Columbus, OH – Today, the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) criticized the misleadingly named Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) for attempting to block research at Ohio State University that could one day lead to cures for debilitating spinal cord injuries. PCRM is an animal rights organization with strong ties to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and its position against animal research reflects its radical agenda. Once again, the “Physicians Committee” is siding with lab rats instead of the humans that might be saved through animal-based research.
The Center for Consumer Freedom highlighted several little known facts about the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, including:
• Less than 5 percent of its members are actual physicians. The group’s goals are to stop medical research that requires the use of animals, and to remove meat and dairy foods from our diet by demonizing them as “unhealthy.” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has already steered more than $1.3 million to PCRM. Animal People News notes that PETA and PCRM are so closely connected that they should be considered “a single fundraising unit.”
• PCRM discourages Americans from making donations to respected health charities like the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the American Red Cross, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, and the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation—solely because they support research that requires the use of animals.
• The American Medical Association (AMA) has called PCRM a “fringe organization” that uses “unethical tactics” and is “interested in perverting medical science.” When he was the AMA’s Vice President for Scientific Affairs, Dr. Jerod M. Loeb wrote that PCRM was “officially censured” by the AMA. That AMA statement also condemned PCRM for supporting “a campaign of misinformation against important animal research of AIDS.”
• In 2001, PCRM co-signed letters (on PCRM letterhead) with Kevin Kjonaas, then the leader of a violent animal rights group described by the U.S. Department of Justice as a “domestic terrorism threat.” The letters strongly urged companies in 32 states and 8 foreign countries stop doing business with a biomedical research laboratory that uses animals. Kjonaas has been arrested and will face federal terrorism charges in June 2005.
To read “7 Things You Didn’t Know about PCRM,” visit www.physicianscam.com.
