Interviewer: Professor Regan, you are widely
accepted as a founder and prominent leader in
the animal rights movement. Could you describe
what is meant by animal rights and what do you
mean when you speak of the "rights view"?
Professor Regan: There are many people
who feel that we have an obligation to be kind
to animals, and not to be cruel to them. But this
view doesn't make it a matter of justice that
we treat animals in a certain way-just that it
is nice if we are kind and not very good if we
are cruel. Many people think that we should be
nice to animals because if we are not nice to
animals we will not be nice people, and then we
will end up beating up our children and our neighbors
and so on. The problem is, these views don't focus
on our duty to animals but only on the effects
our treatment of animals has on us. The rights
view says, "We owe it as a matter of strict
justice to treat animals in a certain way."
In particular we owe it to these animals not to
eat them, for example, or not to put them in cages
for our entertainment, or not to use them in education
or in surgery, which is so anachronistic and yet
characteristic of modern medical education in
the United States. The current view is, "These
animals are ours, we may do with them as we wish."
The rights view says, "No you may not. They
cannot claim their rights, they cannot understand
their rights, and in this way they are very much
like mentally enfeebled human beings. But they
have them none the less."
The important thing to see is that the animal
rights position, properly understood, is the human
rights position. It's not that we are saying that
non-human animals have a right to be treated with
respect but human animals don't. We're dealing
with the rights of all animals, and since we humans
are animals, it follows that we have the same
basic kinds of rights as they do.
Interviewer: Your fate, you have said,
is to help others see animals in a different way-as
creatures who do not belong in cages or skillets.
How would you have people see animals?
Professor Regan: It's a very difficult
thing. It's something we all struggle towards
and I'm not sure that I have perfected it myself.
To quote from Dustin, "... see them as other
nations, see them as sharing the earth with us,
co-inhabitants with us," but essentially
having the capacity, as in the case of wild animals,
of living quite separately from us. In the case
of domestic animals the great challenge is to
figure out how to live in a mutually respectful
symbiotic relationship. It is very difficult to
do that.
Interviewer:
What were some of your main reasons or motives
for writing The Case For Animal Rights? And do
you feel these objectives are being accomplished?
Professor Regan: I think the main reason
I wrote the book was to finally say in a very
disciplined, rigorous, and in some ways an emotionally
detached style, that animals in fact do have rights
and are entitled to he treated accordingly because
of strict justice. Many people talked about animal
rights and it had become a slogan-part of the
political rhetoric of America and its talk of
rights. But no one had set out to make the case
for animal rights in a very disciplined, sustained
way. So I thought it was important to do that.
Certainly it is not a popular book, one that you
can race through. It is a book to be studied rather
than to be read. But I also think of it as a weapon.
Frequently those of us who advocate animal rights
are considered uninformed, illogical, sloppy,
sentimental and so on. And I take the book to
be a philosophical tool for ramming those accusations
down the throats of those uninformed, emotional,
illogical and sloppy thinkers who make these accusations.
Interviewer: I understand that the Vietnam
War, Gandhi and, believe it or not, the death
of your own pet dog all became impetuses to your
involvement in the animal rights movement. Can
you fill in the missing parts?
Professor Regan: Regarding the Vietnam
War, it occurred to me that if I was going to
be an effective activist in the streets, I'd have
to combine my activism with scholarship. So I
began to research the fields of nonviolent conflict
resolution, pacifism, aggression, war, and so
forth, and in the course of doing that it was
inevitable that I read Gandhi. Gandhi was obviously
very relevant to the question of violence and
war and so on. He was the first one who challenged
me to think about what I call the invisible violence
in our life, in particular the food that we eat.
We normally don't think of the violence that goes
into the production of animal products-meat and
other by-products. Gandhi was the first person
who taught me that the fork is a weapon of violence.
I was worried about napalm and M-17's and flame
throwers, and here I was participating in violence
myself and yet blind to it. So intellectually
I derived the arguments for vegetarianism from
Gandhi's influence. But what opened my heart to
the issue was the death of our dog. It was before
we had children, and as so often happens the dog
was like a surrogate child for us. When we returned
home one day the dog had been killed, which caused
us tremendous grief. But I realized in the course
of that experience that there was in me (although
suppressed or repressed by society) a great caring
for animals that wasn't considered appropriate
for a man. This was part of the aculturization
in our macho society in which men are not supposed
to care about animals. Nonetheless I felt a deep
love for this particular animal, but it was too
great a love, too great a sense of compassion,
to be reposed in just one creature; it was a more
boundless compassion. I was very fortunate that
my head and my heart came together at that particular
time in my life. And from then on there was no
turning back.
