AnimalRights.Net

In late September, researchers
announced that a man who received a baboon liver in an experimental 1992
transplant contracted a herpes virus known as cytomegalovirus (CMV) from
the baboon. The man died of liver failure a couple months after the transplant,
but tests of his tissues revealed he was infected with CMV.

Animal rights activists
and others opposed to transgenic diseases were quick to pounce on this
revelation to argue against animal transplants. But what does this really
mean?

First, it is important
not to understate the real risk associated with transgenic transplants,
especially in the early stages the technology is in. There is simply no
way anyone can guarantee that a disease won’t pass from animals to human
beings without further research – which, of course, is why this research
is still experimental and hospitals around the country aren’t’ doing hundreds
of such transplants.

By the same token, it is
important not to overstate the risk. Animal-human contact constantly poses
risks that most of us find completely acceptable. Few people outside the
animal rights community would advocate banning pig farming simply because
pigs are an important vector for the influenza virus. Nor would most people
advocate eliminating horses because of the handful of deaths from equine
encephalitis every year.

It’s also important to
note that although the transplant recipient in this case was infected
with CMV immediately after the transplant, his body showed no signs of
infection at his death. According to an Associated Press story on the
case, the reason the virus was able to infect the patient was because
he stopped taking the antiviral drug ganciclovir after 18 days because
of the side effects. Tissue samples taken 28 days after the transplant
show the CMV virus. The patient resumed the ganciclovir, and by day 35
was completely free of the virus. Although no one can be certain, it appears
the drug killed the virus.

Even if ganciclovir couldn’t
kill CMV, there is a straightforward way to completely avoid this problem
– raise animals intended for transplantation in sterile conditions. CMV
infects about 98 percent of baboons because it is harmless to the animals;
the only way to prevent such infection is to raise the animals in sterile
conditions. An AIDS patient who received a bone marrow transplant from
a baboon was free of CMV because the baboon used had been raised from
birth in a sterile environment, quarantined from other baboons.

I was shocked and dismayed
a few weeks ago when I opened U.S. News & World Report to see
conservative columnist John Leo denouncing the idea of using a trial to
grant non-human primates rights. Although Leo is against the primate trial,
he ended up conceding much of the animal rights argument.

Leo certainly doesn’t have
a lot of use for animal rights in principle, noting that “it’s even
an expression of bias to talk about protecting wildlife, since this assumes
that human control and domination of other species is acceptable. These
are surely far-out ideas.” Unfortunately as he moves through his
argument it becomes apparent Leo has been heavily influenced by these
“far out ideas.” Leo writes, “Ideas about humane treatment
of animals are indeed changing. Many of us have changed our minds about
furs, zoos, slaughterhouse techniques, and at least some forms of animal
experimentation.”

In fact despite the implication
early on in his piece that he is against the idea of primates being granted
rights, it is clear by the end of the piece that what Leo really objects
to is the issue being solved through judicial activism rather than through
legislation as he makes clear in the following passage, “The debate
about greater concern for the animal world continues. But the alliance
between the radicals and the lawyers means that, once again, an issue
that ought to be taken to the people and resolved by democratic means
will most likely be pre-empted by judges and lawyers.”

What’s going on here? Although
I happen to agree with Leo about many things, he has a tendency to overestimate
both the sincerity and the accuracy of his opponents. Leo repeats, for
example, extravagant claims made about non-human primates use of language
which don’t tend to hold up under scrutiny (Leo claims that an ape can
talk at the same level of a 4-year old, which I would chalk up as pure
nonsense – unfortunately Leo does an extremely poor job of documenting
which ape can talk at that level, apparently taking animal rights propaganda
at face value.) His inclusion of zoos in the list of things he no longer
supports was shocking, however. Some zoos, especially before the 1980s,
did engage in abusive behavior and poor care, but then some pet owners
also neglect their animals. If Leo is against holding animals in properly
managed zoos I don’t see how he can consider the rest of the animal rights
argument as “too far out.”

On the other hand Leo does
a good job of summarizing the legal theory promulgated by Steven Wise
and others. Wise actually argues that non-human primates should have standing
to sue using pre-Civil War statutes that allowed slaves, who were non-persons
under the Constitution, to bring lawsuits.

