http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19826592.000-review-ithe-animal-research-wari-by-p-michael-conn-and-james-v-parker.html
New Scientist. 4 June 2008.

Review: The Animal Research War
by P Michael Conn and James V Parker. Deborah Blum.

IN 2001, P. Michael Conn, an administrator at the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton, flew to Miami to be interviewed for a university position. When he arrived in Florida, his plane was met by an angry crowd of animal-rights activists wielding protest signs. They followed him, interrupted his meetings and literally chased him onto his plane back to the West Coast.

Not surprisingly, he didn't get the job. But the incident, Conn says, was valuable nevertheless. It convinced him that he was involved in an outright war, that so-called "animal rightists" didn't merely want to protect animals, they wanted to destroy any science that used them. That epiphany eventually led to The Animal Research War, a
salvo fired back at the enemy.

"What other word than 'war' can we employ to describe what is happening to the enterprise of biomedical research?" ask Conn and his co-author James Parker, a former public information officer at the Oregon primate centre. "Attack? Assault? Siege? All the words that come to mind come from the battlefield." They wouldn't have thought in war-like terms in earlier decades, the authors say, but today the situation has become urgent.

Actually, the word "war" did appear in the title of a book on primate research that I wrote 14 years ago. Still, The Animal Research War is packed with evidence that little has improved since. In fact, the relationship between animal rightists and animal researchers has deteriorated. Scientists seem more defensive and secretive about their work, activists more impatient and aggressive. And both seem less willing to
listen to - or even acknowledge - valid points made by the other side.

Valid points do exist. Animal research - not all, but a respectable portion - has contributed to medical advances that have saved millions of human lives. Last century, the polio vaccines were developed using rhesus macaques from Asia; last year, scientists began work using the same animals on vaccines against the tropical infection lassa fever. These are only a few out of many examples. Still, even those
valued animals are not always treated with kindness or even respect - I once interviewed the manager of a monkey research facility who told me he absolutely loathed monkeys (and would prefer to work with goats) - and the regulations set forth in
animal-welfare laws are not always scrupulously followed.

Fair-minded balance, however, is not the organising principle of the book. Conn and Parker see the situation in stark black and white: animal activists are interested in harming research, destroying medical advances for the rest of us and engaging in domestic terrorism. By contrast, animal researchers are simple folk who labour, despite personal risk, for the good of humanity. The rest of us may be a mixed bag of good and evil. "But in the world's ambiguity... one group can claim credit for much good." And that would be: biomedical researchers. Conn and Park go on to suggest that such scientists belong among the chosen few "who would lead us into the peaceable kingdom".

"Are animal-rights activists engaged in domestic terrorism?" Who comprises the audience for this haloed perspective? The book certainly isn't written to win over animal rightists. It didn't win me over, either. I find the hyperbole unconvincing at best and hilarious at worst. Excerpts from The Animal Research War, however, have already appeared in two magazines, American Scientist, published by the scientific
society Sigma XI, and The Scientist, which covers the life sciences. The latter featured the book on its cover, with the headline: "The WAR Against Your Work."

Will that rile animal researchers? That's what Conn and Parker are hoping for. Their book is a battle cry: it asks the research community and its supporters to fight back
against a well-honed opposition. As the authors illustrate in detail, both researchers and university administrators are far too prone to cower in dismay rather than stand up for their work. The real measure of Conn and Parker's trumpet-blowing will be how, if at all, it redraws the battle lines.

Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of The Monkey Wars (Oxford University Press, 1994)

From issue 2659 of New Scientist magazine, 04 June 2008, page 48