Animal Passions

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If Huntingdon had been forced to close, says Cass, Britain would have lost vital pharmaceutical, biochemical and agrochemical research work — "and who's going to invest in the U.K. if a few demonstrators can drive a company out of business?" Once the government understood that, says Cass, it was "tremendous" in its support. Sixteen months after he was assaulted, Cass — a nonscientist — was honored by the Queen for services to medical research. "We happen to be the target now," says Cass, "but it could be someone else tomorrow. The government knows that."

That knowledge has helped fuel the newest animal-testing controversy in Cambridgeshire. In May 2002, Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged "concerns about public-safety dangers and unlawful protests" at the proposed university primate lab site, then declared: "We cannot have vital work stifled simply because it is controversial." Says Mark Matfield, executive director of the Research Defence Society and the University's expert witness at the appeal hearing: "Cambridge has world-class scientists. They need the facilities for them to work at that level."

While the proposed lab has no links with HLS, SHAC is also taking a keen interest. "Do these people really think that we're going to let the largest primate-neuroscience lab in Europe be built?" Avery asked at the appeal hearing last December. "We will undermine [the university] tactically, financially, with the press, with the tourists. Cambridge will become known as the animal-cruelty capital of the world." A new animal-rights group, SPEAC (Stop Primate Experiments at Cambridge), took shape over the summer. Denying any formal connection to SHAC, speac announced that it holds the entire university culpable in the matter of the primate lab. To apply pressure for the abandonment of the project, SPEAC began leafleting, organizing demos and targeting university departments with letters and periodic e-mail bombardments.

"This is an issue that is bedeviled by polarization," notes Simon Festing, director of public dialogue for the Association of Medical Research Charities. "The antivivisectionists were getting ahead of the game. Scientists are now catching up and becoming a lot more proactive." It is important, he says, for them to emphasize the link between research on animals and helping to relieve human suffering. "Sadly, the number of people who get to visit labs is small," says Festing. "The majority of animals are running around quite happily in their cages."

When Time visited HLS's dog facility earlier this year, 708 beagle puppies were on hand — all from controlled breeding stock and with decades of background data behind them. "People think we have a lot of very ill animals on site," says Cass. "We're not injecting animals with aids and seeing if we can cure them. All the animals are healthy." The dozens of alert, tail-wagging puppies in one large room — subjects of testing for a potential new anticancer medication — appeared to be healthy, frisky and well looked after. But at the end of any testing period, all the animals involved will be killed and forensic examinations will be conducted on them. "We do get some tears at the end of a study," according to Fred, an animal technician who did not want his real name used. "It's no different than working with terminally ill patients."

Because of client confidentiality, HLS declined to elaborate on exactly what was being tested on the puppies, but acknowledged that the majority of substances tested on dogs were pharmaceuticals, veterinary medicines, flea collars or agrochemical products. New compounds are first screened in nonanimal tests, then on rodents, then on dogs, pigs or monkeys. None is for use in cosmetic products.

While much of the vivisection debate focuses on dogs, cats and monkeys — animals that are either popular human companions or more like us than fish and mice — British statistics for 2002 show that dogs, cats, horses and nonhuman primates were collectively used in less than 1% of the 2.73 million new scientific procedures carried out in the country. The number of new procedures was up by 100,000 — 4.2% — over 2001, and an overwhelming 84% of them involved mice, rats and other rodents, 7% fish, 5% birds and the remainder miscellaneous.

"Good animal welfare," says Cass, "leads to good science." As for animal rights, "personally, that's not something I can subscribe to. Animals kill a lot more animals than humans do. If animals have rights, they have responsibilities, too. But being an accountant, I'm not much of a philosopher." Avery, who disagrees with Cass on so much else, also shies away from the word rights. "Nobody," he says, "is talking about one puppy, one vote." But as the Cambridge dispute shows, that's about all these two camps agree on.