IN THE STRUGGLE
Peter Tatchell Speaks to the Abolitionist
Interviewed by Claudette Vaughan
 Peter Tatchell is a pioneer in the queer community for notably being one of the first, if not the first queer animal rights and human rights activist to speak out against AIDS testing on non-human animals.
Here he speaks to the Abolitionist...
Abolitionist: How did a radical gay rights activist pursue animal rights?
PT: I am not just a gay rights activist. As a green left gay activist, I support all struggles against all forms of oppression. My support for animal rights was compounded when I discovered how animal-based research has diverted and hindered studies to find a HIV vaccine and cure. The damage HIV causes is unique to humans. Therefore it is pointless studying other species.
Abolitionist: How successful have you been in making the case for animal rights
within the gay community Peter?
PT: The lesbian and gay community response to animal rights issues has been mixed. Some people are very gayist – they see everything from a sexual orientation perspective, which is rather narrow and limiting. But a lot of gay people had their eyes opened by my expose of how animal research delayed the development life-saving protease inhibitor drugs.
Abolitionist: Because primates (except humans) can’t get AIDS why is there
so much disinformation away from this fundamental truth?
PT: The animal research model is so well established that many people cannot think outside the box. They cannot conceive of humane, effective alternative methods of scientific research. Plus the big drug companies propagandise all the time about the supposed necessity of animal testing, in order to give themselves an alibi in case their new treatments cause patient illnesses and deaths.
Abolitionist: Do you think the bulk of animal experimentation these days is centred
on managing the disease as pharmaceutical companies are making millions of dollars here and do you think that the once escalation to find a cure for HIV has taken a back seat?
PT: The research is correctly oriented to finding both a vaccine and a cure. It is the animal-based methodology that is flawed.
Abolitionist: Do you give any credence to the man-made theory of how HIV arrived in the world? (Simultaneously in Africa and the gay bathhouses of New York through the polio vaccine).
PT: I don’t think is possible to give a definitive answer. None of the theories of the origins of HIV are entirely persuasive. All have gaps and weaknesses.
Abolitionist: What do you think is going on with gays in the world? Why are gay people so hated in Bush’s America do you think? (I’m thinking here of Log Cabin)
PT: The Republicans are cynically using homophobia as political weapon to win votes, similar to the way the Nazis exploited anti-Semitism. The US Christian right is the mirror image of Islamic fundamentalism. Both want theocratic rule.
Abolitionist: It’s been said before of you that you have developed a largely original mixture of political views. That you see gay rights as more than just a subsection of civil rights and equality of opportunity, but more as a revolutionary movement to replace traditional ideals of masculinity. Is this right?
PT: I see queer rights as part of the spectrum of human rights; an aspect of the universal struggle for emancipation. But I also see queer liberation (as opposed to mere gay rights) offering a subversive critique of the orthodox, often suffocating, models of masculinity and femininity. This critique can empower both queers and straights.
Abolitionist: When Michel Foucault was alive he also spoke along similar lines and he thought that emulating the straight relationship model was redundant for gay men who should forge their own way in life instead of trying to normalize things further to what the status quo dictates. What do you think of that?
PT: We queers should live our lives on our terms and stop mimicking the heteros. Give up all that ‘straight-acting’ nonsense. Forget assimilation. Be yourself, not what heterosexists want us to be i.e. like them.
Abolitionist: Having said that now what are your views on gay marriage. Is demanding marriage rights for gays assimilation or protectionist in your view or is this besides the point? Some people would say granting gay marriage rights
is revolutionary. What would you say?
PT: I am against homophobic discrimination. The ban on same-sex marriage is discrimination, so I fight to overturn it. But marriage (unlike love) is a fundamentally hetero institution, which has traditionally oppressed women, children and queers. With all this negative baggage, I would never want to get married. But I will defend the right of others to make that misguided choice, because I am against the homophobia of the same-sex marriage ban.
Abolitionist: You once wrote a wonderful article on showing compassion to animals be experimented on. What is the ethical case against animal experimentation in your view?
PT: The ethical case against animal experimentation is the same as the ethical case against the abuse of humans by war, poverty, racism, misogyny and homophobia: to stop suffering.
Abolitionist: Where is the world at with HIV research and animal rights at the moment?
PT: Some work is being done to develop alternative, non-animal research methods: cell, tissue and organ banks, computer modeling and so on. But not enough. Much more money needs to be invested. We need a Manhattan Project-style research programme to replace animal models with more humane and accurate human-based research and testing. That would pave the way for big advances in medicine, to the benefit of all humankind.
Abolitionist: Your activism is reminiscent of a typical hard-core activism that AIDS
activists in general have neglected. What would you like to see done to
help the cause?
