AnimalRights.Net

Recently, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals‘ Bruce Friedrich posted a bizarre appeal on behalf
of convicted arsonist and animal rights activist Frank Allen. It seems
Allen and his family are unhappy with the way prison official are treating
him.

Among the laundry list of complaints
presented in Friedrich’s email is that Allen is “receiving an incorrect
dosage of insulin” to treat his Diabetes.

Insulin? Insulin treatment for
diabetes was developed through animal experimentation and for decades
diabetics avoided health problems and premature death by using insulin
derived primarily from pigs (insulin derived from humans is now available).

As Michael Bliss, author of The
Discovery of Insulin, sums up the role of animal experiments in diabetes
treatment,

The discovery of insulin in the early 1920s stands as
one of the outstanding examples in medical history of the successful use
of animal experimentation to improve the human condition. Insulin would
not have been isolated, at Toronto or anywhere else, without the sacrifice
of thousands of dogs. These dogs made it possible for millions of humans
to live.

Allen wants and Friederich supports
access to a medical technology developed with techniques that both men
are committed to abolishing.

Paul McCartney recently gave a BBC
radio interview in which he seemed to step back from his, and his deceased
wife Linda’s, hard core animal rights position on animal experimentation.

“I’m finding out now,”
McCartney told the BBC, “that there is quite a lot of animal experimentation
— some of it I suppose absolutely necessary when you come down to the
final tests before people.”

McCartney made comments about his
wife’s treatment for breast Cancer that indicate Linda never knew the
drugs she was taking had been tested on animals. He said that doctors
treating Linda gave the impression that the drugs they prescribed had
not been tested in animals.

“If they tell you ‘It’s ok
to have this because we didn’t test it on animals’ then you are going
to believe them,” McCartney said.

In other words, all this time Paul
and Linda McCartney went around advocating for animal rights and against
animal experimentation, they were so ignorant of the topic that they didn’t
even know the fundamental basics about the use of animals in drug development
and testing.

This is the state of the
animal rights movement’s knowledge of the use of animals by medical researchers.

A communiqué signed only by “the
Justice Department” shows what happens when movements such as animal
rights begin providing a safe haven for people bent on violence. The release
promised retaliation against any animal rights activists who provides
information on terrorist acts committed by activists. Claiming that “our
movement is currently under threat from infiltrators, informers, and violent
animal abusers,” the communiqué warns. “Former ALF activists
have been suspected of feeding information into federal agents … this
will not be tolerated.”

Citing rumors that Josh Ellerman and Colby Ellerman supplied federal authorities with detailed information about
Animal Liberation Front activities, the communiqué warns, “they [animal rights
informants] will not rest in peace once released. We will be on the other
side of the fence waiting and we will find them wherever they hide …
The ALF have a clear policy of adherence to non-violence. We do not.”

I thought it was only hunters and
meat eaters who resorted to violence?

With Halloween right around the
corner, the American |Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals|
released a rather sensible guide to keeping pets safe during the holiday,
noting that “there are plenty of stories of vicious pranksters who
have teased, injured, stolen, even killed pets on this night.”

But that sort of restrained warning
doesn’t go nearly far enough for some animal rights activists who insist
on spreading myths about large, well-organized Satanic cults bent on sacrificing
and mutilating black cats on Halloween.

A short release by |Education and Action for Animals| is typical. Without offering any evidence, EAA claimed
“the number of animals abused and sacrificed may increase by TEN
TIMES during the Halloween season.” Like other outlets, EAA warned
that black cats were in special danger because “they are highest
in demand for sacrificial purposes”; again, a claim made with no
evidence to back it up.

But that was nothing compared to
Mesia Quartano, who runs the Mining Company’s Animal Rights page.
To provide her readers with information on the horrors black cats face
from Satanic cults she provided links to ultraconservative Christian fundamentalists
who believe that a super-secret Satanic order called the Brotherhood has
infiltrated key position in government and the corporate world. This sort
of nonsense has been thoroughly debunked (see sociologist Jeffery Victors
excellent book on the topic, Satanic Panic, among others) but is
kept alive by an unlikely convergence of fringe elements in fundamentalist
Christian, radical feminist and animal rights circles.

And just in case further evidence
is needed on the credulity of people when it comes to animal deaths, a
recent news story distributed on animal rights lists provides ample evidence.
A large number of horribly mutilated animals were found in a city dumpster,
obviously put there by some sicko or perhaps a cult. Except, as
it turned out a few days later, the mutilated animals’ presence had a
rather mundane explanation. It seems the animals were, in fact, road kill
placed in the dumpster by a company contracted with by the local authorities
specifically to remove such animals.

