Archive for 1999
New Technique Expands the Range of Transgenic Animals
According to Wired, an
article in the November 18 issue of Current Biology details new advances
in inserting human genes into nonhuman animals. Researchers at the University
of Chicago have developed a technique to create transgenic organisms in
species as diverse as beetles, frogs and birds, with a potential to transplant
genes to many other species. Previously transgenic experiments had been
limited to fruit flies, nematodes, mice and rats.
The potential for advancing
medical knowledge is immense. Plans are already underway to use the new
technique to study diabetes, for example, as well as embryology.
Source:
Expanding
the Lab Menagerie from Wired News, November 19, 1999
Tags: Genetic Engineering, Medical Research
Animal Rights Activists Take On Thanksgiving
As the United States prepares
to celebrate Thanksgiving, animal rights activists are busy trying to
make their case that meat eating in general, and the eating of turkeys
specifically, is cruel and unnecessary.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals launched a special undercover investigative report on its web
site claiming to document cruelty at a turkey farm in Minnesota. PETA
urged people to write Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura and other officials
with complaints about animal cruelty.
Interestingly, even PETA seems
to be recognizing that it has a credibility gap with its undercover investigations
after repeatedly providing misinformation and selectively edited videotapes
in previous undercover operations. A letter from Mary Beth Sweetland,
PETA’s Director of Research, Investigations & Rescue Department, to
a Minnesota prosecutor specifically mentions that the videotape of the
investigation is “a first-generation copy of the original videographic
record…”
No word yet on whether or not
Minnesota officials are investigating the case.
Meanwhile United Poultry Concerns
is going to protest the annual White House Thanksgiving ceremony. Keeping
with tradition, a live turkey will be presented at the White House and
President Clinton will then “pardon” the turkey.
According to UPC’s Karen Davis,
“Instead of sarcastically ‘pardoning’ a turkey to palliate mass murder,
food poisoning, moldering carcasses and rotting politics, we urge people
to join us in marching to a different drumstick this Thanksgiving and
Eat Happy.”
A UPC press release on the
protest also claimed the pardoning ceremony was designed to “make fun
of turkeys.”
Meanwhile, to celebrate Thanksgiving,
PETA will be in Baltimore giving away fur coats to the homeless. The coats
have been donated to PETA over the years and have a red stripe painted
on one of the sleeves to make them worthless for resale.
Here’s my suggestion for PETA
next year. Why not get a bunch of people to donate Thanksgiving turkeys,
put a red food die stripe down the middle and pass them out as well? Couldn’t
hurt.
Sources:
Turkey Advocates
Will Protest Presidential “Pardoning” Ceremony, United Poultry Concerns
press release, November 1999.
Turkey Farm Cruelty:
The Case, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals letter, November
18, 1999.
Peta To
Give Away Fur Coats To Baltimore’s Homeless, People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals press release, November 22, 1999.
Tags: Karen Davis, Mary Beth Sweetland, Maryland, Minnesota, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Turkeys, United Poultry Concerns, United States, Washington, DC
ALF Strikes Again in Washington State
The Animal Liberation Front broke
into a research center at Washington State University, smashing equipment
and spray painting ‘ALF’ throughout the building. The target of the attack,
the Avian Health Laboratory, conducted safety tests on egg and chicken
products. Last month the ALF claimed responsibility for an attack on a
research laboratory at Western Washington University.
Source:
Equipment
destroyed at animal research center from the Associated Press, November
22, 1999
Tags: Animal Liberation Front, Cougars, Terrorism
Researchers Extend Life Span of Mice
The Associated Press and other
news outlets are reporting that Italian scientists managed to increase
the life expectancy of mice by 35 percent by manipulating their genes.
The researchers switched off a gene that made the mice vulnerable to cell
damage from oxygen. So far there is no evidence that the mice experienced
any side effects from the change.
“They hit a milestone in aging
research with this study — they’ve found a genetic intervention in mice
that make them live longer without any side effects,” Massachusetts Institute
of Technology researcher Leonard Guarente told the Associated Press.
The principal researcher on the
project, Pier Giusepe Pelicci warned that it was a big step from extending
life span in mice to doing so in human beings, but oxidation has long
been suspected as a major factor in the aging of human beings as well
as other animals.
