When the research participants are animals, it is quite apparent that society has turned a blind eye to extraordinary suffering. But society in general is starting to recognize that animals are not blocks of wood or glassware and that they have the capacity to suffer.

Over and above that, it makes your research that much better if your results don't have to jump the gap from animal to human. When I pick up the Journal of the American Medical Association, or the other leading medical journals, I don't see articles titled "Rat Cured." That is not what the rank and file of American physicians want to know about. I'm not suggesting that the average physician is ready to march in the street for animals. I'm suggesting that they're interested in what will work for their human patients.

There is no question that results from ethical research conducted on human populations are miles ahead of results from research conducted on animals. And if we aren't recognizing that there is an ethical problem with harming animals, then something has gone wrong.

There were people in the 1700s who said that slavery was bad economics. And there were people who said, "Sure, that may be true, but there is also an ethical component -- which if you don't recognize, then there is something wrong with you." In any other prior ethical problem, whether we're talking about the status of women or gay people or anybody else, these same issues apply.

How did you develop the interests that would define the advocacy of your adult life?

My background is entirely different from what I do now. It's a little odd for me to be advocating a vegetarian diet. My grandfather was a cattle rancher and my uncles and cousins still raise cattle. They're good people, and I'm still close to them.

A year before I went to medical school, I worked as an assistant in a morgue. One day I had to prepare a cadaver for examination. This was a heart attack victim. I cut in and removed a section of ribs. Then the mortician opened the heart, and the arteries were clogged with fatty deposits. Later, I went upstairs for lunch and in the hospital cafeteria they were serving ribs. The sight of those ribs was so similar to the section of human ribs I had just handled that I just couldn't eat them. That set me on the path to vegetarianism.

Didn't you adopt a mouse at some point?

I had a rat. Rats are one of the most unreasonably denigrated species. When I was in college I actually did experiment on rats. The experiments were not just old-fashioned, but downright nasty B.F. Skinner behavioral experiments. It didn't bother me at the time; I had gone hunting while I was growing up.

You hunted?

I don't want to give the impression that I was a frequent or especially accurate hunter, but yes, my father occasionally thought it would be a wonderful idea for us to go out and disrupt the stillness of dawn.

Anyway, I ended up bringing a rat home with me. And as long as he was in the cage I didn't think much about him -- I use "him" instead of "it" because animals have gender, unlike a strawberry. But when I let him run around the apartment, I realized that these animals were a lot like dogs or any other social animal. He eventually developed a breast tumor and died a very miserable death. Seeing an animal that no one respects display all the emotions and desperation you would expect to see in that margin between life and death really made an impression on me.

Robert Smith, a Republican senator from New Hampshire, has said: "Concern for animals should not be the exclusive concern of a single political party, just as concern for the environment, human rights and national sovereignty are bipartisan issues." In your dealings with Congress have you determined whether animal and nutrition issues are perceived as partisan issues?

I think they are entirely bipartisan. And I'm happy that whatever other seismographic changes there might be in the political landscape, I don't think this new administration will be any less sympathetic to either health concerns or ethical issues in research.

So you have no specific worries about the Bush administration?

Not in this regard. There have been appropriate concerns raised over other aspects of this administration. One party is no better than another. When Bill Clinton was running for reelection he bought up $60 million worth of beef. And the government's explicit and unabashed reason for this was to support U.S. farmers during a farm crisis. Where do you put $60 million worth of beef? They put it in school lunches, in federal hospitals; they threw it in prison food. This was quite out in the open and nobody ever said that children need another burger. Needless to say, it's the last thing they need.

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