Interviewer: Rene Decartes holds a very
influential position in the history of Western
philosophy. What were his views regarding animals
and consciousness, and how has that influenced
the modern world view?
Professor
Regan: Decartes, a Catholic thinker, argued
that animals are nature's machines. He thought
of them as unthinking, unfeeling creatures who
are not aware of anything, who are essentially
like wind-up toys, except that you don't have
to wind them up. It was an enormously influential
view, because it happened to coincide with the
development of experimental physiology. This was
during the 17th century in France. The Cartesian
scientists were intellectually given a license
not to worry about how the animals responded,
and of course this was before anesthesia. They
literally nailed dogs up by all four paws, then
simply opened up their stomaches and studied the
circulation of their blood- on live, un-anestheticized
animals who were screaming in agony. In many ways,
I think that today's fields of research involving
non-human animals were birthed by Decartes' ideas.
And to this day there are many closet Cartesians
out there who are still part of the scientific
establishment, who still wonder whether animals
feel pain. It was not only historically influential,
it continues to be influential.
Interviewer: In the realm of religion,
I can see Christendom uniting against cruelty,
but they haven't as yet seen the fork as a weapon
of violence. What do you, and Judeo-Christian
leaders you know, find in that tradition that
would support animal rights and vegetarianism?
Professor Regan: It's going to be difficult
to persuade the great masses of Christians to
give up the meat on their plate. What we can do
is to persuade them to give up supporting the
factory farm. In effect this would be to give
up eating meat, because it's very difficult to
get any meat that has not been raised on a factory
farm. So we may end up having defacto Christian
vegetarians without their being de joure. In other
words they will be vegetarians so long as the
meat comes from a certain source, but otherwise
not.
It is absolutely clear that in Eden our diet was
vegetarian. So, Biblically speaking, what we have
now is a fallen world; and one step back to Eden
would be to stop eating meat. Biblically this
is absolutely clear. When I speak to Christians
and to Jews in those terms, then they at least
begin to think, maybe it is not just factory-farmed
veal that I should be saying no to, maybe there
is something deeper here. After all, why remain
alienated from God over a hamburger?
Interviewer: In your interview in The Animals'
Agenda magazine you stated, "There is no
way out of our own bondage and current predicaments
without helping animals." And you have also
said, "There will be no peace in the world
until there is peace at home." How would
you support these statements?
Professor Regan: They may be more declarations
of faith than they are hard core scientific claims.
Most people are unaware of the invisible violence
in their lives. They go and buy toothpaste and
shampoos and deodorants and so on, unthinkingly.
These are items that we need, and we bring them
home and we use them, and when we are out of them
we go and replenish them. People must begin to
realize that these products have a history of
violence to them in which animals have been used
in testing them in excruciatingly painful ways,
like eye irritancy tests, skin irritancy tests
and other sorts of tests. All the products in
our home have been tested in these ways, unless
we go to the trouble to find products that have
not been tested in those ways and buy them. I
have got to believe that supporting that kind
of thing in ignorance is a terrible human failing.
We are just fooling ourselves if we think we can
bring peace to the world, and change the opinions
and the visions and the desires and the ideals
of people all throughout the world, if we can't
even say to ourselves, "By God, I've got
to get rid of this stuff in my house." I
mean, whom are we fooling?
My view is that those over whom we have control
are ourselves. That's where we should start. Peace
begins at home. Nonviolence begins at home. Progress
begins at home. I'm not saying not to work as
a political activist. Of course, I do that myself.
But I think we have to work to clean up our own
act, to get our own house in order. But then people
say, "We will lose so much. You are asking
us to give up so much." And my view is, "No,
you don't lose, you gain." What you gain
is control of your life-through the knowledge
of what you are doing with a dollar bill. Take
those ideals of harmony and justice and nonviolence
and caring and compassion and express them in
the marketplace. That's where it begins.
