Singer Grace Slick Fights for an End to Animal Testing
By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers
Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick is pushing Congress to adopt a bill that would stop invasive experiments on chimpanzees and free the mammals from small testing cages. "I will do whatever I can," she told Whispers from her California home. "I want the whole idea of testing banned. Use a petri dish if you want to test an animal," she says. Slick is part of a broad effort, led by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, to limit or end drug testing on animals. The activists are backing H.R. 1326, which would end the testing, release federally owned chimps to permanent sanctuaries, and end federal funding for breeding federally owned chimpanzees.
For Slick's part, she has taped a phone message on the issue delivered to all lawmakers. Meanwhile, today on Capitol Hill, the doctors' group is exhibiting photos and videos of former testing chimps now living in sanctuaries. Why Slick? "People tend to use celebrities because they believe us. You just need to know what you're talking about," she says. Slick has been involved in fighting animal testing for over 30 years, first getting interested in it when she received a flier in the mail about pandas being endangered. "It's not an emotional deal. It's about the science," she says, calling animal testing "sloppy science." Arguing that it's difficult to apply lessons learned on rats and chimps to how a drug will react in humans, she says, "We're not like rats."
(Photo of Slick courtesy Robert Knight.)
Tags: animal cruelty
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Reader Comments
Horrible sciance
Animal testing is cruel! animals have feelings just as humans do. we have enough sciance already. we do not need to torment animals for uselessness. i can't wait for a day when all people - humans and animals alike- will have equal rights. people go to jail for hurting animals but why is that they do not serve time will killing hundreds in labs? and cruely at that.
Animal Testing IS sloppy science
How many drugs have passed animal tests, only to kill thousands of humans? Fenfen was one of the most notorious as well as celebrex.
I believe killing animals for the sake of us "superior" humans is an ethical abomination. No wonder we're destroying the planet. We don't know how to treat all the inhabitants.
Go Gracie!!
Animal testing is not sloppy science
Much successful research has been done using animal testing. No, humans don't react the same as do animals but there are similarities depending on the animal and what is being studied. The alternative would have been to go straight to testing on humans and that would have killed an awful lot of people. Many of the people opposed to animal research probably wouldn't be alive today if not for discoveries made using it. Perhaps those people don't care about that but I for one am grateful for it. There may be a day (and I hope there is) when our command of science gets to the point where we don't need animal research but that day is not here yet.
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