Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

by Sunaura Taylor

In response to this threat, the American Medical Association (AMA), the largest association of medical doctors and students in the United States, devised a plan to combat the animal advocacy movement by capitalizing on infighting within it, and by criminalizing animal activists. Many of their tactics attempted to spin the conversation, changing phrases such as “Animals in Research” to “Advancing Biomedical Research” and decrying animal activists for obstructing scientific and medical progress.5 The AMA’s plan was not supposed to be shared with the public, but in 1989 a document titled “Animal Research Action Plan” was leaked to animal advocacy groups.6 It stated, “To defeat the animal rights movement, one has to peel away the outermost layers of support and isolate the hardcore activists from the general public and shrink the size of the sympathizers.”7 One way to do that was to pit animals against disabled people.