NEW DIRECTION FOR AMERICANS FOR MEDICAL PROGRESS ––OR MORE OF THE SAME?
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:
Americans for Medical Progress has posted a reward of $5,000 for information leading to the arrest
and conviction of whoever vandalized the homes and cars of five federally funded researchers on April 28. Although the names of the researchers were not officially disclosed, one is believed to be Sharon Juliano, whose experiments on cats have been subject of numerous protests held in front of her home and elsewhere in her neighborhood.
AMP was founded by three executives of U.S. Surgical Corporation, specifically to attack the animal
rights movement––and U.S. Surgical, whose laboratory use of dogs has been target of annual demonstrations by Friends of Animals for 13 years, donated $980,000 of the $985,000 AMP raised in 1991. (1992 financial data isn’t yet available.) However, AMP refrained from any mention of animal issues in a May 14 full-page ad in The New York Times, which depicted Marie Curie and suggested that the purpose of the organization is to “bring the story of medical science––and medical heroes––to young Americans.”
Sources close to the biomedical research community told ANIMAL PEOPLE that U.S. Surgical presi-
dent Leon Hirsch desperately wants to gain a role in designing the national public health plan now being assembled by Hilary Clinton, and has realized that bashing animal rights activism won’t appeal to White House science advisor John Gibbon, an outspoken critic of animal experimentation that doesn’t have a direct bearing on improving human or animal health.