Ever since the blow out with Lycos,
an annoying pop-up window soliciting funds appears whenever I browse the
Envirolink web site, and supporters keeping sending out a fundraising
e-mail claming EnviroLink is in dire financial straits. The e-mail asks
for donations — the larger the better. EnviroLink chief Josh Knauer says
EnviroLink needs only $5,000 per month to keep going.

Which doesn’t make any sense.

In the fund raising email, Knauer
claims that “over 375,000 people from over 150 countries use EnviroLink’s
services every day.” Either that number is grossly inaccurate or
Knauer has absolutely no idea what he’s doing. If, in fact, EnviroLink
has over 375,000 people visiting its site every day, that would be close
to 12 million people each month who visit the site or subscribe to email
lists it hosts, etc. If Knauer can’t figure out a way to generate a paltry
$60,000 a year from his 144 million users each year, maybe he should consider
hiring somebody who can. That is simply a pathetic performance — I could
generate $60,000 annually with a tenth of EnviroLink’s users.

EnviroLink hosts a Sustainable
Business Network, but apparently EnviroLink’s own business practices are
not sustainable.

Peter Singer helped kick start the contemporary animal rights movement with
his 1975 book, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals.
Although some in the animal rights community try to distance themselves from
Singer, his ideas have generally been embraced by mainstream animal rights groups
(for example, the copy of Animal Liberation I own was reprinted in cooperation
with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals which advertises itself on
the cover and end pages).

Singer was recently offered The Ira W. DeCamp Professorship of Bioethics at
Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, which led the Wall Street
Journal to attack Singer and Princeton in a September 25 editorial by Naomi
Schaefer and in an unsigned October 2 opinion piece in the Journal’s
weekend section.

Why the criticism? Because Singer has fulfilled one of the main predictions
made by those opposed to animal rights; he regularly uses the implications of
his pro-animal rights arguments to grossly devalue human life. Singer’s
philosophy is based on utilitarianism, meaning he believes morality consists
of minimizing suffering and maximizing pleasure or happiness. Unlike most utilitarians
he argues that animal suffering and happiness are also morally relevant. In
Animal Liberation, he argued that humans should abandon the use of animals
for food and medical experiments in order to minimize suffering. In doing so
Singer explicitly equated the suffering or happiness of non-humans such as chimpanzees
with humans who are mentally impaired in some way, such as very young children
or the mentally retarded.

But aside from simply not actively harming others, there is another way to
minimize suffering from the point of view of a utilitarian – namely by
killing beings that are suffering and likely to continue such suffering indefinitely.
After all, dead things (whether human or non-human) don’t suffer. Most
utilitarians twist themselves into knots to avoid the harsh conclusion that
murder is sometimes the moral thing to do. But not Singer. He’s more than
happy to see human beings living “miserable lives” killed to minimize
the overall level of suffering.

Schaefer quoted from Singer’s book, Practical Ethics, in which Singer
argued that abortion is morally permissible because “the life of a fetus
is of no greater value than the life of a nonhuman animal at a similar level
of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel, etc., and that
since no fetus is a person no fetus has the same claim to life as a person.”
A pretty standard pro-choice argument, but Singer insists on taking his thinking
to what he believes is its logical conclusion, continuing, “Now it must
be admitted that these arguments apply to the newborn baby as much as to the
fetus.” As Schaefer sums up this bizarre passage, Singer agrees with some
antiabortion activists that abortion is like infanticide.

The main difference being that Singer approves of infanticide. Singer
has written that “killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to
killing a person.” And Singer doesn’t restrict his killing impulses
to just severely retarded and disabled infants. He also argues, for example,
that it is morally permissible to kill a hemophiliac infant if by doing so it
would improve the prospects of a non-hemophiliac infant.

Singer makes similar arguments about forcible euthanasia. Many people in the
United States and elsewhere support the right of individuals who are terminally
ill to voluntarily end their lives, but Singer goes way beyond this. He favors
killing people who have a low “quality of life” even when those people
would prefer to live — i.e. Singer endorses murder. Singer tries to pass off
this astounding conclusion in pseudo-intellectual drivel, writing that society
“would have to accept in some cases that it would be right to kill a person
who does not choose to die on the grounds that the person will otherwise lead
a miserable life.”

Presumably it would be Singer and others like him who would get to decide what
qualifies as a “miserable life” (may I suggest, just to get priority
on the idea, that someone who opposes medical research that could lead to a
cure for terminal illness, while simultaneously arguing it is okay to murder
those who suffer from such diseases certainly qualifies as leading a miserable
life?)

The Fall l998 issue of Free Inquiry featured an article by Harold Hillman
on “The Limits of Ethical Vegetarianism.” Hillman is a medical researcher
who is the director of the Unity Laboratory of Applied Neurobiology in the United
Kingdom. On the other hand he considers himself an “ethical vegetarian,”
meaning he doesn’t eat meat because he think it imposes needless suffering or
as he explains it, “ethical vegetarians feel that it is morally wrong to
kill animals to eat when one can live a healthy life without doing so.”