I don’t think this has much
chance of succeeding because if it did there would be several well-positioned
coalitions ready to take legislative action to overturn such a decisions.
The most obvious group, aside from the animal industry, threatened by
such a decision would be pro-choice forces such as the National Organization
for Women and Planned Parenthood. Any decision that allows people to sue
on behalf of non-persons would be a direct challenge to a woman’s right
to have an abortion in the United States.

On September 4, suspected
animal rights terrorist Justin Samuel was arrested in Hasslet, Belgium
and the machinery is now in motion to extradite him to the United States.
In 1998 Samuel was indicted by a Wisconsin grand jury for releasing in
excess of 3,000 mink from Wisconsin fur farms. In addition the grand jury
hit Samuel and his alleged co-conspirator, Peter Young, with a racketeering
charge alleging the duo engaged in “overt acts in three states as
part of a conspiracy to engage in extortion by attempting to coerce the
farmers to close their business rather than face the threat of further
economic losses as a result of their attacks.”

Apparently Rush Limbaugh
has recently made some disparaging remarks about animal rights activists,
which drew the ire of an activist who expressed his anger an animal rights
email list. According to the activist, Rush Limbaugh is “the individual
who has done more harm to the cause of ANIMAL LIBERATION than anyone else
in history…” Normally I ignore such rantings on AR-NEWS, but this
one got me to thinking whether Limbaugh really deserved the title as the
person whose done the most to harm the animal rights movement.

Ingrid Newkirk would be
the obvious candidate for the honor, but since its difficult sometime
to tell who is behind specific People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals campaigns and media coverage of Newkirk
is often excessively deferential, I have to pass over her. To stick to
a single person, I’d say Peter Singer clearly stands head and shoulders
above the rest.

       But first to dispatch with
Limbaugh. Certainly Limbaugh has a big audience, but his negatives are
so high he pretty much only preaches to the choir. Limbaugh also has a
well-known problem of factual inaccuracy – I certainly wouldn’t take anything
he says at face value.

Singer is the leader because
a) like many of the other animal rights activists, he makes constant gaffes
and b) unlike other animal rights activists, Singer’s comments have received
widespread coverage in most major and minor newspapers in the country.
Tom Regan probably said the single dumbest thing by a major animal rights
proponent when he said he’d throw a retarded infant overboard in a lifeboat
before an intelligent dog, but he was speaking extemporaneously and that
quote wasn’t (and isn’t likely to be) widely reported in the mainstream
media.

But Singer not only include
his views about killing babies and senile old people in his books, but
he actually goes out of his way to reemphasize his beliefs to the media.
Recently deciding that only if he had an opportunity to explain his views
himself, Singer engaged in a debate at Princeton at which he actually
had the gall to say: “Killing an infant is not equivalent to killing
a person because by a person I mean something more of a rational self-aware
being.” Princeton has kindly placed audio and video feeds of the
debate on their web site at http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/special/index.shtml.

Many animal rights activists
would probably like to disown Singer’s views on infants and old people,
but his views illustrate an important component of the anti-animal rights
argument: you can’t just grant animals rights and assume this will have
no far reaching effects on other moral and legal principles. The attempt
to equate marginal human beings with non-human animals inevitably changes
not only the moral position of the non-humans but that of human beings
as well. In fact the changes resulting from current animal rights philosophies
would involve dramatic restructuring of most contemporary societies view
of the moral universe as it applies to human beings.

Just to illustrate how
seriously some animal rights activists take their admonition to give equal
consideration to animal interests, an activist posted a note to an animal
rights email list a few weeks ago angry at C-SPAN’s excellent morning
show.

Was the activist angry at some positive coverage of the animal industry,
or perhaps its highlighting of an advance in medical research? Nope, according
to the activist, “The C-SPAN morning show has come under criticism
for requiring a daily newspaper headline, requiring participants to be
involved in the hundreds of millions of trees, birds, squirrels, etc.
killed annually for newsprint.” Wow. Now if we could just get the
activists to understand that millions of birds, squirrels, etc., are also
killed producing the vegetables they consider to be cruelty-free we’d
be getting somewhere.