Animal research

opens wide chasm

By Jim O’Neal

The Gazette

IOWA CITY — In the most tranquil of times, animal rights activists feel they must agitate the public to effectively promote a radical idea — that all sentient, social beings have rights to liberty, safety and freedom from preventable suffering.

They disseminate disturbing information about vivisection, the umbrella term for restraining, infecting, distressing and dissecting laboratory animals for research. They challenge the efficacy of such experiments and urge Jane Q. Public to see lab animals as conscious, feeling creatures subjected to captivity and torment.

In the most tranquil of times, advocates of vivisection likewise appeal to emotion, asking Ms. Public if she values a rat’s comfort more than a child’s recovery from a virulent disease.

They detail the history of animal experimentation, which the Foundation for Biomedical Research credits for “practically every present-day protocol for the prevention, treatment, cure and control of disease, pain and suffering.”

But in Iowa, this is not the most tranquil of times.

When extremists broke into the University of Iowa’s Seashore Hall and Spence Laboratories in the overnight hours of Nov. 13-14, stealing some 400 animals and destroying documentation and equipment valued at nearly half a million dollars, they touched off an explosion of fury and fear that widened the divide of tranquil times into a chasm.

Communication at the UI between adversaries in the morally charged debate over animal-based research has been reduced to shouts across that chasm — a fiery statement by university President David Skorton condemning the break-in, combative guest columns, and prickly question-and-answer sessions after lectures by visitors opposed to animal research.

The rhetoric can be sharp, like that used by Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Interviewed by The Gazette, Newkirk blasted a UI psychology professor for shocking rats to shed light on developmental disorders.

“It’s just outrageous,” Newkirk said. “It’s like studying sexual crimes by raping women.”

An international group called the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), whose members stay in the shadows to avoid arrest, claimed responsibility for the Seashore Hall break-in.

Two local animal rights groups that say they want to operate in the mainstream on campus, the Iowa Law Student Animal Legal Defense Fund and the UI chapter of the Farm Animal Welfare Network, disavow the ALF but say the UI unfairly tars them with the same brush.

The student groups, determined to chip away at a mountain of tradition, are far more vocal than UI administrators and faculty members.

While the university continues to be a place where students are free to protest, pass out literature and bring in provocative speakers, the animal rights activists say it is not fostering methodical, inclusive debate.

The UI administration hasn’t always been reticent about defending animal testing in public forums. In 1997, Skorton, then vice president for research, took part in a forum on the humane treatment of research animals at the university.

He reported that the university had improved its policies, requiring researchers to document their investigations of alternatives to animal testing. He also noted that the UI had met the veterinary care standards set by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International.

The campus activists say that willingness to speak at a 1997 forum contrasts with the lack of response to their recent overtures.

Leana Stormont, president of the UI Law Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, invited more than 20 UI scientists to debate Dr. Ray Greek, a critic of animal-based research who spoke on campus Thursday. None responded, she said.

Skorton, a cardiologist, was among those invited.

In a recent radio interview, Skorton said animal experimentation is a matter worthy of intellectual debate. Stormont said those words ring hollow in light of the unanswered invitations.

“Their tactic appears to be just to stonewall us, to not even engage us in debate,” she said. “For an institution that espouses the importance of open dialogue, to refuse to even participate is dubious.”

Jim Jacobson, treasurer of the law student chapter, said UI scientists were “conspicuous by their absence” at the Greek lecture.

“They don’t want to give us credence,” said Jacobson, who covered the UI as a Gazette reporter before enrolling in law school and who worked two years ago as an intern in the UI counsel’s office. “They don’t want to admit that Dr. Greek even has a point because that would open a door to people asking what they’re doing, and they don’t want to open that door.”

Tony Arduini, a communications instructor at Kirkwood Community College, said a party that feels under siege might try to minimize its opposition by ignoring it.

Generally that’s a bad idea from a public relations standpoint,” Arduini said. “Silence implies there’s something to be hidden.”

PETA’s Newkirk went further.

“It makes the researchers look disgusting and secretive, and as if they are unreasonable and irrational,” she said.

Nonsense, UI officials say.

Steve Parrott, UI director of university relations, said Skorton and Provost Michael Hogan responded point-by-point to animal defenders’ concerns in their statement condemning the break-ins.

Hogan told The Gazette the administration does not ask faculty members to advocate for university policies.

Phillip Jones, UI vice president for student services, said faculty members’ silence is itself a message.

“Students and faculty alike have the right to dissent,” Jones said. “If they have not responded, you might take that as a form of dissent.”

He said the ALF “sabotage” of the UI research discouraged frank discussion.

“There are people who believe that a violent act should not be responded to,” he said.

Stormont rankles at the association with the ALF.

“The university conflates our actions with theirs,” she said.

Parrott said the student groups encouraged that association when they sponsored a Jan. 21 lecture by Steve Best, a University of Texas-El Paso philosophy professor who lauded the ALF.

At one point this semester, a UI research center planned a public presentation on animal research in a setting it could control. After the Greek lecture was scheduled, the UI-based Upper Midwest Center for Public Health Preparedness arranged a March 10 lecture by Dr. William Talman, director of the UI neurobiology lab, on the case for using animals in biomedical research.

Stormont e-mailed activists, urging them to attend the lecture and show that they “will not stand for the dissemination of unsubstantiated half-truths that prey on the public’s fears about health.” She said in the e-mail she was not proposing a protest or an effort to “shout anybody down.”

The UI center canceled its event, saying Talman had a scheduling conflict. Stormont called the cancellation yet another effort by the university to avoid public conflict.

Talman declined to comment on that charge but affirmed he had had a scheduling conflict that prevented him from delivering the lecture. The center said at the time it would reschedule the Talman lecture. It has not.

Talman said he chose not to debate Greek because he does not consider Greek a credible adversary.

“There’s quite a difference between Dr. Greek and intellectual debate,” he said.

Parrott said Stormont seems to underestimate the impact of the ALF’s actions, which included posting the home addresses of UI scientists on the Internet.

“Our researchers and their families have been harassed,” he said. “If that hadn’t happened, I suspect she would have found a different climate on campus. Who knows? Maybe as the memory of this incident fades — and if no more happen — it may be possible to find people who are willing to debate this.”

This story was originally published in The Gazette of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, on March 27, 2005.