The Primate Freedom Project
Co-founder Rick Bogle Interviewed
By Claudette Vaughan
Abolitionist: Rick please tell us about The Primate Freedom Project.
Rick Bogle: The Primate Freedom Project is dedicated to ending the use of nonhuman primates in biomedical and harmful behavioral experimentation. We are an animal rights organisation.
We work to educate the public and policy makers about the similarity between humans and the other primates and to call attention to the ethical implications that arise as a result. We publish information about monkeys and apes and their experiences in the labs on PrimateFreedom.com. We write a newsletter for members of congress.
We advocate for the monkeys and chimpanzees held in labs across the country by connecting individual activists with individual animals through the use of Primate Freedom Tags. We encourage and assist people who try to find out about the individual monkey or chimpanzee identified on their Primate Freedom Tag.
We support activists and grassroots efforts on behalf of monkeys and apes by helping them with research, promotion, and various in-kind donations.
Abolitionist:Your brainchild The National Primate Research Exhibition Hall is causing a stir in the US. Why and how did you form this new campaign and how successful has it been?
Once, years ago, I was protesting in front of the Oregon National Primate Research Center. Directly across the street from the entrance was a very large vacant lot. I thought it would make a great location for an interpretive center, something like the interpretive centers that are usually operated as part of a state park. I was unable to interest any of the large organisations in this idea. Not too long ago, this lot was sold and developed.
About two years ago I was protesting in front of the Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory, directly adjacent to the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, on the University of Wisconsin, Madison campus. A friend mentioned that the building immediately next door, directly between these two large monkey labs, was privately owned, and that the owner had a bicycle shop just around the corner from where we were.
I went immediately and asked him if he was interested in selling the property and he said no, he wasn’t. I told him that I wanted to establish an exhibit there that would put the primate lab’s experiments and cruelty on public display. He immediately changed his mind and promised to sell me the property.
Once the university found out that he had entered into a contract to sell us the property for $675,000, they offered $1,000,000 and exerted other pressure on him. He immediately began trying to get out of our contract. We filed a lawsuit, went to trial, and are currently awaiting the judge’s decision.
We believe we have a clear legal claim to the property. We have made a strong legal argument and expect to prevail. But we recognise that the powers that be in Madison have a deserved reputation for being in the
university’s pocket, so we are also realistic about the possible result.
In all likelihood, the decision, in any eventuality, will be appealed. It is pretty clear that the owner has the university’s strong support.
The university’s strong resistance to our effort is perfectly understandable. They too understand the power of this idea. Our goal, as I have said, is to end primate experimentation. This is the thin edge of the
wedge that will liberate all animals, in my opinion.
We intend to continually refresh our efforts there with controversial displays that will call attention to the parallels between the current plight of the animals most like us and the past treatment of minorities. We
will host artists’ interpretations of vivisection. We will explore the history and legacy of Harry Harlow. We will showcase experiments occurring around the nation and the history of primate vivisection. We will have video displays, images, interactive exhibits, and laboratory equipment on display.
We imagine the walls painted in graphic murals and life-sized bronzes of monkeys in restraint chairs outside our door. We will connect the dots for people and point out the fallacies of animal models of human disease and drug response. We will expose the federal oversight system’s failure. We will bring in speakers of note. We will host conferences and rallies. And we will do all of this less than ten feet from the doors to two of the most infamous primate laboratories on the planet where 2000 monkeys are being held in small stainless steel cages. We intend to change the world.
To answer the last part of your question, we haven’t been too successful yet. When we eventually win, you will be able to judge our success yourself. If we are successful, the vivisection of monkeys and apes will finally be put in an unwavering spotlight 365 days a year. If we don’t get the nation talking, if you aren’t reading about it or considering a visit, then we will have failed.
Abolitionist: You asked the question “How like us do they have to be?” as an entry point into the larger discussion about animal ethics and human responsibility or lack of it. How have you answered that question yourself, Rick?
