Animal rights v. research argument after cat theft

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 35

Animal rights v. research argument after cat theft

By

NELSON GRAVES

NZPA Reuter Washington Jitender Dubey called it petty theft Alex Pacheco called it a daring rescue. Their opposing views reflect a struggle pitting researchers against animal rights advocates — a conflict that flared up recently when 25 cats and seven pigs were removed from a Federal laboratory in a Washington suburb. The United States Agriculture Department announced that raiders had cut through chain-link security fences protecting a Government research centre in Beltsville, Maryland, smashed padlocks and stolen the cats and pigs, bred for experiments involving parasitic diseases.

The “thieves,” the Government said, sprayed slogans — "Stop the Slaughter,” “Animals are not Machines” — on walls and left vegetarian recipes and a poem by Henry David Thoreau. The unusual nature of the burglary and the involvement of a favourite pet aroused interest in the press and public. But surrounding the almost comic details are import-

ant questions: How dangerous is toxoplasm gondii, the parasite carried by some of the cats? Is it worth studying the disease the parasite causes? Are government scientists mistreating animals, and should they be held more accountable? The Government issued a national alert for recovery of the animals, warning that 11 of the cats bad been infected with toxo-

plasmosis — a disease that can cause pregnant women to miscarry or give birth to deformed children.

' Toxoplasmosis has been found to cause abortions in sheep, goats and pigs, and can be transmitted to pregnant women who come into contact with farm animals or cht faeces, or who eat improperly cooked meat from infected animals. An estimated 3000 American children are born each year with toxoplasmosis, suffering deformities that include hydrocephaly, which enlarges and can destroy the brain, and blindness. Many of the infected children die before 20. -

But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,

a well-known animal rights group, said the “animal liberation raid” saved the cats from abusive treatment P.E.T.A. said U.S.D.A. scientist Jitender Dubey, had been conducting “grotesque” experiments on cats for 15 years without discovering anything of clinical significance. Dubey, according to P.E.T.A., has forced infected mice brains through stomach tubes into kittens and cats, which die within days after developing infections of the heart lungs or liver.

“Experimenters simply record their dehydration, diarrhoea, high fever, weakness, inflammation of heart and liver and pneumonia before killing them," the group said.

U.S.D.A. officials dispute that “The cats never suffer. Very rarely does a cat get sick from (experiments),” Dubey said. Dubey, who has worked on toxoplasmosis since 1964, said experiments involving force-feeding of cats with infected mice brains were suspended in 1972, but had proved instrumental in discovering

that toxoplasmosis can be transmitted in meat He also said he does not experiment on kittens anymore.

Michael Ruff, acting director of the Animal Parasitology Insititute, said: “We’re on the side of the animals.” The department he said, hopes to develop a vaccine that will prevent thousands of spontaneous abortions in sheep flocks.

The chairman of P.E.T.A., Alex Pacheco, told Reuters the cats had been treated with drugs and posed no threat to the public. Later, in an effort to show that cats are not dangerous, P.E.T.A. called a pregnant woman and a cat before a news conference.

But Dubey said there is no cure for toxoplasmosis and that the drugs administered by P.E.T.A. only slowed its spread. He also said the disease poses a particular threat to AIDS patients. Dennis Juranek, chief of epidemiology at the parasitic disease division of the Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta, told Reuters the cats stolen from the lab could be

considered more dangerous to pregnant women than most other cats because they had just been Infected with the parasite. “If my wife were pregnant and I knew the cat was excreting, these organisms, I wouldn’t be cavalier about that,” he said.

Pacheco said that his group, which claims 200,000 members, aimed to open Government-spon-sored research to public scrutiny. He told of a federallyfunded laboratory where monkeys with severed spines were forced by electrical shock to use crippled arms to eat

Pacheco said he worked at the lab for four months before calling in the police to arrest the bead researcher, who had worked on the same experiment for 22 years, unaccountable to taxpayers who spent 1U51.5 million ($2.5 million) on the research.

“Our concern is pain and suffering. If you wouldn’t do it to a retarded child, you probably shouldn’t be doing it to an intelligent healthy animal either,” Pacheco said.