Alan Cooper & John Pippin, M.D., represented the range of animal advocacy

John Pippin,  M.D.,  left;  Alan Cooper,  right. 
(Beth Clifton collage)

Both Alan Cooper & John Pippin,  M.D. were felled by long struggles with debilitating illness

It would be difficult to imagine two animal advocates with less in common than Alan Cooper and John Pippin,  M.D.,  except that both were veterans of more than 20 years in animal advocacy on a variety of fronts,  and died recently after long struggles with debilitating diseases.

Pippin was renowned as a cardiologist before becoming an animal advocate;  Cooper was a gardener.  Pippin was a former police officer;  Cooper did prison time.  Cooper eschewed formal education;  Pippin became a professor.  Cooper was notoriously abrasive;  Pippin was known for his ability to speak to any audience.

Though Cooper and Pippin were within three years of the same age,  Cooper became involved in animal advocacy more than 25 years sooner,  and was effectively done as a front-line activist by the time Pippin started.

Despite all that,  work on behalf of animals ended up as the defining element in both of their lives.

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Alan Cooper.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Alan Cooper:  British crown court said he didn’t do it

Alan Cooper,  73 ,  a longtime anti-dolphin captivity activist,  best known for having been acquitted in 1991 for allegedly masturbating a wild dolphin the preceding year,  died at home in Blandford Forum,  Dorset,  England,  on May 11, 2026.

Cooper,  an accomplished swimmer and bicyclist for years even after falling ill,  had battled multiple sclerosis since 1999.

“We are not treating the death as suspicious.  However,  we have not been able to locate his next of kin,”  coroner’s officer Lucy Manuel told the Blandford Forum.

Next of kin were eventually identified,  but Cooper,  a notoriously prickly personality,  acknowledged in his 2013 online autobiography Dolphin Lover (https://www.dolphin-lover.me.uk/) that he had never been close to his family,  and had never had a family of his own.

“I was the youngest of five,  three brothers and a sister,”  Cooper recalled.  “They were all born in the period 1939-1945 and I post war in 1952.  I always felt a different generation to them.  My parents were hard working,  not that I appreciated that fact at the time,  and I can say I didn’t do without anything,  despite how hard it must have been to make ends meet.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Became vegan in 1982

Originally from Manchester,  Cooper “moved to Dorset in the late 1990s,”  he wrote.

Working as a gardener,  Cooper became “a committed vegan” in November 1982,  he remembered,  “when,  by chance,  I watched in horror a documentary,  The Animals Film,”  narrated by actress Julie Christie,  “documenting the abuse of animals by humans in factory farms,  circuses,  vivisection laboratories, etc.  From having been a vegetarian of sorts,  I became a vegan overnight.”

Cooper did not initially focus on dolphin captivity.

“In the 1980s,”  Cooper observed,  “the growing animal rights community was predominantly dealing with vivisection,  hunting,  and factory farming , and failed to scrutinize the six dolphin shows in the United Kingdom: Knowsley,  Whipsnade,  Morecambe,  Brighton,  Windsor,  and Flamingo Land.

“Greenpeace was more preoccupied with anti-whaling.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Felt affinity with the lives of dolphins”

“I think it was 1984,”  Cooper wrote,  “when I attended a lecture at Altrincham library given by Dr. Horace Dobbs about his encounters with wild dolphins off the U.K. coast.

“Even with my limited experience and knowledge of dolphins,  I felt an affinity with the lives of dolphins and their apparent freedom from the chains that so constrain many people in the human world––jobs, money,  houses,  marriage,  and children.”

Activism on behalf of captive marine mammals was beginning,  but Cooper was largely unaware of it.

“Mark Glover,  working for Greenpeace,  launched a private prosecution against Flamingo Land for breach of an import license.  Doug Cartlidge,  an ex-trainer,  was at this time a rather lone battler against U.K. dolphinaria,”  Cooper learned later,  “challenging the Department of the Environment and local councils responsible for issuing operating licenses under the Zoo Licensing Act.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Broke into Unilever Laboratories

Cooper meanwhile became involved in other animal advocacy causes.

“In the spring of 1986,”  Cooper recounted,  “I,  along with twenty-four other activists,  received prison sentences for smashing into Unilever Laboratories in Bedfordshire where animals were being experimented upon.  I received a two-year sentence for my part in the daylight raid.  I was released on parole in January 1987,  having served eight months.”

