The Times

Weekend of September 25/26, 1976 TIMES/GUIDE 7

Good Guys for Animals: Stop school experimentation

By ELIZABETH OWEN Staff Writer Miriam Dan and Marie Irani won't be going back to the Dade County Youth Fair next spring. The two animal crusaders, who started an organization called Good Guys for Animals two years ago, said that although they were allowed to set up a booth outside the gates last year, they were intimidated by Youth Fair employes and made to look like silly old women. The women claimed that some of the workers came outside and tried to provoke them by criticizing their signs and sending a photographer to take pictures of them. All they wanted to do, Miriam said, was make the public aware of the cruel and inhuman animal experimentation they say is conducted at Dade County school for the fair each year. Good Guys for Animals, which was formed in July, 1974, for the purpose of eliminating such experimentation, met for the first year at Sambo's on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. Now, because a few of the members live on Miami Beach, the organization meets at the Howard Johnson's downtown, the first Sunday of each month. Most of the members, including Miriam and Marie, live in Southwest Dade. Organization members go to shopping malls regularly where they pass out literature and solicit signatures for petitions that call for an end to animal experimentation. Dadeland and Midway Malls are two of their prime targets, and the women are trying to set up a similar arrangement at Westchester Mall. The organization also sends literature to school board members, hoping some of them might champion their cause. Last April, Miriam attended a school board meeting where she spoke her piece and asked for support. She said chairman Ben Sheppard excused himself from taking a stand, saying he was a vegetarian and therefore not qualified. Other members said they felt badly about experimentation that caused animals to suffer, but felt it was in accordance with Youth Fair regulations. "Though I offered good reasons why schools should discontinue the practice, the board members didn't pay much attention," Miriam said. "They heard me, but they really didn't listen." She added that Dr. Linton Tyler said at the meeting that he works for a company that breeds animals for experimentation, and that he sees nothing wrong with its procedures. But months later, she said, he called her and asked her not to spread rumors about him: that he has nothing to do with the actual experimentation and is in fact willing to support Good Guys before the school board. When contacted by The Times-Guide, Tyler affirmed that he works for Schering-Plough, a pharmaceutical company that conducts medical research on animals. He said he is against experimentation of the nature that Miriam described, and intends to propose to the school board that it be stopped. "I was very disturbed about some of the things Mrs. Dan told me is going on in classrooms," he said. "I feel it's important to have animals in the classroom for purposes of observing their behavior, but I'm opposed to any kind of experimentation that causes them to suffer." He added that although his company does use animals for experimentation, painful unpleasant tests are conducted only on rodents. The larger animals, — beagles, police dogs, and rhesus monkeys — are used strictly for milder experiments such as dose-relation (giving an animal a drug to test its tolerance). "We limit our testing to what is required by the federal government," he said. Good Guys for Animals suggests alternatives that can be used as educational aids in school classrooms instead of live animals. Plastic models of animals, injecting lethal dosages of drugs or vitamins into them to see the outcome, or depriving them of necessary nutrients, serve no teaching purpose, the group feels. "These experiments go beyond the horrors of Frankenstein," Miriam said angrily. "They must be stopped." Mrs. Dan Mrs. Irani

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