Incurably ill fight for right to animal experiments

Press, 23 February 1988, Page 21

Incurably ill fight for right to animal experiments

PA San Francisco Grisly brochures showing animals mutilated in the name of science; raids on medical laboratories; Hollywood celebrities haranguing authorities to defend homeless cats and dogs from mad scientists. Rick Simpson, aged 49, victim of multiple sclerosis, decided he would not take these onslaughts by animal rights activists any more. He is fighting back. Simpson founded a movement, gathering momentum across the United States, intent on protecting the right of researchers to experiment on animals.

He and an estimated 2000 other members of an organisation called Incurably 111 For Animal Research, or 1.1.F.A.R., believe animal rights groups have gone too far and are jeopardising medical science. “We want cures for our illnesses,” Simpson said in a telephone interview from his home in Arizona. “It is selfish but, when you are incurably ill, you are not just philosophis-. ing, you are dealing with the reality of finding a cure or not finding a cure.”

Simpson’s crusade began in the spring of 1985 when he was undergoing experimental drug therapy at the University of Arizona Medical Centre. As he lay ill, a local animal rights group picketed the campus, protesting against experiments on animals.

Simpson was outraged. “There are no animal

worshippers that are incurably ill,” he recalled later.

The day after the demonstration, he launched 1.1.F.A.R. (pronounced Eye-far), vowing to fight back by spreading the word about the good accomplished by animal experiments. Today, the organisation has chapters in three states, and others are forming in a half dozen more.

All the group’s officers and most of its board of directors suffer from an incurable illness — A.1.D.5., Alzheimer’s disease, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, to name a few. Steve Carroll, 1.1.F.A.R. executive director, underwent a series of skin grafts after he was badly burned in a 1971 aircraft accident. He is convinced the procedures, first tested on animals, saved his life.

A leg fracture also resulted in an untreatable infectious inflammation of the bone marrow, and he now hopes a drug will be found that can cure it. Carroll, who has a pet Siamese cat, travels the country spreading the 1.1.F.A.R. creed. 1.1.F.A.R. has the backing of the California Biomedical Research Association, formed by health groups and universities engaged in biomedical research.

Animal rights advocates charge that the incurably ill are being recruited by groups like Bressler’s to act as spokesmen. “I am very concerned that people who have serious illnesses or disabilities

are being used unknowingly to promote kinds of experiments that will in no way help them,” said Dr Neal Barnard, medical adviser to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

That organisation, formed in 1981 with headquarters in Washington, is the largest United States animal rights group and opposes all experiments on animals.

Bressler says that 1.1.F.A.R. is independent of her association but says she helps them distribute literature.

“Nobody is twisting anyone’s arms to get involved,” she said. Last year, 1.1.F.A.R. campaigned to defeat attempts in Arizona and Florida to bar the use of abandoned animals for research.

Bob Barker, a television game show host and master of ceremonies for beauty pageants, joined animal activists in a bid to stop the sale of stray cats and dogs from a California shelter to scientists. The proposed ban was defeated.

As part of a national demonstration in December, an actress, Cloris Leachman, urged Los Angeles County officials to halt the sale of animals from its shelters for laboratory research. 1.1.F.A.R. has recruited its own celebrities.

The actor, Charlton Heston, has endorsed it, and his photograph and a quotation supporting 1.1.F.A.R. appear on the cover of one of the organisation’s brochures.