Later in 1987 Cooper “completed a 24-hour ‘meat-out’ bicycle ride to publicize vegetarianism. I managed 303 miles.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Swam with dolphins

“My first experience of a dolphin was in 1988 or 1989,”  Cooper recalled.  “I had travelled over to Eire [Ireland] to see and try and swim with Funghie,  a wild dolphin who had inhabited Dingle Bay for a few years.”

Cooper did not connect with Funghie,  but in March 1990 began frequently swimming with Freddie,  a wild dolphin at Amble in Northumberland who was already known for interacting with humans.

Cooper simultaneously was participating often in protests seeking the release of the Morecambe dolphin Rocky.

“A coalition of national organizations,”  including “Zoo Check,  Care for the Wild and the Bellerive Foundation,”  Cooper recounted,  “formed the ‘Into the Blue’ project and located a suitable rehabilitation site for ex-captive dolphins in the Turks & Caicos Isles in the British West Indies.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Clashed with dolphin trainers

“The only problem lay in extricating Rocky from Morecambe and from his trainer John Braithwaite.  In November 1990,  on the pretext that the heating at the pool at Morecambe had failed,  Braithwaite moved Rocky to Flamingo Land.  This appears to have been very convenient for Flamingo Land dolphin trainer Peter Bloom,  who happened to have three captive females there.”

Cooper had already come into conflict with both Bloom and his assistant William Prickett.

“The next weekend,”  after Rocky arrived at Flamingo Land,”  Cooper said,  as Cooper swam with Freddie,  Bloom was among the occupants of a boat that shadowed them.

“The boat was around for approximately thirty minutes,”  Cooper narrated.  “Freddy was his usual self,  sometimes hooking me with his penis to the leg or arm.  It was all perfectly normal,  to me at least.”

Cooper was criminally charged with having “committed a lewd and obscene act with a bottlenose dolphin,”  but was acquitted a year later.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Helped to close Flamingo Land

The case had the effect of projecting Cooper into global prominence as an anti-captivity activist.

Cooper in October 1992 represented International Dolphin Watch at a conference in Germany organized by Stefan Austermuhle,  later executive director of the Peruvian organization Mundo Azul and general manager of the Peruvian marine ecotourism company Nature Expeditions.

“The conference,  attended by around a dozen people,”  Cooper recalled,  “established the European Network for Dolphins and nominated July 4 as an intended annual World Day for Captive Dolphins,”  apparently unaware that this would conflict with U.S. Fourth of July celebrations.

The British government in August 1993 brought into effect new regulations for keeping captive dolphins.  With the new regulations pending,  the British dolphin captivity industry collapsed.  Flamingo Land,  closed in March 1993,  was the last to fold.

The three Flamingo Land dolphins were sold to an oceanarium in Sweden.

Rick Spill,  also known as Bill Wewer,  in 1995.

Duped by double agents

Cooper followed them to Sweden to join an anti-captivity protest in 1994,  campaigned with the Belgian organization Planet Verte in 1995,   and then in October 1995 attended an anti-dolphin captivity conference in the U.S.,  hosted by a British organization,  the Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society.

“My initial impression,  in a room of around a hundred attendees, was how inspiring it was,”  Cooper wrote.  “This was my first visit to the USA and I was yet to learn that American anti-captivity campaigners talk a good talk,  but don’t quite walk the walk.”

Part of a generation of militant British activists for whom animal issues were vaguely intertwined with class struggle,  Cooper for neither the first time nor the last was drawn toward the most confrontational.

For the next several years Cooper made common cause with agents provocateur Ben White and Rick Spill,  both of whom had infiltrated the Animal Welfare Institute,  and were first exposed in their dual roles by ANIMALS 24-7,  later by others.

(See Russ Rector, “the feared activist feared even among activists,” dead at 69.)

Ric O’Barry in Taiji.
(Dolphin Project photo)

Ric O’Barry rejected Cooper’s help

Representing the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,  Cooper,  bearing a hatchet to represent a Faroese dolphin killer,  and fellow activist Einar Kismul,  dressed as a dolphin,  in 1997 invaded the office of the Faroese Commercial Attaché in Aberdeen,  Scotland.