Sources:
Researchers
increase life span of genetically engineered mice from the Associated
Press, November 17, 1999.
Scientists
Find Protein to Control Lifespan in Mice from Reuters, November 18,
1999.
Tags: Genetic Engineering, Medical Research, Mice
Much Ado about Baboon Herpes
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.
Tags: Uncategorized
John Leo, Closet Animal Rights Advocate?
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.
Tags: Uncategorized
Justin Samuel Arrested; Peter Young Still at Large
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.”
Tags: Belgium, Europe, Justin Samuel
Who has hurt animal rights movement most: Rush Limbaugh or Peter Singer?
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.
Tags: Ingrid Newkirk, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Peter Singer
The Craziest Animal Rights Quote I’ve Seen in Awhile
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.
Tags: Miscellaneous
Clemency Offer Will Only Encourage Animal Rights Terrorists
When President Clinton offered clemency
to 16 Puerto Rican nationalists who waged a campaign of terror bombing
in the 1970s and 1980s, he dramatically increased the danger posed to
American businesses and researchers by the most organized terrorist groups
in the United States today – animal rights terrorists.
Over the last two decades,
animal rights groups calling themselves the Animal Liberation Front and
the Justice Department have waged a campaign of terror that includes hundreds
of break-ins and bombings. U.S. businesses and research facilities have
often been frequent targets of such criminals. In August, numerous businesses
involved in the fur trade received packages in the mail containing razor
blades and death threats sent by an animal rights organization calling
itself the Justice Department. The threats gave the businesses until the
end of the year to abandon the fur business or face violent reprisals.
The FBI is currently investigating the threats.
Those who firebomb research labs
and destroy meat packing facilities defend their actions by saying they
only target property and never people (although groups like the Justice
Department have no problem hurting people). Like the Puerto Rican nationalists,
they don’t even consider their actions violence or terrorism but rather
as acts of liberation.
The Clinton administration and supporters
of clemency for the Puerto Rican nationalists just gave this position
a big boost. Time and again television and newspaper coverage of the controversy
featured people in positions of power and influence arguing it was okay
to free these prisoners because all they did was destroy buildings and
property rather than kill human beings.
These apologists for violence miss
the point; the ultimate goal of terrorism is not to kill but create an
atmosphere of fear. Terrorists kill people only because it is an extremely
effective way to create fear, but such fear can be manufactured just as
easily by destroying property as by outright murder. Racist extremists
often use the threat of arson or other damage to physical property to
intimidate minorities, and some antiabortion extremists have attempted
to use destruction of property at abortion clinics to scare women away
from such facilities. By seeking to create an atmosphere of fear in the
targeted population, such acts of property destruction constitute the
very heart and soul of terrorism.
In defense of the clemency offer,
defenders of the Puerto Rican nationalists claim those convicted have
since renounced violence. Such renunciations are next to worthless as
the case of Rodney Coronado illustrates. Coronado was the first animal
rights activists convicted in federal court for a terrorist bombing. In
1992 Coronado firebombed a research lab at Michigan State University,
causing more than $1 million in damages. Despite a long history of other
violent activities, Coronado received only a 5 year prison sentences.
One of the factors leading to the light sentence was Coronado’s vehement
denunciation of both violence and the animal rights movement at his pre-sentencing
hearing. Once he was sentenced, however, Coronado simply ignored his previous
renunciation of violence and regularly wrote articles from prison justifying
and encouraging acts of destruction against research labs and other facilities.
Renunciation is a poor substitute for incarceration.
Violence from the animal rights
community is likely to increase in the coming years. After some initial
success in gaining public acceptance in the 1980s, the movement experienced
something of a backlash in the 1990s. Today influential members of even
relatively mainstream groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals defend illegal actions as the only way the movement will be
able to change society.
With his clemency offer to convicted
terrorists, the president gave the violent side of the animal rights movement
notice that so long as they can’t be linked to murder their actions won’t
be considered “real” terrorism. American businesses and research
facilities may have to pay the price for Clinton’s soft spot for terrorists.
Tags: Terrorism