Interviewer: You have described that animals
are used in the field of science nowadays in three
subcategories: education, toxicology or poisons
testing, and research. What are your views on
the age old argument about stopping progress if
we don't use animals in these ways?
Professor Regan: Let's go through them:
education, toxicology testing and research. In
the field of education the United States is an
anachronism. We normally require our young people,
sometimes from grade school up, to dissect and
vivisect animals, and if a young person says,
"No, I have an objection to doing this,"
then they are ridiculed, they are punished, or
something happens. In fact there is a recent case
in California of a fourteen year old girl standing
up and saying, "I'm not going to dissect
this frog," and she was hassled. So the school
board says, "Okay, you don't have to dissect
the frog, but we are going to put a little note
on your permanent record that says you didn't
do all the work that was required of you."
Well, I hope that all the young people and their
parents reading this say, "Enough is enough!"
We should not brutalize our children in this way
by forcing them to do something which, if they
did on their own in a public place, they would
be arrested for. If you take a frog into a shopping
mall and prepare to dissect it, you are going
to get arrested. But you take that same situation
and put it in a school and require somebody to
do that and punish them if they don't. Now that
kind of schizophrenia is unfathomable to me!
In medical education in Great Britain, both in
human medicine and in veterinary medicine, no
student is ever required to dissect or vivisect
an animal. In seventeen British universities,
including Cambridge and Oxford, it is a written
policy that if you have a conscientious objection
to doing any dissection or vivisection you need
not do it. Now, are we in America seriously going
to say that this fourteen year old girl, or all
those for whom she speaks, can't get a decent
education in the life sciences without dissecting
and vivisecting? Heavens no. Gandhi, my hero,
says, "You can judge the character and greatness
of a society by how it treats its animals."
There are always two victims in a laboratory situation.
One is the non-human animal and the other is the
student. And sometimes I think it's the instructor
too who has been victimized.
Now let's consider product testing, toxicity testing.
First I would like to mention that there are nonviolent,
cruelty-free cosmetics and household items that
are available. (If people write to me I will send
them a list of cruelty-free products,) Very often
people say, "If we don't do these toxicity
tests on animals then it is a great risk for public
health." That is just propaganda produced
by the animal exploiters. In the November 1986
issue of Nature magazine it was shown that if
you do a battery of ten non-animal tests (such
as cell and tissue culture and mathematical modeling
tests), you can get results that are superior
to all the animal tests regarding carcinogenic
and other effects. Now, there are sixty thousand
human-factured chemicals in the marketplace. Sixty
thousand. And only two thousand have been tested
on animals. If we started right now and tried
to test on animals the other fifty-eight thousand
that are out there-that we are breathing, eating,
inhaling and getting exposed to through our skin
and so on-it would take us a hundred years and
it would cost between two and four million dollars
for each test. We neither have the time, nor the
will, nor the financial ability to do this. But
if we do the battery of non-animal tests we can
do it in two to four days for two hundred dollars
per chemical. Now, anyone who says, "You
are against progress, you are going to set back
science, you are against public health, you really
hate human beings, you just love animals,"
and so on, this is, I think, ridiculous.
The only people who are going to say that with
a straight face are the people who are in the
business of making money from the sale and use
of animals. And my view is, don't believe them,
don't trust them. They always say, "We love
animals; we wouldn't use them if we didn't have
to." Well, that's just rhetoric. I have never
known a research scientist who said that who went
to the trouble to buy cruelty-free cosmetics.
And those alternatives already exist. If they
really loved animals they wouldn't buy products
of pain. I've never known a research scientist
who said, "I wouldn't use animals unless
I had to; I love animals," who is a vegetarian.
But if they really did love animals the way they
say they do, they wouldn't eat them, because there
is an alternative there, and a healthier alternative
as well. So don't believe these people for a minute.
They use animals because they have been trained
to use animals, because they have a career tied
up in using animals, and because if they didn't
use animals they wouldn't have a job any more!
In a very important book called Alternatives to
Pain For Experiments on Animals Dallas Pratt reports
on a hundred or so cases that he investigated
in which scientists used animals in painful experiments
when valid nonviolent scientific alternatives
already existed. In terms of research, there is
every reason to believe that animal experimentation
is actually retarding the progress of science
rather than helping it go forward. All we have
to do is look at cancer research as a case in
point. They have put twenty billion dollars into
cancer research. And as the recent report from
the Office of Technology Assessment states, they
have really made no significant progress in twenty
years of research. Why? Because they give cancer
to mice and rats-that's their methodology. Then
they try to extrapolate that to human beings.
