Kinkajous Return, Controversy Remains

The return of the kinkajous to UC Irvine is not the end of this controversy.

Paul Sypherd, UCI’s vice chancellor of research and graduate studies, says that animals rights advocates victimize people whose animals they have taken without the right and legal authority to do so.

First, the kinkajous were not taken illegally.

Secondly, vivisectors are not victims but perpetrators of heinous crimes against other sentient creatures. The true victims in this case are the kinkajous who were taken from their wild homes and subjected to the horrors of laboratory life.

We involved in this case believe that Cary Chevalier’s experiments, though allegedly resulting in no animal deaths, were scientifically invalid and will result only in meaningless words in some journal. Any responsible ecologist understands that an animal cannot be studied independent of its ecosystem.

If Chevalier is so concerned about the kinkajous, saving their rain forest homes rather than “cooking” animals would seem to be more ecologically beneficial to the kinkajou and all the other critters, including man, with whom they coexist.

KYLE OWENS

The Fund for Animals

Silver Spring, Md.