ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION

Taking on what was a chapter or two in recent books about animal rights, Daniel Cohen's Animal Rights: A Handbook for Young Adults (1993) and Marna Owen's Animal Rights: Yes or No? (1993), Day manages to create detective thriller out of the dilemmas. While stating attempts at balance were ``impeded by wild claims, questionable photographs, unlikely explanations,'' she nevertheless manages to tread on the seesaw, capturing, on one hand, the intense passion of protesters trained to break into buildings and disable police cars and presenting, on the other, some of the valid criticisms and suggestions of the animal rights movement. Likewise, she deftly handles shortcomings of the pro- experimentation camp, as well as the pluses and minuses of others on the continuum, e.g., the animal welfarist who shuns suffering and might use computer or cell-culture models. Unique features include a history of animal experimentation over 2,000 years and a challenging chapter about experimentation on humans, detailing Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary's recent exposÇs of involuntary radiation. Readers will have to make up their own minds, as Day suggests: Is animal experimentation an environmental issue? Are we all equal? List of abbreviations; glossary; notes; bibliography; index. (Nonfiction. 12+)