Although animal rights activists claim animal research is wrong and inaccurate, when it is self-serving to do so, they will cite such research. This short bit from the e-mail newsletter of Americans for Medical Progress illustrates something that I see happen a lot:

Activist Benefits (Rhetorically) From Animal Research

Always eager to make the case against eating meat, virulent animal rights activist Adam Weissman (who was arrested last week at a demonstration at Huntingdon Life Sciences in New Jersey) cited animal studies to prove a link between \”mad cow disease\” and a human brain wasting illness.

Today\’s post on AR News was of an April 7 Reuters newswire article citing a study published last week in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, dealing with the behavior of prions — the distorted proteins blamed for causing BSE and its human equivalent, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) — in monkeys.

That pesky animal research sure has a way of coming in handy when you want to make a case.