Scientists and patients will be celebrating the promising new HIV treatments to be featured in Vancouver next week, but animal-rights activists almost certainly won't be cheering them on. That's because much of AIDS research would be impossible without experiments that animal advocates consider unethical. Their belief, and their willingness to defend it aggressively, has put them on a collision course with many AIDS activists.
Tensions between the two groups exploded last December, when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals assailed an AIDS treatment that involved taking immune cells from a baboon and then killing it for autopsy. Since baboons don't...