Cooper went on to campaign against the Sarkanemmi dolphinarium at Tampere,  Finland,  in 1997 and 1998,  campaigned in Norway in 1999,  and in 2000 joined a protest against a dolphinarium that operated at the West Edmonton Mall from 1985 to 2004.

“In the early 2000s I offered to go with Ric O’Barry to try and help document the Taiji dolphin killing,”  Cooper wrote,  “but he declined my offer. What I did do though were regular pickets at the Japanese embassy in London.”

Faroe Islands.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Multiple sclerosis

Cooper “was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis in the summer of 1999,”  he remembered.  Then “2000 had started as the previous decade ended,  with an involvement with a crook in Edmonton,  followed in 2001 with a diagnosis of skin cancer.

“Then,  also in 2001,  Monica Harvey, a friend disabled by polio,  fell out of the wheelchair I was pushing when the wheel caught a raised paving stone,  and broke her leg.  Sadly,  Monica never recovered and died about a year later.”

Multiple sclerosis obliged Cooper to “stop cycling in 2005, when I realized I was becoming a danger not just to myself but other road users.  I had to stop doing educational street information stalls on the threats to whales and dolphins,”  a project Cooper had begun “in 1993 in Manchester and the surrounding towns with the launch of the Faroe Isles pilot whale campaign,  and continued in Dorset and Wiltshire after moving down south in 1998.”

Cooper in 2009 changed his focus in activism,  beginning by sponsoring a child in Afghanistan through Action Aid.  He went on to sponsor,  as of 2013,  “two Afghan girls,  one Burmese girl,  one Zimbabwean girl,  and a Tibetan girl refugee living in India.”

Cooper also funded drilling four wells and expanding a school in Afghanistan,  returning,  he said,  to his original interest before becoming involved in animal advocacy.

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John Pippin. (Facebook photo)

John J. Pippin,  M.D.:  history major,  cop,  medical doctor,  animal advocate

John J. Pippin,  M.D.,  76,  for 20 years director of academic affairs for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine [PCRM],  shot himself on his birthday,  March 28,  2026,  in Dallas,  Texas.

“He had cancer for many years.  He had spinal  surgery and was in extreme pain,”  Spay/Neuter Your Pet Inc. founder Diane Randolph told ANIMALS 24-7.

            Born in Brookline,  Massachusetts,  Pippin according to his Dallas Morning News obituary grew up in Dallas,  but returned to Massachusetts as a European history major at Harvard University.

Pippin subsequently worked for the Harvard and Cambridge police departments for five years before earning his medical degree at the University of Massachusetts.  He went on to complete a medical residency,  chief residency,  and clinical cardiovascular fellowship at New England Deaconess Hospital (now the Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospital) in Boston.

Pippin later became founding director of cardiovascular medicine and medical imaging at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas,  before returning to academia as a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School and the Medical College of Virginia.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Joined PCRM in 2005

Pippin joined the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine staff in 2005.

“His previous laboratory work informed his belief that animal experiments are scientifically and ethically unjustifiable.  He worked for more than two decades to advocate for the replacement of animals in research,  testing,  and medical training,”  the Dallas Morning News remembered.

“He testified before the British Parliament in 2005,  conducted countless interviews with reporters,  and authored or co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed articles or abstracts,  many published in leading medical journals,”  the Dallas Morning News recounted.

In 2010,  responding to Pippin’s critique of the experimental design,  the National Aeronautics & Space Administration cancelled a plan to use squirrel monkeys in radiation experiments before the experiments started.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Led fight against gas chamber

That same year,  the Dallas Morning News recalled,  “He led the local effort against the use of a gas chamber for euthanizing dogs and cats by the animal shelter in Garland,  Texas.  The city dismantled the device in 2010.”

“In 2011,”  the Dallas Morning News continued,  Pippin “testified before the National Academies of Sciences,  Engineering,  & Medicine on the need to go beyond using chimpanzees in disease research.  His efforts played a crucial role in the Academies’ landmark report that spelled the end of chimpanzee experiments in the United States.”

Beth & Merritt Clifton.

Later,  the Dallas Morning News said,  Pippin “was instrumental in replacing the use of animals in deadly training exercises at medical schools across the U.S. and Canada,  a once-common practice that he helped end in 2016.

“In total,”  the Dallas Morning News said,  “he helped convince 133 programs teaching medical students,  physicians,  or paramedics to replace animals with models based on human anatomy.”

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