Medical Research and Animal Rights

Since your editorials usually reflect compassion and concern for the less fortunate, I was stunned by the caustic tone of your editorial excoriating “animal rights cranks” and their “self-righteous tantrums.” Even some researchers are more critical of the research grants industry than you are.

I would like to briefly quote two other “self-absorbed, vulgar minds” on the issue of vivisection:

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”

--Schopenhauer

“Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.”

--George Bernard Shaw

Somehow millions of us feel quite comfortable in the company of these “cruel and callous” zealots.

MARY ANN MELVIN

Solano Beach