Amid Protest, Yale Defends Role of Animal Research in War on Drugs

Yale University on Wednesday defended its multimillion-dollar animal research program as critical to the war against drug abuse, but protesters led by TV celebrity Bob Barker condemned the practice.

“Without these tools, the war on drugs would not be a war because we would have surrendered,” Dr. Charles E. Riordan said of Yale’s testing on animals to improve treatment and prevention of drug abuse.

“If we don’t get better answers, we’re going to lose this war,” Riordan said at a news conference held by the Yale School of Medicine as animal rights activists, including television game-show host Barker, rallied and marched outside.

Yale receives about $120 million a year in grants from the National Institutes of Health, about half of which is used in animal research, said Dr. J. G. Collins, an associate professor in anesthesiology.

The university, which is a major research center, also receives unspecified lesser amounts of money from other sources and uses about 100,000 animals in research each year, 90% of them rodents, Collins said.

“On any given day about 20,000 animals are housed in facilities,” he said.

Dr. Martine Y. K. Armstrong, who chairs Yale’s committee on animal use in research and teaching, said those opposed to the use of laboratory animals do not understand scientific progress.

The protesters, who held a rally Wednesday on the New Haven Green before marching to the medical school, said the research funds would be better spent in public treatment and prevention programs in the war against drugs.