I think that the future of- all advances in medicine
and research is at the cell and tissue level,
which doesn't have anything to do with whole animal
model testing.
I think the thing that people need to realize
also is that science is just big business, an
enormous business. In fact, I refer to the medical-industrial
complex, which is much larger and more sinister
than the military-industrial complex because it
gets away with more. It's not in the business
to keep people well. It's in the business to have
people sick, and this is a great failing, a social
failing. So, what we need to do is not only change
laws and change attitudes and so on, but also
to change the whole complexion of science and
medicine as practiced in this country.
Interviewer: In the epilogue of your book,
The Case For Animal Rights, you stated that the
rights view is not anti-business, nor anti-science,
nor anti-freedom of the individual, and yet those
whose business it is to use animals in research
and in trade might disagree. How would you defend
your statement?
Professor Regan: To say that a certain
business should end is not, in and of itself,
anti-business. There was a business in the trade
of slaves, and when we said, "Look, you can't
do this anymore, you can't buy and sell slaves
as pieces of property," that wasn't anti-business.
We were just saying that there are some things
that are not to be bought or sold. So similarly,
if we arrive at the point where animals are not
bought and sold for scientific purposes or for
gustatory delight, that will not be anti-business.
People will still be encouraged to make a living.
There is nothing in the animal rights movement
or philosophy that follows any particular party
line or economic line, It is not conservative
or liberal, Republican or Democrat. It is not
against the free market. It just says, if you
do have a free market then you are going to have
to make a living without exploiting animals. And
that's not anti-business. In fact, what it does
is create all kinds of new businesses, alternatives
like tofu-burgers for example. So, it's not anti-business
and it's certainly not anti-freedom of the individual.
No one has the freedom to violate the rights of
anybody else. That's not one of our freedoms.
If we agree that animals have rights, then no
one has that freedom. So it's not against human
freedom, it's against the excess of human freedom.
Animal rights could hardly be characterized as
anti-science. In fact. I think the animal experimentation
methodology that characterizes Western science
is anti-science-stagecoach methodology, something
that fits the 19th century. Here we are almost
in the 21st century and people are still dissecting
rats and pithing frogs. What does that tell us?
It tells us that rather than animal rights being
anti-scientific it is very pro-scientific. We
want to see science outgrow its past; grown-up
science is what we want. I think of Galileo's
contemporaries when he said, "I want you
to look through this telescope to see what's out
there.'' And of course they all said, "No.
No. We have no need. We know what's out there.
We don't have to look." When contemporary
scientists say, "There are no alternatives,"
that is like Galileo's contemporaries saying,
"We already know, we are not going to look."
Again, almost to a person, when the scientists
that I have dealt with say there are no alternatives,
they have never made the slightest conscientious
effort to find them.
Interviewer: There is a rise of interest
in preventive medicine, and a growing acknowledgement
that indeed diet has something to do with health.
Gandhi influenced you dietarily. If you will,
talk about your dietary convictions and practices.
Professor Regan: When I read Gandhi he
challenged me to think about the violence that
I was supporting by eating animals. That made
a profound impact on me. So when I entered the
animal rights movement my first step was at the
dinner table, so to speak. Since that time I have
learned a great deal about what others have to
say about diet, its effect on the environment
on the one hand, and its effect on the human body
on the other. If we look just at the health aspect
of it, the arguments against eating animals are
so overwhelming. We are what we eat, and if we
eat a lot of fat we are going to be fat-in the
wrong ways, in the wrong places, and in the wrong
times. It just makes sense not to eat meat.
When people say, I don't eat red meat, just chicken,
that really cracks me up, because somehow they
think that if they eat white meat they will minimize
their health risks. In fact, back East the pork
industry has a major campaign to convince people
that pork is white meat.
We have recently seen the statistics about the
effects of eating chicken. According to a report
issued by the National Resource Council, there
are millions of cases per year of people becoming
sick from the Salmonella bacteria in chicken-millions
of cases of Americans having flu-like symptoms:
diarrhea, vomiting, fever and so on. And people
say, Oh, it's the flu. It's not the flu, it's
Salmonella poisoning! There are people dying of
this bacteria. So the idea that we can avoid serious
health risks by eating white meat is just laughable.