Hillman is certainly a reasonable advocate of this position. For example he
concedes that since “vegetarians tend to eat, smoke and drink less and
exercise more than the population at large … one cannot know for certain whether
their improved health is due to their way of life or to their diets.”

But he also takes his philosophy well beyond eating practices, concluding that
“an ethical vegetarian should not wear leather shoes, belts, or watch straps,
or buy such items as wallets, handbags, baseballs, footballs, or cricket balls”
or even common glues, although Hillman concedes that “I am not sure whether
there are any alternatives to the manufacture of these products at present.”

And yet Hillman believes it is not inconsistent with this doctrine to continue
to perform medical experiments on animals. He writes that “as a medical
researcher, I believe that medical and biological advances — to the advantage
of human beings and animals alike — could not have been made without experiments
on animals.” Hillman does argue that the use of animals should be minimized
where possible, but argues that nonetheless it is consistent with ethical vegetarianism
to continue such experiments.

I happen to think Hillman’s argument is grossly inconsistent. Once Hillman
commits himself to the claim that “we should avoid all pain to animals
and the use of products requiring animals to suffer,” there is no magical
exception that says “except for medical research.” In logical terms,
Hillman is guilty of the fallacy of special pleading (hunting, meat eating and
fur farming are unnecessary, but medical research is my livelihood. You can’t
take that away.)

If people should not buy baseballs that are made with animal products, should
they receive medical treatment which required animals to suffer and die in order
to be developed? Hillman seems to think using animals for medical research is
“necessary” but of course using animals for that purpose is no more
“necessary” than using them for furs or baseball.

I don’t mean to pick on Hillman since I’ve seen some fanatical hunters who
make the opposite argument — that hunting animals in the wild with weapons
such as bows and arrow is a natural and spiritual thing to do, and thus should
continue, while experimenting on animals in labs is a cold calculating process
which should be severely restricted if not banned outright.

As far as I’m concerned once either side of the argument is conceded, the whole
animal rights argument logically follows. If it is immoral to eat animals it
is certainly immoral to perform medical experiments on them and vice versa.
Where ethical vegetarians, a few fanatical hunters and the entire animal rights
community are wrong is in believing either activity is morally questionable.

Parade magazine recently
ran a short piece on Paul McCartney in which the former Beatle said people
wanting to remember his wife Linda McCartney should send contributions
to Memorial Sloan-Kettering where she was treated for breast cancer before
her death. As an astute reader pointed out in the October 4 issue of Parade,
however, that McCartney said he was opposed to the use of animals but breast
cancer research relies on animal studies.

How does Paul reconcile this ethical
dilemma? He told Parade that he is still “totally against
experiments on animals,” so contributions in Linda’s name would only
go for spending on human trials.

Earth to Paul: the only way a breast
cancer drug gets to the human trial stage is after it has gone
through extensive animal testing. McCartney’s position seems to be that
it is okay to do human trials of breast cancer drugs, but the animal tests
that make the human trials possible should be banned.

“Live and Let Die” indeed!

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is back to its bizarre ways (if I didn’t know better, I’d swear
this group had been taken over by hunters looking to discredit the animal
rights movement). In mid-September PETA showed up to protest at the American
Meat Institute convention and held a “human barbecue.” It barbecued
tofu in the shape of a “cattleman.”

“People eat other animals,
why not humans?” asked PETA President Ingrid Newkirk in a press release.
“The notion of eating any animals should be as preposterous as cannibalism.
So eating a hamburger is the same as roasting up Uncle Bob.”

If that wasn’t enough, PETA attacked
ads featuring the National Football League’s John Randle, who plays defensive
tackle for the Minnesota Vikings. The commercial, paid for by Nike, shows
Randle making a small football jersey emblazoned with a No. 4 similar to
the one that Green Bay Packer quarterback Brett Favre wears. Randle then
practices chasing the chicken around the field (Favre is known for his
ability to take off running if he can’t find a receiver to throw
to). The chicken keeps getting away from Randle until the finale where
the audience sees Randle standing over a grill where he is preparing chicken.

PETA, of course, is horrified that
the ad is running and wants it pulled immediately. In fact, PETA claims
that “the commercial mimics what psychologists now see as a sign
of criminal mentality, in that pleasure is apparently derived from trauma
inflicted on a vulnerable animal.” According to Newkirk, “Young
people who see Randle as a role model may learn to associate the terror
of defenseless chickens as a form of amusement.”

So eating hamburger is cannibalism
and chasing a chicken is a sure sign that one is a sociopathic criminal.

I know a lot of anti-animal rights
people despise PETA, but in my opinion they are our best ally. No single
person or group does more to discredit animal rights and show just how
bizarre the animal rights agenda is than PETA.