MONKEY BUSINESS
Regarding Frans B.M. de Waal’s review of “The Monkey Wars” by Deborah Blum (“Please Don’t Feed the Extremists,” Nov. 20):
I would like to advise Times’ readers and people everywhere to use their critical judgment when reading about animal experimentation because $10 billion of taxpayers’ money is what funds a great deal of this animal research. It is fascinating to see the consistency with which letters of support for such research are written by researchers--people making their living by doing animal research. De Waal is in no position to be objective while he defends his federal funding and his salary. If animal research has benefited anyone at all it certainly has benefited career researchers. You do the math, we’re talking $10 billion and our health system hasn’t made a dent in the top 10 causes of death. Why? Because they are largely preventable and very few federal dollars are earmarked for prevention.
The two most widely used measures of health are longevity and infant mortality and by either criterion our nation ranks nearly last among developed countries. This is not surprising given our devotion to expensive high-tech intervention instead of basic prevention. We can understand why a person whose life was prolonged by high-tech treatment feels that biomedical research is vital but the fact is that headline-making breakthroughs have little impact on the health of the nation as a whole. Most premature deaths are not due to a lack of high-tech methods but to a lack of basic prevention programs.
Making medical progress is not the same as improving human health. According to government statistics from the U.S. Public Health Service lifestyle is the most important factor that determines health; second is the environment; third is genetics; and only fourth important is medical intervention (which is the practical application of research). We cannot improve health and reduce costs by investing in the least important determinant of health. We must invest in prevention for which we already have enough knowledge to prevent most disease and injury. If we are not willing to make a serious commitment to prevention using the information we now have amassing more scientific data will not help. And if we are not willing, why not?
The goal of our health care system must be to improve human health, to produce the greatest health benefit for the greatest number of people; any contrary goal would imply that one person or group is more important than another person or group which is not tolerable in our society. We can undeniably save more lives through prevention than through medical intervention--they may be different lives but they are just as important. It is not that we don’t care about those whose only hope is clinical research; it is that we do care about the much larger number of people who are being lost to utterly preventable illnesses and injuries.
Why are we funding maternal deprivation studies in monkeys when we are not funding day care centers for children? Why are we making cocaine addicts out of dogs and cats while people are being turned away from mental health and drug rehabilitation centers? Why are we crash testing dogs and pigs in car accident studies while we delay air bag laws and close trauma care centers? The list goes on and on.
As is well-known, federal funds are not unlimited. Every dollar spent on animal research takes money away from programs that help people.
LORIN LINDNER, Ph.D., M.P.H., LOS ANGELES
Calling opponents extremists is effective rhetoric, since the term connotes violent and unreasonable fanatics. But the fact remains that “extreme” positions are sometimes correct. In the era of slavery, abolitionists were the extremists, while “voices of reason” would urge only moderate reforms such as keeping slave families intact. The “extremist” had the better grasp of the fundamental wrongness of slavery--and, one can plausibly argue, so it is with the antivivisectionist. Moreover, most abolitionists do not rely on “yelling” or violence, as De Waal intimates; they seek change through consciousness-raising and legislation.
KATHIE JENNI, PH.D., ASSOC. PROF. OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF REDLANDS
Researcher De Waal, in his self-serving review of “The Monkey Wars” (Book Review, Nov. 20), tells us that primates are similar to humans thereby making them valuable research models. On the other hand, it’s OK to experiment on them because they are not like us. Animal experimenters have had it both ways for too long. The fact remains that despite billions of dollars and the death of millions of animals, the major diseases are still with us.
BILL DYER, VENICE
