Monkey Wars - 94 edition

Summary: The controversy over the use of primates in research admits of no easy answers. We have all benefited from the medical discoveries of primate research--vaccines for polio, rubella, and hepatitis B are just a few. But we have also learned more in recent years about how intelligent apes and monkeys really are: they can speak to us with sign language, they can even play video games (and are as obsessed with the games as any human teenager). And activists have also uncov ...show moreered widespread and unnecessarily callous treatment of animals by researchers (in 1982, a Silver Spring lab was charged with 17 counts of animal cruelty). It is a complex issue, made more difficult by the combative stance of both researchers and animal activists.
In The Monkey Wars, Deborah Blum gives a human face to this often caustic debate--and an all-but-human face to the subjects of the struggle, the chimpanzees and monkeys themselves. Blum criss-crosses America to show us first hand the issues and personalities involved. She offers a wide-ranging, informative look at animal rights activists, now numbering some twelve million, from the moderate Animal Welfare Institute to the highly radical Animal Liberation Front (a group destructive enough to be placed on the FBI's terrorist list). And she interviews a wide variety of researchers, many forced to conduct their work protected by barbed wire and alarm systems, men and women for whom death threats and hate mail are common. She takes us to Roger Fouts's research center in Ellensburg, Washington, where we meet five chimpanzees trained in human sign language, and we visit LEMSIP, a research facility in New York State that has no barbed wire, no alarms--and no protesters chanting outside--because its director, Jan Moor-Jankowski, listens to activists with respect and treats his animals humanely. And along the way, Blum offers us insights into the many side-issues involved: the intense battle to win over school kids fought by both sides, and the danger of transplanting animal organs into humans.

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Edition/Copyright: 94
Cover: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 01/28/1996

View Author Bio

Blum, Deborah :

Deborah Blum, a science writer, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the series of articles that have inspired this book.

View Review

"A candid look at the issues from both sides. No comparable book on this topic exists."

--Los Angeles Times

"A fascinating, well-researched and timely book that will have a major impact."

--George B. Schaller, The Wildlife Conservation Society

"[Blum] writes in a straight-forward, informal style, never raising her own voice, and she is scrupulously fair about presenting all sides."

--The New York Times Book Review

Oxford University Press Web Site, May, 2001