Rick Bogle: It is a rhetorical question that seeks a concrete answer. My answer might be different than someone else's. Your readers are familiar with the history of rights. There was a time when no one was similar enough to a land-owning gentleman to be given any consideration in the eyes of the law. People who looked different certainly weren't enough like “us.” Neither were the poor, women, or their children, the handicapped, or animals.
Today, it is taken as a matter of fact that humans of every variety have a set of inherent rights precisely because of our similarities, and that these similarities trump our many differences. So, the question naturally arises, what are the similarities that we deem sufficient to afford every one of us
this set of basic rights?
We should keep in mind the requirement that each of us must have these characteristics and that they must be explicable, that is, we should be able to explain in understandable terms, why they matter. I can’t easily do this for the characteristic of species.
A thought experiment might help clarify my point. If species is a characteristic that matters, then we should be able to build a hierarchy of concern based solely on an organism’s species. Thus, we should be able to
readily place an oyster ahead of a clam simply because one is a member of the species Crassostrea gigas and the other is a member of Mercenaria mercenaria. This seems arbitrary.
On the other hand, suppose we learned that all oysters experience more pain than do all clams when being boiled alive. Now, there would be a clear and understandable reason to be more concerned for an oyster than a clam.
From this, it seems that there isn’t any reason to be more concerned for a member of Homo sapien than for a member of the species Canis familiaris simply because one is a human and the other is a dog, so there must be characteristics, like a sense of pain, that naturally compel us to be concerned for one another.
For me, personally, it comes down to this: if an organism, you, a monkey, a dog, a leach, behaves as if it is self-directed, then we should act toward it with caution and concern until we know otherwise. We should practice the Golden Rule with any organism that acts as if there could be someone home.
But making the case for oysters is much harder than making the case for monkeys because our close evolutionary relatedness makes a monkey’s behavior more understandable to many more people. It is a simple matter of fact that monkeys and apes (that’s us) share a constellation of behaviors that would
be included in any fair collection of characteristics that we should deem sufficient to acknowledge another’s most fundamental rights.
The exemplar case is, I think, Masserman J, Wechkin S, Terris W. 1964. ‘Altruistic' behavior in rhesus monkeys. American Journal of Psychiatry vol. 121: 584-5. Rather than explain the study, I will simply encourage your readers to look at it themselves:
http://www.madisonmonkeys.com/masserman.pdf
Abolitionist: How much AIDS/HIV testing is being done on primates in the US today?
RB: SIV, simmian immunodeficiency virus, studies are widespread. A quick search of the literature, using PubMed, suggests that about 300 papers were published within the year. Looking at the CRISP, searching only for 2005, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 240 funded studies associated with SIV.
Abolitionist: Most alternative methods are based not on truly scientific methods like
human cell and tissue cultures and clinical investigations of human patients, but rather of animal cell and tissue cultures and computer models, which are more or less equal value to the worthless and fraudulent animal experiments they are suppose to replace.
RB: Yes, replacing whole animals with animal cells and tissues misses the point that a mouse is not a good predictive physiological model of a minke whale, a human, a dog, or a bat.
Abolitionist: The authorities responsible for the validation and assessment of alternative methods will acknowledge and officially accept alternative methods only if they produce the same results as the animal experiment it is supposed to replace. Although such methods are clearly detrimental both to the abolition of animal experiments on medical and scientific grounds and to animal protection, it is astounding that an ever increasing number of animal rights, animal protection and antivivisectionist organisations are not only endorsing the 3R's but also promoting and financing the research and development of alternative methods. Your thoughts Rick?
RB: Animal rightists don't endorse the 3Rs. Welfarists do. If someone endorses the 3Rs, in spite of any claims to the contrary, they cannot simultaneously maintain the position that animals have the right not to be hurt by us in most instances.
Abolitionist: True anti-vivisection promotes only two R’s. Remove (all animal experiments) and Reject alternative methods. Will this happen?
RB: Yes. Liberation movements succeed. This seems to be a plain fact.
http://www.primateresearch.com
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