Animal-Rights Demonstration

The statement by Stuart Krassner, UC Irvine associate vice chancellor for research, that animal-rights activists who picketed Robert F. Phalen’s home Sunday want “a child to die as a result (of the abolition of experiments on animals)” and use the tactics of “fascists and communists” are cheap shots and far more anti-intellectual than our position that animal experiments are wrong, highly unreliable and ethically indefensible.

We stand with George Bernard Shaw, Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Bashevis Singer and countless great intellectuals like them in taking the position that man does not have the right to inflict misery, pain and death on helpless animals.

We know we are fighting the power alliance of profit-hungry industry and miserably misguided academe, but we know we are right, and our arguments--if not as high-sounding as those of the scientist defenders of their miserable trade--deserve to be heard and aired.

There are a number of alternatives to the holocaust of animal experimentation, and all we are asking is that these alternatives be earnestly sought and that senseless, repetitive, forever morally wrong experimentation on animals be phased out.

DAGMAR M. RIOS

Newport Beach