Archive for 1998
Damned if you do . . .
One of vice-president Al Gore’s big environmental
projects has been to force chemical companies to test thousands of chemicals
already on the market for toxicity – most of these chemicals were
in widespread use before modern safety regulations and thus never went
through the testing regimen that new compounds go through. The Environmental
Protection Agency pressured the Chemical Manufacturers Association into
running a battery of five animal toxicity tests on 3,000 or so chemicals.
The use of animal toxicity tests brought an
objection from the Humane Society of the United States, which wants the
EPA to use this initiative to develop and implement alternatives to animal
testing, saying among other things that “the relevance of all this
animal testing to human safety is questionable, according to several toxicologists
with whom we have conferred.”
According to HSUS, the LD50 test (which establishes
the dose level that kills 50 percent of the experimental animals) is “widely
criticized on humane and scientific grounds.”
In fact, if interpreted properly, the LD50
tests still give important information about toxicity that can’t be gleaned
solely from the tissue and cell culture alternatives that HSUS and other
animal rights organizations push.
Those tests certainly have their place,
especially for establishing potential toxicity before conducting animal
tests, but there is still an enormous gap between testing on isolated
tissues and cells and testing on a whole organism.
Tags: Humane Society of the United States, LD50 Test, Medical Research
Tumor-destroying virus tested in mice
A reovirus that normally causes mild respiratory
infections in human beings has been found to be an effective killer of
cancerous tumors in mice.
According to a report in Science,
the reovirus uses the Ras pathway in the cells of mice, which normally
regulates cell growth. It is the Ras pathway that is activated in about
75 percent of human cancers.
Other viruses have been found to destroy tumors,
but this is the first virus that uses the Ras pathway. “This is the
pathway everyone wants to target,” said Peter Forsyth, an oncologist
at the University of Calgary. “The treatment is very effective.”
The main advantage of the reovirus is that
it doesn’t seem to affect noncancerous cells. Clinical trials in human
beings are years away, however.
Tags: Cancer, Medical Research, Mice
It is about terror
Animal rights terrorists and their defenders
usually try to argue they’re only concerned with damaging property
to stop experiments or registering their moral outrage, but a recent release
from |Stop Quintiles’ Animal Tests| (SQAT), reveals the true motives
behind the activists ‘direction action.’
The release described a recent protest at |Quintiles|,
a laboratory that conducts experiments on animals. Fourteen activists
showed up to harass Quintiles employees as they were leaving work. According
to SQAT’s press release, employees “were forced to run a gauntlet
of shouting protesters … and several cars belonging to Quintiles
staff were chase up the road by irate demonstrators.”
And the goal of this protest – to instill
a sense of terror and fear into the researchers.
Fear was evident
on the faces of many of the workers, both inside the lab and as they were
leaving, and several cowered in their cars in response to the verbal onslaught.
Those who cause fear and terror to innocent creatures had been forced,
in some small degree, to experience those feelings themselves.”
Rhetoric almost identical to the pro-life movement’s
strategy of intimidating abortion providers and their clients.
Tags: Quintiles Laboratory, Stop Quintiles Animal Tests, Terrorism
Great Britain bans animal testing – sort of
During the last election cycle, Great Britain’s
Labor Party promised to abolish animal tests for cosmetic products, and
it followed through in November by announcing an agreement with the cosmetics
industry to ban all such tests.
The ban, however, will affect only a small
percentage of animal tests in the UK. According to the Home Office, only
1,266 of 2.64 million animal procedures involved cosmetics testing that
would be banned under the agreement. And the ban doesn’t mean cosmetic
products in the UK will no longer involve animal testing. Most such testing
already takes place outside the UK, in countries such as Japan, France
and the United States. Most of the little cosmetic animal testing done
in the UK will simply be outsourced to those countries.
The real point of the ban is largely symbolic
– animal rights activists hope the ban in Great Britain will help
kick start their efforts to get a European Union-wide ban on animal testing
for cosmetics ingredients and finished products.
Tags: Cosmetics Testing
What Goes Around Comes Around
Following the passage of Arizona’s
ban on cockfighting, an unidentified group is circulating a press release
claiming that those in favor of cockfighting are using the Internet to
harass and target animal rights activists who supported the measure.
“Taking a page from the anti-abortion
movement’s book on terrorism, Arizona cockfighters have posted a
list of animal activists’ names at a website on the Internet,”
the press release claims.
Antiabortion terrorism? Try animal
rights terrorism. Assuming the press release is accurate, these people
are doing to animal rights activists exactly what the activists have been
doing to medical researchers, fur farmers and others for years. Animal
rights activists regularly post to the Internet the names and phone numbers
of medical researchers, journalists who write disapproving articles, fur
farmers and others.
This is what happens when social
movements self-righteously believe they are so obviously correct that
they may break the law with impunity and attack indiscriminately both
persons and property who get in their way. Officials with animal rights
organizations such People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals issue fawning
press releases and articles defending the activities of groups such as
the Animal Liberation Front, but animal rights activists are the first
ones to cry foul when their tactics are turned back on them.
Not that I support taking direct
action against animal rights activists. As I have said before, the main
thing that such direct action does is discredit animal rights activists
in the eyes of most Americans. The reaction to the recent destruction
of more than $12 million in property at Vail proved that point. Even those
local environmentalist and activists who opposed the new Vail development
condemned the action and the attack did more than anything to unite that
community behind the ski resort. Engaging in direct action against animal
rights activists only risks giving them sympathy on a potentially national
stage that they simply don’t deserve.
