Sure,
BRAD is consistent – saying and doing what you’re used to, year after year.
BRAD is savvy – playing to your hopes and promising to meet your desires.
BRAD is popular – enjoying celebrations of self in places near and far.
But,
BRAD is also selfish – valuing self interest over all else.
BRAD is dishonest – promoting falsehoods to endear some and villainize others.
BRAD is disingenuous – feigning empathy and benevolence to distract from discrimination and violence.
And, BRAD is sociopathic – furiously defending and promoting the wholly unnecessary suffering and death of millions of lives each and every year.
It’s time to break up with BRAD.
Biomedical Research Awareness Day (“BRAD”) – an animal research industry initiative – takes place the third Thursday of April.
BRAD is an “international outreach program” that is “committed to educating students and the public on the importance of biomedical research and the humane use of animals” and asks people to “pledge support” for the exploitation of animals in biomedical research.
BRAD’s self-view is one of heroism, the active and brave combating of “[t]hreats by animal rights extremists [that] hurt medical progress.”
BRAD is the brainchild of Americans for Medical Progress (AMP), an animal research industry group that is sarcastically referred to as “Americans for Medical Profits”.
AMP is a big player in the animal research industry’s propaganda onslaught. Indeed, the organization was founded by heavy-hitting industry players “to develop responsive, media-savvy and effective strategies to mitigate the animal rights threat to biomedical research” and to “duke it out with the animal rights folks in the pages of the nation’s newspapers and on the internet”.
Moreover, even though it claims to be an “unbiased consumer group”, AMP remains entangled with and both financially sponsored and directed by organizations, corporations, universities, and individuals that profit from, pursue, and fight for the continuation and proliferation of animal research.
AMP and BRAD churn out industry propaganda masquerading as facts.
Calling out all of the lies and blatant untruths that AMP perpetuates would require a book, but the flavor of its self-interested, deceptive advocacy can be easily exemplified.
According to AMP, nonhuman research subjects receive top-notch care, rarely “experience procedures that are more invasive than what most people face during an annual physical examination”, are protected by robust regulations, and aren’t sourced from animal shelters. Oh, yeah, and biomedical research involving nonhumans is both critical for human well-being and still required by U.S. law.
In truth, however:
- More than 95% of drugs that pass animal testing fail in human testing.
- Less than 5% of all nonhuman research subjects receive any protection under the Animal Welfare Act, which also does not prohibit a single experimental procedure or harm.
- Laboratories in many states still engage in pound seizure.
- Nonhuman animal experimentation does not and cannot serve the non-financial interests of humans.
- Animal experimentation is no longer required by U.S. law.
AMP, and BRAD, is the animal research industry masquerading as a supporter of human and nonhuman welfare.
Those participating in BRAD this year will receive more than a heap of deliberate, false industry jargon. If they sign up, they will also receive “Monkey stickers”, “Mouse and rat” stickers”, “[a] Mouse keychain”, and “Mouse” notepads . . . they will be encouraged to decorate their personal items with stylized, fictionalized representations of the very lives they support commodifying, brutalizing, and terminating with impunity . . . the very lives deemed so inconsequential that those championing their protection are branded “extremists” by BRAD.
It’s time to break up with BRAD.
Rather than the pledge pushed by BRAD, take this opportunity to join the fight for truth and the realization of the best interests of both humans and nonhumans. Please join Rise for Animals on our mission to end animal experimentation in our lifetime.