Your Mind Or The Monkey?
Stuart Jeffries interviews Tipu Aziz, a scientist who's open about his animal testing, and defends its use in the cosmetics industry:
Professor Tipu Aziz is showing me a bullfight on his laptop. "It's a film from the 60s by a Yale professor called Delgado," he says. "That's an angry bull," the neurosurgeon adds unnecessarily, pointing at the twitching, menacing animal. On screen, Delgado hides behind the anti-goring screen at the edge of the ring, leaving his research student to defend himself with a cape. Then we see the bull after Delgado has implanted electrodes in its brain. He has become a picture of calm. If only all bulls had such brain surgery, bullfighting would be obsolete.Aziz shows me this film as one of the first examples of deep brain stimulation, a surgical procedure he pioneered in Britain to halt the symptoms of Parkinson's disease (which affects one in 100 people over 60) and other crippling tremor-based ailments. Patients have small electrodes permanently implanted in their brains. Wires are passed under the skin to a pacemaker. A battery is inserted in the chest. Some patients have described the surgery as miraculous - tremors stop and, in some cases, patients walk again. "Many people cry after the surgery because they are so happy that the symptoms have been effectively turned off."
He shows me several before-and-after videos of sufferers to whom he has brought relief - upsetting images of twitching, horribly writhing men and women, unable to walk, unable to talk, but with their mental faculties intact. He shows me a four-year-old girl suffering from dystonia, a degenerative condition akin to Parkinson's. "At first we didn't want to operate on a small girl, but when she came to us she was dying - she couldn't swallow or move. So we operated. Now," he says, clinching the point, "she is a healthy teenager." These films are marvellous PR for Aziz's work, of course. He performs brain surgery about three times a week. He says that 40,000 people around the world have benefited from the techniques he has developed. He is very proud of his work.
Only one problem: Aziz is a vivisectionist. He experiments on monkeys. He drills into their heads and puts electrodes in their brains. He has drugged them, too, in order to recreate the symptoms of Parkinson's. He reckons to use on average two monkeys a year this way and estimates that about 100 have been used for such research around the world. "I have absolutely no qualms about what I do." He points at his laptop: "These cases are why my conscience is clear."
Animals are not people. People have to take priority. I'm not for needlessly causing animals pain, or killing them for sport (if they aren't also eaten or used), but I have no problem with eating them or wearing them -- and as for animal testing for medical purposes or cosmetics...please do (as humanely as possible).
I had to laugh when a woman I know disparaged me for wearing my eBay Furs 1940s mouton lamb swing coat (a bargain at $129!). "Honey, I don't like fur," she said, slipping into her hip-length suede coat.
I get the sense that a lot of the "anti-fur" people take their position because the animals in question are so cute. If a baby seal looked like a tarantula, would they really care?
The key here is "humanely". In many cases, in all industries that involve the use of animals, their treatment is anything but humane.
The film industry is a beacon of change in this realm, to everyones benefit. True, sometimes to the point of being ridiculous.
eric at March 5, 2006 3:28 PM
If another species used us for testing because they didn't understand our type of intelligence, or because they felt that their species takes priority because they are more "evolved" or whatever justification the human species itself may use, how would you feel?
Some may say that animals aren't "intelligent" like humans are, but how do we know? Species of great ape have culture. Prairie dogs have language. What makes us so much better?
If a creature is eligible for testing only because of intelligence, then why don't we use infants or the mentally disabled for testing? One could say that it also has to do with the potential for intelligence, so we couldn't use infants. However, that still leaves those in a vegetable or mentally disabled state, because their potential for intelligence can never rise.
Definitely not saying we should use any human for involuntary medical or cosmetic testing, but just something to think about...
Stephanie at March 5, 2006 11:14 PM
> and defends its use in the cosmetics industry
Hmm, that little zinger didn't escape my attention. It's one thing to alleviate the symptoms of a crippling disease by sacrificing a couple of macaques a year -- quite another to drip shampoo into the eyes of thousands of restrained rabbits to alleviate eye-sting in the showers of America. This is Aziz's defence of the practice, later in the Guardian piece:
That's a remarkably weak argument. What "suffering" is he talking about here?
Stu "El Inglés" Harris at March 6, 2006 6:53 AM
"What "suffering" is he talking about here?"
The pain and suffering of looking at an ugly woman before she's put on her make-up.
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