanted to walk into a biomedical laboratory and
see what's going on--No way! You're out of here right now!
And yet some laboratories, like the University of Colorado,
have an open-door policy, but that simply means you can
go into the monkey room when no experiments are going on
and see the monkeys in their cages and that's about the
extent of the tour. You don't get to watch the surgery.
You don't get to watch an animal in a device that holds
its head straight while electrodes are sent into the brain.
You don't see what happens when an animal's skin is burned
or whatever is going on in the laboratory. So there's no
way that a citizen, unless they go in undercover or get
a job in a lab, is going to figure out what's going on in
a laboratory.
We're always assured that the animals are treated wonderfully.
And, in many cases, the researchers do care and they are
concerned about anesthetic and so forth, but in many cases
they're not. I was a witness in the prosecution of Dr. Edward
Taub from a lab in Silver Springs, Maryland funded by the
NIH. And I went in that lab after hours and inspected the
lab and wrote an affidavit which led to his eventual arrest
and court trial. All of the monkeys in there had been withheld
from veterinary care for over 2 years. There were ANIMALS
WITH BROKEN BONES, ANIMALS WITH OPEN WOUNDS. There was no
place for the animals to sit on a perch so they sat on piles
of feces. The monkey biscuits were tossed into the cages
and fell into the urine trays. All of the medications were
out of date and this was with NIH funding and frequent inspections
by the USDA! That is not an isolated case. We've gone into
labs in other ways and found atrocious conditions and also
experiments that are so ridiculous, so redundant that they
shouldn't be going on at all. So there's a great need for
more oversight. But, as I say that, I give the impression
that maybe I'd be satisfied with more regulations. I WOULDN'T
BE SATISFIED WITH MORE REGULATIONS. I WANT THE ANIMALS OUT
OF THE LABORATORIES.
CGW: Experiments conducted by The Dept. of Defense are
funded by our tax dollars, correct?
Don: That's right. And we don't know how many of our tax
dollars. We know that there are billions of dollars that
go to the NIH and some half of their budget is in some way
centering around animal research so we're talking 7 or 8
billion dollars a year. But, as far as the military is concerned,
the last time I knew there were 41 different labs within
the United States military doing research on non-human animals.
Why? Why should they do that? If that research is that important,
go into the scientific community and ask the NIH or the
National Science Foundation or laboratory animal people
to do this. Don't throw it into a military laboratory where
there's essentially no oversight, where people can do whatever
they want to do, given the whims of the commander of that
particular base. I have testified before the House Armed
Services Committee, and other committees, trying to stop
this kind of thing. But the military is sacrosanct; it's
very secretive and it's really worse than the other kinds
of laboratories. We don't know how much money goes into
their research and, again, that's our tax dollars. I would
stake my professional reputation on the fact that no research
out of military laboratories has done anything to further
human beings in any way.
CGW: Do you feel that the use of primates in research
is a special ethical dilemma, more so than other animals?
Don: No, but I think it's easier for the public to see
because primates are our closest cousins, especially the
Great Apes. One of the things I'm very much involved in
with Peter Singer is the Great Ape Project where we're actually
trying to give the Great Apes--the orangutans, the gorilla,
and particularly the chimpanzee--rights that other animals
don't have. Not human rights--but we would like to see rights
that say that they are not captured; not taken from their
home lands; their habitat is not destroyed willy nilly;
they are not put into captivity and they are not tortured.
They are not subjected to pain and stress and death--for
human beings. So, we hope that, if we can gain a few of
these rights for our closest cousins, then maybe we can
extend those rights to other animals.
CGW: But where do we draw the line?
Don: It's hard to say. Certainly as low down the scale
as we possibly can. I tend to look at the ability to feel
pain as at least one place where we can all agree. Mice
and rats feel pain and so do many other animals. AS JEREMY
BENTHAM, THE PHILOSOPHER, SAID: "IT'S NOT CAN THEY TALK
OR CAN THEY REASON, BUT CAN THEY SUFFER?" And that's really
the basis for a system of ethics that we should at least
key on. When you get below that with organisms that do not
have a developed central nervous system, then there's some
iffiness. But if we live as gently as we can, if we walk
as gently as we can on the earth then we're going to minimize
pain and suffering so we don't just arbitrarily cause death
to anything, even plants. WE JUST SIMPLY TRY TO RESPECT
ALL LIFE ON THE PLANET AND, IN DOING SO, HOPEFULLY MAKE
THE PLANET A MORE PEACEFUL PLACE IN WHICH TO LIVE.
CGW: What can members of the public do to help bring
an end to the use of animals in research?
Don: I hate to just say you can join animal rights groups.
But we want to develop more and more public power and clout--to
combine our emotions, our power, our interests in seeing
that these kinds of things are changed. In order to become
well informed, I think it's important to join the National
Anti-Vivisection Society or other groups that have the information
and that can help people find what really is going on in
the laboratories. You should take no one's word, not mine
or anyone else's, for what is going on. Go to the literature,
ask questions, demand that because you're a taxpayer you
want answers. Call your elected representatives, your senators,
your congresspeople and tell them how you feel about these
things because they are interested in re-election and they
will listen to you. So there are ways that we can affect
change, and we already have. In the 14 years since I've
been involved in the animal rights movement, a lot of change
has come about. The zeitgeist is changing to the point where
people know that we're out there. They know that people
are opposed to the wearing of fur coats, or the eating of
other animals or whatever it may be, and so I think it's
become a time that is right for change--that we can now
say OK let's go a step further and let's look at our own
behavior and try to modify our individual behavior to try
to make this a more peaceful place for all of us.
You can learn more about the work Don Barnes is involved
in at the NAVS website. Go
there now!
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