The Monkey Wars

A gritty, in-the-trenches report on the battle over primate use in medical research, inspired by a series of articles by the author that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Deborah Blum provides an unflinching look at the experiments that chimps and monkeys endure in research labs and gives equal accord to both researchers and animal rights activists.

The use of primates in research is an ongoing controversy. We have all benefited from the medical discoveries, yet we have also learned more in recent years about the real intelligence of apes and monkeys. Activists have also uncovered cases of animal cruelty by researchers. The Monkey Wars assesses the often caustic debate over the use of primates in scientific research, and examines the personalities and issues behind the headlines. The author focuses on researchers forced to conduct their work behind barbed wire and alarm systems, animal rights activists ranging from the moderate AWI Institute to the highly radical ALF, and some of the remarkable chimpanzees involved. The research community and its activist critics are invariably portrayed as rival camps locked in a long, bitter, and seemingly intractable political battle. In reality there are people on both sides willing to accept and work within the complex middle. Deborah Blum gives these people a voice

1 - The Outsider
2 - Of Street Thoughs and Target Practice
3 - The Black Box
4 - The Trap
5 - The Face of Evil
6 - The Peg-leg Pig
7 - Hear No Evil
8 - The Salt in the Soup
9 - Not a Nice Death
10 - Just Another Jerk Scientist
11 - The Last Mangabeys
12 - One Nation

Deborah Blum won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for a series of articles that have inspired this book.