Source:
Cockfighters use Internet to target animal activists. Citizens Again Cockfighting, Press Release, November 6, 1998.
Tags: Animal Liberation Front, Arizona, Chickens, Cockfighting, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Terrorism, United States
Will transplant recipients be less than human?
Animal rights activists seem to
be increasingly desperate in their fight against Xenotransplantation –
the transplanting of organs and tissues from animals into human beings.
First, they argued such transplantation simply wouldn’t work. After
that argument failed, they argued there were enormous dangers of passing
diseases between animals and humans. Now that the evidence indicates this
risk is minimal, the activists are pulling out the big guns in their rhetorical
grab bag – people who receive animal organs aren’t really human.
According to Gill Langley, who
co-wrote a recent report on xenotransplantation for the
British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and Compassion in World Farming, “The
human xenotransplantation patient will become a literal chimera. It sounds
like scare-mongering, but let me assure you that the word chimera is being
used by xenotransplant scientists.”
Scare-mongering? From an animal rights
activist?
If the thought of being less than
human isn’t enough, Langley’s report warns that patients whose
lives are saved by these new technologies (which he still claims won’t
work) could face unknown psychological consequences.
So this is the justification
that animal rights activists are going to present to the 50,000 people
in Europe alone who are waiting to receive organs? Xenotransplantation
must be stopped to prevent those dying individuals from becoming less
than human and suffering the attendant psychological side effects. Better
dead than depressed?
Source:
Activists say animal transplants make us less human. Reuters, October 13, 1998.
Tags: British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, Compassion in World Farming, Medical Research, Xenotransplantation
PETA demands withdrawal Nike commercial
Coming on the heels of its complaints
about commercials featuring National Football League defenseman John Randle
chasing a chicken dressed as Brett Favre, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is demanding Nike withdraw a commercial featuring the NFL’s
Denver Broncos.
The commercial parodies the running
of the bulls in Spain. The viewer sees the bulls stampeding down a street
and a matador waiting for them in a large stadium. Before the bulls can
get to the stadium, though, the Denver Broncos defense lines up in formation
on the street. The commercial cuts back to the stadium where the matador
is perplexed by a loud crash and then wailing of bulls in the distance.
According to a PETA press release,
the commercial “promotes animal torment and cruelty.” Personally,
I thought the commercial was hilarious.
Source:
PETA sees red over Broncos Nike Ad. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Press Release, October 12, 1998.
Tags: Bullfighting, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Dredging data to "prove" white meat consumption contributes to cancer
The American Journal of Epidemiology
recently published a study that animal rights and vegan/vegetarian activists
are sure to jump on – Dr. Pramil Singh and Dr. Gary Fraser of the
Center for Health Research at Loma Linda University in California claim
their study of 34,000 Seventh Day Adventists shows that white meat consumption
increases the risk of colon cancer.
Should you give up or cut back
on white meat? Certainly not based on this study, which arrives at its
results by shameless data dredging.
What’s data dredging? Suppose
I wanted to prove that vegetarians who attend animal rights protests have
a higher rate of colon cancer than vegetarians who don’t. So I get
several thousand vegetarians to fill out questionnaires detailing how
often they attend such protests.
At first I’m sorely disappointed
by the results – vegetarians who attend animal rights protests don’t
seem to get colon cancer any more often than those who stay away from
such protests. But that’s not the result I’m looking for, so
I need to get fancy with the data. I start looking at the results from
every possible angle and find an interesting trend.
While there is no general increase
in colon cancer from attending animal rights protests, I do find an oddity
that activists who regularly read Humane Society of the United States propaganda but only occasionally attend People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals-sponsored protests have lower rates of colon cancer than those
who rarely read HSUS propaganda but regularly attend PETA protests.
And so I publish my results –
I have proven that attending PETA protests increases the risk of colon
cancer.
Convinced?
This is the sort of methodology
Singh and Fraser use. Their study, in fact, found there was no statistically significant association between read meat consumption and
colon cancer and white meat consumption and colon cancer. But that didn’t
produce the result they wanted, so they went searching for associations
in subgroups of data and found a couple.
Specifically the subgroup in their
study who reported they ate red meat more than once a week but ate white
meat only occasionally had a 90 percent increased risk of colon cancer,
while those who consumed white meat more than once per week but only occasionally
eat read meat had a 229 percent increased risk of colon cancer.
Source:
Meat consumption and colon cancer. American Journal of Epidemiology, October 15, 1998.
Study finds chicken cauces cancer too. Reuters, October, 1998.
Tags: Cancer
Cornell activists burn effigy of Animal Welfare Committee chairman
Nine animal rights activists at
Cornell University were recently arrested for trespassing during a demonstration
outside a biology laboratory. A press release by two of the activists
said one of the arrested students is being charged with harassment, “a
charge which violated a restraining order placed on him by the campus
Judicial Administrator after an effigy-torching of the Animal Welfare
Committee chairman last week.”
This is what animal rights activists
must mean when they talk about having compassion for all living creatures.
What is more reprehensible is that, according to the justifications offered
by some activists in favor of “direct action,” this isn’t
really violence because, as in raids on laboratories and fur farms,
all that is being destroyed is property.
Sure, and when the KKK burns a
cross on some black family’s lawn or paints swastikas on a synagogue,
all they’re really doing is harming property in a peaceful, non-violent
way.
Sources:
Activists attempt to view animal mutilation. Cornell Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Press Release, November 2, 1998.
Tags: Medical Research, Miscellaneous
Animal rights terrorist demands his insulin
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.
Tags: Bruce Friedrich, Diabetes, Dogs, Medical Research, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Pigs