PAUL MCCARTNEY ON RESEARCH

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Composer and songwriter Paul
McCartney told BBC Radio 2 interviewer
Des Lynam during an October 23 broadcast
that his late wife Linda’s long struggle with
breast cancer and her death last April had
heightened his awareness of the moral dilemmas
associated with animal research.
Though Paul and Linda McCartney
were both vegetarians and animal rights campaigners
for more than 20 years, he said he
had not previously realized how much animal
experimentation is done, nor the extent to
which it is legally required.
“I suppose a limited thing is
unavoidable, but it is very difficult for me to
think like that,” he said, “because I favor the
rights of the animals. Linda and I are just
passionate about these poor creatures that we
often use so cruelly.”

Continued McCartney, “If a drug
has to be used on humans, then legally it has
to be tested on an animal. This was difficult
for Linda when she was undergoing her treatment.”
Therefore, McCartney added,
“During the treatment, a nice answer is a
nice answer, and if they say ‘It’s okay to
have this because we didn’t test it on animals,’
you are going to believe them.”
Commented Carla Lane, a friend
of the McCartney family, “If I got cancer, I
would have to say, ‘The drugs are there, the
tests have been done, give them to me.’ It
doesn’t mean if you are against testing on
animals you are willing to die. If you are ill,
you have no option but to take what you
need. It doesn’t stop you hating it.”
McCartney was also in the news for
outfitting Avon and Somerset Police wildlife
warden Roger Jollifee with $7,500 worth of
night vision equipment to help catch poachers
near McCartney’s 100-acre deer sanctuary in
Exmoor.