This article is reprinted from National Review with the permission of the author.

Animal rights activists keep attempting to grant “rights” to animals through novel — and I would say, frivolous — lawsuits. PETA sued SeaWorld, claiming that the orcas were “slaves.” The Nonhuman Rights Project has sued three times to have chimpanzees and elephants declared “persons” entitled to writs of habeas corpus.

Those suits failed. But animal rights activists never give up. Now, PETA is suing the NIH and the National Institute of Mental Health, claiming that the agency’s refusal to allow them to receive closed-circuit monitoring of research monkeys and communicate directly with them violates the animal rights fanatics’ First and Fifth Amendment rights.

The irrationality begins in the complaint’s first and second paragraphs when the complaint alleges PETA has a right to receive communications from “fellow primates” that are “willing speakers.” Of course, the research monkeys have no clue about PETA, nor could they speak to the activists. Rather, the activists would interpret the monkey’s vocalizations and body postures to suit their own ideological preconceptions in an ongoing attempt to prevent animal research.

PETA claims to be engaged in “newsgathering” and that getting access to the animals is equivalent to journalists accessing human prisons:

Newsgathering serves a particularly powerful function under the First Amendment when seeking access to incarcerated beings whose voices are otherwise silenced, to ascertain information about their conditions…The captive rhesus monkeys…are willing speakers under the First Amendment…By these communications, the individuals are expressing the pain, suffering, stress, fear, and depression they endure and begging the torment to stop. In Murray’s laboratory, the macaques communication seldom, if ever, receive the sympathetic ear of a listener ready and willing to provide the help they seek.

Okay, let’s stop right there. You get the gist. What is really going on here is an attempt by PETA to enter the lab toward the goal of thwarting all medical and scientific experimentation using animals regardless of the good such research could bring to human beings.

In this, I recall the notorious “Silver Spring Monkey Case,” in which PETA-affiliated animal rights activists infiltrated an NIH-funded lab in the 1980s, where Dr. Edward Taub was seeking to discover methods to help stroke victims regain physical capacities. When Taub left for a week on vacation, the animal rights infiltrator was supposed to keep the lab clean and orderly. Instead, he allowed the lab to become filthy with feces, etc., and then called authorities, charging the researcher with animal abuse. Taub was actually arrested when he returned home.

From my piece published here at NRO:

The animal research that so distressed animal liberationists helped Taub achieve a medical breakthrough in the treatment of stroke victims–called Constraint-Induced Movement (CI Therapy)–by which the brain is induced to “rewire itself” following stroke or other serious brain trauma. CI Therapy is so successful that there is now a long waiting list of stroke patients with upper limb impairments at Taub’s Alabama clinic. The technique is also in further human trials for other conditions, including as an approach to treating children with cerebral palsy and traumatic brain injury.

It is frightening to think that if Pacheco had successfully ruined Taub, CI Therapy might have been lost to humanity. “We are contrasting the treatment of thirteen monkeys with the improved motor ability and quality of life for thousands of human beings,” Taub told me a few years ago. “If I had been unable to continue with my research, it would have left the burden of thousands of stroke victims unalleviated.”

Taub was so successful that the Society for Neuroscience cited CI therapy as one of the top 10 translational neuroscience accomplishments of the 20th century — which almost didn’t happen because animal rights fanatics came perilously close to destroying his career. PETA is unrepentant and still brags that the Silver Springs monkey travesty was “the case that launched PETA.”

The “grim good” (as I call it) of animal experimentation cannot be denied. There is not one modern medical treatment or intervention that does not involve animal research at some point in the process. Indeed, even Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s alpha wolf, benefited from animal research when she lauded the pain control she received for a broken wrist some years ago — and never saw the irony.

I have no idea what knowledge the researchers are seeking to learn in their experiments. I do know that animal researchers provide tremendous benefit to the world and that if PETA succeeds in thwarting animal experiments, human suffering will go unalleviated and illnesses untreated.

The court should dismiss the case with prejudice.