Chicago Tribune (CT) - TUESDAY, November 8, 1994 Edition: NORTH SPORTS FINAL Section: NEWS Page: 1 Word Count: 923
William Mullen, Tribune Staff Writer

Just 5 square miles of jungle, Tinjil is home to pythons, brown rats, monitor lizards and a large group of transplanted macaque monkeys. Scientists put the monkeys on the island in 1987, starting a breeding colony of monkeys now numbering 1,100 that are destined to become test subjects for experimental AIDS vaccines and anti-viral therapies.Depending on how you look at it, Tinjil either is playing an important role in a noble effort, or, as animal rights activists insist, is the site of dreadful human infamy.

Last Friday in Chicago, the lines of argument were sharply drawn at the American Veterinary Medical Association's national forum on animal welfare.

About 200 veterinarians and at least one philosopher packed an all-day conference at the Westin O'Hare Hotel, debating the use of animals in biomedical research, debating the morality of the practice.

"We have no right to take unconsenting mice or rats or dogs or any other animals for experiments to which we (as human beings) are unwilling to subject ourselves," said Nedim C. Buyukmihci.

Buyukmihci is a veterinarian and professor of ophthalmology at the University of California-Davis.

He belongs to the take-no-prisoners faction of the animal rights movement that wants to stop all use of animals in biomedical research. Seeking to alleviate human death and discomfort is not a good enough excuse to inflict the same death and discomfort on other species, he said.

"Is it the fault of animals that we humans are suffering disease and death?" asked Buyukmihci, who said he acquired his views after building his career on animal experimentation. He called the history of medical discoveries and cures based on such experimentation an unproven "myth."

"When you critically and honestly evaluate it," he said, "we do (animal experimentation) not because we think it right, but because we think we will derive benefits from it, and because we have the power to do it."

Even in a gathering of of people whose lives and business is devoted to delivering tender love and care to animals, Buyukmihci stands out. A vegetarian, he wears no animal-related clothing, and he otherwise tries to avoid using animal products of any kind.

His message, however, is a chilling one to biomedical researchers such as William Morton.

Also a veterinarian, Morton is the acting director of the regional primate center at the University of Washington in Seattle. He oversees the $100,000-a-year breeding program on Tinjil.

The Tinjil monkeys are prized for research because they are bred and raised in a natural, fairly pristine community, Morton said. Coming to HIV/AIDS laboratories, they are free of diseases that often plague laboratory animals and thus confound and spoil test results.

Most of the monkeys born and raised on Tinjil will remain there with little or no human contact all their lives, he said.

But twice a year about 50 young monkeys are "harvested." They are captured at feeding stations dotting the island and, within 48 hours, are delivered to laboratories in the United States.

There, they are exposed to a simian version of HIV. Inevitably they develop AIDS, and researchers treat them with experimental vaccines and anti-viral therapies.

So far 350 Tinjil monkeys have come to the U.S. Many have died, and it is likely, Morton said, to be the fate of all of them.

"The dream, of course, is that one day one will survive and make medical history," he said. His voice palpably shudders at the thought of animal rights advocates winning their campaign and shutting down animal-based research.

Critics like Buyukmihci question the accuracy of animal testing's place in medical history, but the American Medical Association credits such experiments for most modern medical advances.

According to AMA records, two-thirds of all Nobel Prizes for medicine resulted from discoveries involving animal studies. Almost all vaccines would not have evolved without animal testing, the AMA maintains.

Animal testing also was crucial, the AMA says, in the development of all antibiotics. It adds to that list life-saving medical equipment and techniques.

Buyukmihci is a disciple of two philosophers whose writings form the intellectual underpinning of the animal rights movement, Peter Singer and Tom Regan. Advocates of that position insist good medical research is possible without animals, by using alternatives such as computer modeling and tissue cultures that are non-injurious to living subjects.

Carl Cohen is also a philosopher, but one who passionately opposes the animal rights movement. At Friday's forum, Cohen, staff philosopher at the University of Michigan medical school, attacked Singer, Regan and Buyukmihci as espousing "flawed" views, which he said are "dangerous and immoral."

"There has been an enormous amount of loose talk about animal rights. Rights arise, and can be intelligibly defended, only among beings who actually do, or can, make moral claims against one another. Therefore, rights are strictly for humans. Animals lack this capacity for free moral judgment, and thus have no rights."

Although humans are obligated to treat animals with humanness, decency and concern, Cohen said humans owe to other humans a degree of moral regard that cannot be extended to animals.

"Refusing to recognize the moral differences among species is a sure path to calamity."

Neither side appeared to give any ground here last week, and the debate is sure to rage on.

CAPTION: MAP: Tinjii Island, Indonesia. Chicago Tribune.

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