PT: Wherever there is injustice and suffering, whether against humans or other animals, we need to make a fuss. Expose and challenge the abusers. Get their funding cut. Shame them in public.
First published in the magazine, Gay Times.
By Peter Tatchell
Am I alone in my sense of moral revulsion at the way chimpanzees are being abused in the name of scientific research to combat AIDS? Is there anyone else who shares my feelings of shame at the way the lesbian and gay community and AIDS organisations have remained silent about the cruelty of these experiments?
We all want to see a cure and vaccine against HIV as soon as possible. But can it be right to remedy the suffering of people with AIDS through deliberate infliction of suffering on other sentient species? Given our own experience of oppression, don't we have a responsibility to speak out against the exploitation of animals in scientific laboratories?
I have seen first hand the pain and anguish AIDS causes. Indeed, it is precisely because of this first-hand knowledge that I feel such a sense of outrage that chimpanzees are being willfully injected with HIV and subjected to other experiments in the name of conquering AIDS.
In addition to the cruelty involved in many of these vivisection experiments, the animals are usually kept in the most appalling conditions. Chimpanzees, which have evolved to live a roaming treetop existence in large family groups, are, instead, isolated in tiny metal cages where they have barely room to turn. This results in stress and anxiety for the animals and leads to psychological disorders and physical ill health.
Even prior to their imprisonment in scientific laboratories, much suffering is inflicted on chimpanzees. Many are taken from the wild as infants; usually by shooting their mothers. For every chimpanzee that reaches a laboratory alive, between five and ten die during capture or later during transportation due to physical abuse, starvation or despair.
In West Africa, partly as a result of this "slave trade" in animals, chimpanzees are now an endangered species with their population today being only two percent of what it was a hundred years ago.
Faced with such barbarism, it seems incumbent on the lesbian and gay community, and on people with HIV, to speak out against this AIDS-related animal research which is increasingly being justified in our name and for our alleged benefit. If we still hold true to the emancipatory ideals which inspired the modern lesbian and gay movement, then we cannot possibly collude with the oppression of other species in order to deliver ourselves from the oppression of AIDS. To demand rights for ourselves as homosexuals, and as people with HIV, and then to deny the rights of other sentient creatures, would be a grotesque betrayal of the liberatory vision which has been at the heart of the struggle for lesbian and gay freedom.
The moral case for opposing AIDS-connected animal experiments, and all other forms of vivisection, closely mirrors the case for universal human rights and the rejection of other forms of oppression such as racism and homophobia.
Like humans, other vertebrate animals are sentient beings. Endowed with a brain and nervous system, however simple and instinctive, they are nevertheless able to experience both pleasure and pain, as well as a range of basic emotions.
It is this capacity for sentience and feelings which is the common bond that unites all members of the animal kingdom and which obligates us to confer rights on other animal species and treat them with compassion. Indeed it is this very same reasoning -the right to be spared physical and psychological suffering-which demands that discrimination on the grounds of class, gender, race and sexual orientation be abolished.
As well as this moral argument against the use of animals in AIDS research, there is also a practical case against vivisection. The results of animal experiments cannot be generalised to human beings because we have a vastly different physiology from other animal species.
One typical medical consequence of these physiological differences between ourselves and other animal species has been that the use of Digitalis for cardiac patients was delayed for many years because it was first tested on dogs and resulted in dangerously high levels of canine blood pressure.
The issue of the uniqueness of human biology has been taken up by the journal New Scientist in connection with AIDS research. It reported on AIDS experiments with Macaque monkeys by the National Institute of Health in the United States and concluded that the NIH's attempt to draw comparisons between immune deficiencies in monkeys and human AIDS was "like saying that apples explain oranges merely because both of them contain a number of pips". It went on to point out that of the monkeys supposedly infected with simian AIDS, "None showed the pattern of imbalance between two types of cell in the immune system which is characteristic of human AIDS".
Despite a substantial body of expert medical opinion which rejects the scientific value of animal research, the public panic and fear of AIDS has been skillfully manipulated by vivisectionists to demand more money for animal research and to oppose animal welfare legislation which would restrict their activities. Indeed, the threatened closure of some vivisection laboratories has been averted by their move into AIDS-related experimentation such as that being conducted on cats and sheep at Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities.
This year, about 200 million animals will be tortured and killed in laboratory experiments worldwide (the human equivalent would be the extermination of most of the population of Western Europe). Relative to this vast scale of suffering and death, vivisectionists have contributed very few advances to medical science. Their work is a moral and medical failure. It is time we said so and began to support humane alternatives such as the pioneering animal-free research of the Dr Hadwen Trust. |
Peter Tatchell’s website is: http://www.petertatchell.net
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