Category: animal rights

World Week for Animals in Labs: Address at U.C. Berkeley

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May 7, 1998

I’ve come to thoroughly understand that the exploitation of animals everywhere exists solely because we as a society do not recognize the rights of animals any more than we at one time did not recognize the rights of certain human beings. If animals are ever to be liberated from the incarceration of laboratories and the horrors of vivisection, we humans must first recognize all animals as individuals with wants, needs, desires, and rights of their own. I quote our nations great civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, who said:

“There comes a time when a moral man can’t obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust. It is important to see that there are times when a man-made law is out of harmony with the moral law of the universe. There is nothing that expressed massive civil disobedience any more than the Boston Tea Party, and yet we give this to our young people and our students as part of the great tradition of our nation. So I think we are in good company when we break unjust laws, and I think those who are willing to do it and accept penalty are those who are part of the saving of the nation.”

Thank you, Dr. King. Wherever you are, you are in my heart today.

I believe all of us here today are also in good company, very good company, in fact, because of our colleagues who climbed the Campanile and dropped the beautiful banner that reads:

END VIVISECTION — ANIMAL LIBERATION

These activists were willing to break the law and accept the penalty in order to educate others about the barbaric practice of vivisection at U.C. Berkeley and the expansion of its dead-end use in the forthcoming neuroscience center at this campus.

Just because one man-made law defines animals as “property” and another man-made law permits the harming and killing of that animal “property,” does not make either the ownership or the abuse a moral action. No individual is the property of another, even if a man-made law says she is. Taking and using the life of one individual to benefit the life of another is out of harmony with the moral law of the universe.

Likewise, taking and using 15 million dollars of taxpayers’ monies and students’ tuition to provide and expand such a use of animals is out of harmony with a student’s right to ethical education. Every one of you students has the right to an ethical education, one that does not include the drugging, burning, blinding, infecting, shocking, addicting, shooting, freezing and surgical mutilation of another individual by your teachers behind your classroom doors on your campus, all of which you pay for.

I’m sure you’ve heard before that the success of your education will depend, in part, on what you make of it, on what you put into it. No one here is going to give you what you want simply because you want it.

Professors Russell DeValois, Richard Van Sluyters, Walter Freeman and Carla Shatz are not going to stop their highly invasive, conspicuously cruel and unnecessary experiments on animals simply because we want them to. U.C. Berkeley belongs to you, the students. And I promise you this: If you take an active stand against the Center for Neuroscience and the expansion of animal research, your education will be enriched a thousandfold because it will then reflect your compassion as well as your taking right action according to Gandhi, Buddha, and Martin Luther King, who are good company indeed.

Take pride in your convictions and the strength to abolish this university’s animal abuse will naturally follow. U.C. Berkeley belongs to you, the students.

Thank you.

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Photo Rex/Shutterstock

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

March 18, 1998

His Holiness the Dalai Lama
The Office of Tibet
241 East 32nd Street
New York, NY 10016

Your Holiness:

It has come to my attention that you will be leading the commencement address at Emory University this year. As you are an internationally beloved spiritual leader of non-violent beliefs as well as a man of genuine compassion, I am compelled to inform you of the brutality, pain and anguish suffered by animals at this university, and I am asking you to speak on behalf of the many sentient beings there who continue to suffer and die in silence.

Each year, over 100,000 animals lose their lives in Emory laboratories after enduring the agony of viral infections, chemical addiction, prolonged isolation and psychological abuse.

In representing the horror of animal research at Emory University, one chimpanzee in particular stands out among the many thousands of innocent individuals subjected to incarceration and suffering at this institution. His name was Jerom. Along with 13 other chimpanzees at Emory’s Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, Jerom was repeatedly injected with an exceptionally virulent strain of HIV, but unlike the others he contracted the virus and eventually succumbed to the severe physical and emotional trauma of AIDS, tormented and ravaged by the disease until he finally was killed on February 13, 1996.

In an effort to prevent a repeat of Jerom’s fate, his caregiver kept a journal of Jerom’s final days to document his painful experience, hoping that someone would halt this cruelty. She writes, “During this time Jerom began to recognize me as his caregiver. He was so severely weakened by the wasting that he had difficulty holding his head up. He would sit with his knees drawn up and hold his chin in his hands. He had to manually turn his head in the direction he wished to face. At times, Jerom would hold his head and sob quietly. Other times, he would climb down from his bed board and curl up in a fetal position on the floor in front of me.”

I challenge this suffering, especially in light of the burgeoning millions of people all over the world who want a science that is not based on the devastation of others, a true science that transcends the pain and destruction of animal-based research, one that yields dependable and sustaining benefits without torturing and killing individuals. This kind of science can be a reality, but only if enough voices, like yours, speak out.

Humans are a conscientious species, yet if we continue to barter ethics for scientific justification and trade in one life for another, then I question such a cost to compassion and ultimately to humanity.

To give you a more complete understanding of Jerom’s tragedy and the trauma caused by this kind of senseless research to both animals and humans, I’ve enclosed the memoir from Jerom’s caregiver and a booklet, Aping Science: A Critical Analysis of Research at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center.

It is not my intent to merely shock or horrify you. The witness you bear to atrocities against your own people and so many others has certainly seen to this end already. But it is your witness itself, your encounters with enduring cruelty, that I appeal to now. In your entire life—here now, before and after—can you ever see how the purposeful wounding and infecting and killing of some should be used to alleviate the suffering of others?

Please search your heart and offer what you find there to the students receiving your commencement address. For the human and non-human animals at Emory University, I urge you to put into the words that I cannot, what it means to the human soul, psyche and spirit to benefit by barbarism and cruelty.

With enduring hope.

John Pepper, CEO, Procter & Gamble

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August 20, 1997

Dear Mr. Pepper:

For many years I bought and used Procter & Gamble products (Cascade, Joy, Dawn, Cover Girl and Max Factor, Noxzema, Vick’s and Icy Hot). I enjoyed them very much.

I no longer buy or use these or any P&G products since I learned that your company is testing chemicals and substances, many of them caustic and toxic, on rabbits, hamsters, ferrets, guinea pigs, rats and mice.

I’m writing you for two reasons: First, because I want you to know P&G’s animal testing is affecting P&G’s customers, and second, because I want to ask you a question.

Regarding your customers, please know that even people who appear to care little for animals, are appalled at P&G’s continued use of toxicity/irritancy tests. Most of my friends and family, co-workers and neighbors, even strangers at the supermarket, are aware of existing alternative methods for animal tests: human cell cultures, tissue cultures and computer models, and these folks also know that federal regulations do not require animal tests, and have not since 1984. Which begs the question: Why test on animals? Your PR brochure does not truthfully answer this question.

Revlon, for example, took a bold stand against animal testing nearly two decades ago. The Body Shop’s philosophy is proudly Against Animal Testing. Both of these companies are favorites of several generations of loyal customers and first-time customers alike, and both companies are growing by leaps and bounds, due largely to cruelty-free testing.

Now is the time to update P&G’s outdated procedures by ending animal testing and instead use alternative testing methods now available.

You could introduce a cruelty-free line of P&G products that bridges the gap between large, corporate market brands and cruelty-free yet small, homegrown brands found in health-food stores. I know this line would be a success.

I hope you will soon end all animal testing at Procter & Gamble. Millions of women and men worldwide will applaud you and reward you with loyal customer support for many years to come.