Animal Sympathizers ‘Bite Back’

Elizabeth Venant and David Treadwell’s feature, “Biting Back” (April 12), reports that those concerned with the mistreatment of animals “face a new and potentially devastating challenge” from a “massive, multimillion-dollar counteroffensive” launched by the “animal-using industries and professions.”

I do not condone terrorist violence for any cause, and as a hunter and a meat-eater, I no doubt fail the purity test of the extremist anti-vivisectionists. But I sympathize with those who employ legal tactics to oppose cruelty to animals and seek to end the pointless and repetitious tests and experiments that inflict disease and injury on animals and masquerade as science.

I find it troubling that the anti-vivisectionist counter-argument to the well-worn “dogs or babies” argument was so poorly represented in The Times’ piece. One paragraph was allocated to reporting the claim of animal rights groups that experiments are unnecessary and to quoting an assertion by Cheryl McAuliffe of the Georgia Fund for Animals that 90% of biomedical research has nothing to do with saving lives. In fact, McAuliffe and others in this international movement, which includes medical doctors and former researchers, are able to support these assertions with some pretty convincing evidence, which was left out of the article.

LEE W. SMITH

West Los Angeles