The longtime Hopkins professor who fought for animal testing alternatives

Oscar had a good life, as far as lab rats go. After completing his testing service at the Johns Hopkins University, he graduated to office pet. He nibbled on peanut butter, his favorite food, and watched Alan M. Goldberg and the other scientists as they walked by.

Goldberg, then an environmental science and toxicology professor, liked to lead by example. He knew he couldn’t eradicate animal testing, but he could move toward that goal and the research animals he worked with could have quality of life in the meantime.

He was thrilled to found the university’s Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing in 1981. At the time, anti-animal cruelty campaigns weren’t yet plastered on billboards or dominating TV commercials. The nonprofit People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was only a year old. Goldberg’s work was quiet but imperative, former colleagues and loved ones said.

“Alan is the invisible hand that created the field of alternatives,” said Paul Locke, a Hopkins environmental health professor and former co-worker.

Humanity was the cornerstone of Goldberg’s 53-year tenure at Hopkins, where he also advocated for AIDS awareness and prevention, ethical food production and anti-racism policy. He consulted for the NBA and launched global conferences that go on decades later. That work ensures his legacy will last long after his death, loved ones said.

Goldberg, also a lover of good food and wine who made friends around the globe, died June 9 of pneumonia at age 86.

He was born in New York on Nov. 20, 1939, to Celia Rudman and William Goldberg. He was eight years younger than his sister, Eleanor, and therefore “an absolutely unequivocal, spoiled brat,” joked his daughter, Naomi Schmuckler. Legend says her father wasn’t required to do chores. If he needed a space to lie down, the people sitting moved.

“We have no idea how he grew up with that kind of spoiling and pampering and princehood [to] be the incredible, compassionate human being he became, but that’s what happened,” Schmuckler said.

Perhaps it was the influence of his high school sweetheart, Helene, who lived nearby in Queens.

The secret to their epic 70-year relationship? “Honesty, respect, shared values,” Helene Goldberg said. “It was never about money. It was about doing the right thing.”

After graduation, Goldberg started studying engineering but transferred to the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy. He went on to earn a doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Minnesota.

When Hopkins offered him a job in 1969, Goldberg accepted, thinking he’d stay for three years to get his career footing.

But he fell in love with Hopkins — with its opportunities to innovate and the smart colleagues who surrounded him. He fell in love with Baltimore, too — the community of friends he found, the lives he saw his kids building here.

At the time, the couple had two young children, Michael and Naomi. Goldberg always made time to play with them or take them out for a good meal, even as he traveled often and took on more work responsibilities, Schmuckler said.

In the early 1990s, after Magic Johnson disclosed his HIV diagnosis, Goldberg served as a consultant to the NBA on AIDS awareness. Later, he organized the first World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences.

The Goldbergs gained a third child, Alex Menkes, after his parents — Goldberg’s close friends and Hopkins colleagues — died suddenly in the late 1980s. Wracked with grief, Goldberg and Menkes, who was then 19, leaned on each other to navigate the pain.

“Al did not just believe in compassion as an abstract principle,” Menkes said at Goldberg’s memorial service. “He lived it. He turned it into action. He turned it into a home. He turned it into a seat at the table. He turned it into family. And, like any real father, he challenged me.”

Goldberg was there for Menkes through it all — when he struggled with school, needed support navigating childhood trauma, celebrated opening his own businesses, got married and had his own children.

Menkes treasures memories of Goldberg’s “apple parties” — think wine tasting but different apples and dips — and his firm but loving insistence that Menkes have tough political conversations with family members. And it was a special treat whenever Menkes saw Goldberg, typically humble and reserved, recognized for his work at Hopkins and beyond.

Goldberg’s honors included the first Russell and Burch Award from the Humane Society of the United States in 1991 and the Enhancement of Animal Welfare Award from the Society of Toxicology in 2002. In 2021, the American Visionary Art Museum named him an “ambassador of compassion,” an honor that accompanied an exhibit on healing and empathy.

“He just was able to put together people and organizations that effected the change that he envisioned,” Menkes said.

In the wake of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, Goldberg delayed his retirement to lead the Inclusion, Diversity, Anti-Racism and Equity initiative at Hopkins’ Department of Environmental Health and Engineering.

Thomas Hartung, director of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, called his predecessor an “iconic figure” and “hero in the field.” Just weeks before his death, Goldberg was inducted into the center’s 3Rs Hall of Honor, which celebrates the lifetime achievements of people who work on animal research and the “three R’s” of alternatives — reduction, refinement and replacement.

Goldberg continued to advocate for positive change over the past few years. One of his unfinished projects was pushing food manufacturers to use labels indicating whether their products were produced and packaged humanely and sustainably.

“He was really a pioneer who did not compromise on science but used the best possible science to show that something is possible in this field,” Hartung said.

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