5100 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 404, Washington, DC 20016
Phone 202-686-2210 | Fax 202-686-2216 | Email pcrm@pcrm.org
Motivation
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has participated in scare campaigns about pollution from livestock farming, meat irradiation, mad cow disease, and the alleged overuse of antibiotics in farm animals. Those disparate causes have one common element: they all serve to frighten consumers away from eating meat. Which is exactly what the animal liberationists at PCRM want.The evidence that PCRM is an animal rights group is overwhelming. In 2003, Neal Barnard was nominated for induction into the “Animal Rights Hall of Fame.” From 1989 to 1991 he served as a Contributing Editor to The Animals' Agenda magazine, writing frequent columns on animal-rights topics.And according to the Daily Californian, in 1989 Neal Barnard told a UC Berkeley audience: “I don’t approve of the use of animals for any purpose that involves touching them -- caging them.”
In a campaign against the United States Surgical Corporation (USSC) in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, PCRM brandished a petition supposedly including thousands of signatures from doctors who opposed USSC’s animal experimentation. PCRM even claimed the list had been “audited,” even though Animal People News would later write that the planned audit was “never completed.” And according to the (now defunct) Animal Rights Reporter, PCRM’s list contained “names of physicians who deny having signed or even seen the document. It also contains many names of persons who are not physicians.”
By the time PCRM trumpeted its petition in 1989, the campaign against USSC had become so intense that animal-rights militant Fran Stephanie Trutt attempted to assassinate the company’s president. PETA paid $7,500 of her legal expenses.
The PCRM-PETA Connection
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has used a tax-exempt affiliate called the Foundation to Support Animal Protection to funnel at least $592,000 to PCRM. This foundation, whose letterhead now shows that it is doing business as “The PETA Foundation,” has the same mailing address as PETA, and PETA owns its website address. Neal Barnard and PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk are two of the Foundation’s three officers. Barnard is its President.
And PETA itself directly gave PCRM over $265,000 between 1988 and 1999.
Barnard is PETA’s “medical advisor” and regularly writes for PETA’s publications. He admitted in a sworn deposition (International Primate Protection League v. Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund, 1992) that PCRM has been housed at PETA headquarters in the past. He also acknowledged requesting and receiving money from PETA, and using a PETA-owned car to drive back and forth from work. According to Barnard’s deposition, PETA even paid the salaries of some of PCRM’s staffers.
Citing an unnamed former PETA employee, a 1989 Washingtonian magazine article explains:
PETA funds were used, he says, to finance membership campaigns and activities of two anti-vivisectionist organizations, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and the National Association of Nurses Against Vivisection (NANAV). Both organizations were housed, rent-free, in PETA’s headquarters, he says, and the respective heads of the groups, Neal Barnard and Susan Brebner, were introduced to him as PETA staff members.
Hostile Takeover: The New England Anti-Vivisection Society
PCRM’s animal-rights agenda was perhaps most clearly evidenced when Neal Barnard involved himself in PETA’s successful campaign to wrest control of the New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS). On March 20, 1989, Forbes reported:
PETA aggressively runs slates of its own people in board elections of rival rights groups. Latest is the successful 1987 “takeover” of the Boston-based New England Anti-Vivisection Society (fund balance, $8 million). The century-old group officially still operates independently, but in reality PETA vegans and allies now control the Society and its spending.An April 10, 1987 Boston Globe article explained how PETA did it:
The wife of Gary Francione, a PETA executive and a Pennsylvania attorney, walked into the Anti-Vivisection Society’s Boston headquarters a few months ago and purchased 300 voting memberships for $3000 in cash. A surge of several hundred applications for voting memberships arrived at the headquarters in bulk March 31. PETA set up the Action Campaign Fund to subsidize or pay full air fare to Boston for an unspecified number of voting activists.And the Boston Herald wrote on April 30, 1987 that Ingrid Newkirk:
… sought to fill four open board of directors’ seats and four officer’s positions with a slate of PETA members and friends. Some locals claimed the election was “stacked” by PETA, who bankrolled the busing of new members to the Boston election meeting from New York, Washington, New Jersey, and New Mexico.Along with PETA founders Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco, PETA’s candidates for NEAVS board membership included Neal Barnard himself. Barnard even co-signed letters with Newkirk and Pacheco, urging NEAVS members to vote for the PETA slate. In 1987, Barnard was elected to NEAVS’ board. He and Newkirk remained there for ten years.
A coalition of NEAVS members -- including some of its officers -- formed an ad hoc group called the Save NEAVS Committee to fight PETA’s takeover. They disclosed a proposal signed by Ingrid Newkirk that read in part:
NEAVS has $7 to $8 million. I would suggest sharing some part of this financial well-being with other organizations which a) have proven themselves to be movement resources, b) are performing valuable services compatible with NEAVS’ goals, and c) are worth protecting. My choices are the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights (AVAR), the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), and the National Alliance for Animal Legislation (NAAL) … A $1,000,000 grant to each of these organizations would not come close to depleting NEAVS’ holdings. It would, however, provide each with an annual income security of approximately $100,000 if we stipulate that the grant be held as principle [sic].Although Newkirk’s million-dollar-gift proposal was never acted upon, NEAVS did give PCRM more than $500,000 between 1989 and 1998. In a sworn deposition (IPPL v. Tulane, 1992), Barnard admitted that PCRM received no money from NEAVS before the takeover, but hundreds of thousands of dollars afterwards.
A profile of PCRM appearing in a contemporary newsletter called the Animal Rights Reporter, discusses the importance of the NEAVS takeover:
With PETA’s and NEAVS’ resources, PCRM can take on campaigns that otherwise would be financially prohibitive. For example, costs of the physicians’ petition against USSC last fall were paid for by NEAVS. This occurred at a time when NEAVS had ongoing litigation with USSC and the PCRM assault can be seen as apart of a NEAVS/PETA attack on the medical supply company. Despite long-standing denials by Barnard and PCRM that it was an animal rights group, PCRM was listed as an “affiliate” on NEAVS’ 1987 tax returns.The connection between PETA and NEAVS was so strong that, for a time, NEAVS’ Legislative Director Cynthia Lebrun-Yaffee operated out of PETA headquarters. Barnard, Newkirk, and Pacheco are no longer on the NEAVS board, but NEAVS current executive director Theodora Capaldo was on PETA’s original 1987 slate of candidates.
