As PCRM's public reputation has recently become commingled with that of the animal-rights movement's most radical wing, the Cooper Clinic and Pippin have apparently decided to part company. And rightly so. Respectable physicians should not associate themselves with organizations (like PCRM) determined to file their own frivolous medical malpractice suits. Or to rewrite the Hippocratic Oath to preclude the open endorsement of homicide, the apparent goal of another long-time PCRM spokesperson with an "M.D." after his name.

Doctors publicly aligning themselves with PCRM are making a conscious choice to endorse an animal-rights group and its agenda. In Dr. Pippin's case, his claim that "certain foods can be so addictive" appears on the book-jacket of PCRM president Neal Barnard's latest nonfiction thriller. Pippin also leads PCRM's effort to convince medical schools to "use teaching methods that do not include live animal laboratories." But it may have been his recent opinion column that put him over the edge with his (now former) employer.

In a September op-ed (appearing in the Jewish World Review, the Buffalo News, and the New Jersey Express-Times), Pippin admitted that "heart disease mortality rates appear to be falling," but also suggested that "meat-heavy diets" would soon be responsible for reversing that trend.

Here are a few more doctors who publicly align themselves with PCRM, and their professional affiliations:

• Dr. Jerry Vlasak -- California trauma surgeon and long-time PCRM spokesperson, who claims to practice at San Bernardino County Medical Center and Riverside Community Hospital. At the "Animal Rights 2003" convention in Los Angeles, he endorsed the murder of researchers whose search for cancer and AIDS cures requires the use of animals.

• Dr. Sam Jacobs -- New Jersey obstetrician / gynecologist, who shares Dr. Pippin's role as PCRM's medical-school enforcer where animal testing is concerned. He also holds a faculty position at Rutgers University's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. At the "Animal Rights 2002" convention, Jacobs announced his affiliation with PCRM just before praising the FBI-labeled terrorist Animal Liberation Front with the words: "I thank ALF for what ALF is doing."

• Dr. Nancy Harrison -- Described in media reports as a pathologist at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Chula Vista, California. She is also a clinical instructor at the UC San Diego medical school. Harrison has made a name for herself by pressuring medical schools (including her own employer) to embrace an animal-rights agenda. She also supports a ban on biology-class dissection.