The way to prevent illness most effectively is
through our life style. If we stop smoking, stop
drinking heavily, stop eating meat, and get enough
exercise, we will become healthy- either to sustain
our health or to recapture it if we have lost
it. People say, "If you don't eat meat, look
at what you are giving up." My message is
always the same: Look at what you are gaining.
Not only are you getting your health again, you
are gaining your life again!
Interviewer: I'm sure the animal rights
movement has something to do with the fact that
now as many as a hundred thousand philosophy students
a year are discussing such issues as the moral
basis of vegetarianism.
Professor Regan: That's true, there has
been more written by philosophers in the past
decade on animal rights than has been written
in the previous two thousand years. What we have
is an enormous outpouring of interest in this
particular issue, and it has found its way into
the classroom, into the textbooks. Typically,
where students are taking courses about contemporary
issues like abortion, euthanasia, nuclear war,
famine and pollution, now animal rights is also
on the agenda of moral concern. It is in these
sorts of courses where animal rights is making
its presence felt. It's not a fad. This is not
going away. On the contrary, intellectual activity
in this area is increasing all the time. People
are writing their dissertations on animal rights.
Now animal rights is part of mainstream academic
intellectual life in the United States, in England,
in Australia and in Europe. Throughout the ages
we have had wonderful, important, articulate,
influential people speaking for animal rights,
but until now it never made it into the classroom.
Interviewer: To quote directly from your
writings, you said, "There is another revolution
coming and it is going to be a big one."
At the same time, you see animal rights issues
as a cause celebre on America's college campuses.
Will this issue of animal rights supply the same
intense motivation that, say, free speech, minority
rights and other issues did to recent past generations?
Professor Regan: My hope is that the rising
generation of students will see animal rights
as their issue, and not just in terms of the laboratory
animal issue, but a larger issue of the integrity
of creation and respect for nature. It's going
to be bigger and broader, but it's still going
lo be their issue. It'll be for them to say, "Enough
is enough. We are not going to continue to do
what our parents did, what our grandparents did,
and so on. We are going to take charge of something
here." I am very hopeful that the revolution
is coming, and the philosophy of youth-which is
question authority, question authority-will find
its focus in the animal rights movement. In particular
I encourage young people to see the connection
between the animal rights movement and students'
rights. I am a quaint person, I .suppose. I still
think that students have rights. In the Sixties
we thought we did and we certainly let the world
know that. My guess is that in the Seventies and
the Eighties the students forgot about that. They
were like intoxicated yuppies thinking about BMWs
and their latest Sony stereo. My hope is that
they will he yuppied out. that we will see the
pendulum swing the other way now and they will
say. Wait a minute. Things...things are not the
source of human fulfillment. Things are not what
satisfy a human's longing to make something good
and creative and positive out of this mortal flesh.
It's really what we do that matters, it's the
testament of our life not the car in our garage
that counts. I think that philosophy is going
to be reborn and that is certainly what I am committed
to. I am going to work very diligently to raise
the consciousness of students to say, "I
will not dissect this animal, I will not vivisect
this animal, and you will not punish me. I have
a right here." And even the students who
don't want to say that, I want those students
to say that that student has that right and they
will back that student's right. And I want to
challenge the .system, every chance I get, in
the public schools, in universities and so on,
on the basis of the students' rights.
Interviewer: How do people interested in
the animal rights movement get more information
and participate?
Professor Regan: I always tell people to
investigate the organizations. There are a lot
of good organizations out there. I never say join
this one rather than that one, although of course
1 would hope that people would be interested enough
to support mine. The way to study it on one's
own is to subscribe to a magazine called The Animals'
Agenda, the magazine of the animal rights movement.
It doesn't favor any one organization over any
other. It just tries to report on what's going
on in the movement. Write to: The Animals'Agenda,
P. O. Box 5234, Westport, Connecticut 06881.
As I said before, if people are interested in
a list of cruelty-free cosmetics and also in finding
out more about what our foundation is doing, they
can write to me at Eden Croft, Raleigh. North
Carolina 27612.
Interviewer: Thank you very much. Professor
Regan.
Professor Regan: My pleasure, thank you.
(Taken
from Clarion Call Magazine.)