PAMELA FERDIN (Animal Rights Activist): Excuse me, can I give you a leaflet about the torture and murder of primates going inside the laboratories of UCLA?
SAUL GONZALEZ: On a recent afternoon, a group of activists gathered outside the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to protest the use of animals in laboratory research at the school.
Ms. FERDIN: It’s immoral. It’s unethical and evil to take non-consenting animals and, against their will, do these horrific things.
GONZALEZ: These demonstrators are peaceful, but in the last few years more militant animal rights activists have waged a campaign of harassment and intimidation against UCLA scientists involved in animal experimentation, such as using primates to investigate methamphetamine and nicotine addiction. The activists’ tactics have ranged from publishing researchers’ home addresses on Web sites to leaving threatening telephone messages.
VOICE OF UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Quit working on animals. Quit torturing and abusing animals. We can cause more economic damage in one night than you can earn in a year.
GONZALEZ: UCLA faculty members even have had pipe bombs planted at their homes. These episodes have created a climate of fear among researchers on campus.
If these folks want to protest, conduct information campaigns, lobby legislatures, call into talk shows, etc., fine. That’s what participatory democracy is all about. But when they burn down facilities, destroy research, sabotage equipment, make threats, intimidate scientists and their families and so on, they’re nothing more than criminals and, possibly, terrorists and should be treated as such.
There have been several news articles of late on this subject. These people are extremists and its only a matter of time before they seriously hurt someone. I am all for legislating the strictest limits on the use of animals for medical and scientific experimentation that is consistent with legitimate and necessary research. But these people seem to be oblivious to the likely consequences of a complete ban on such experimentation. To wish animals were never used for for research is to wish medical science back into the early 19th century.
I for one do not wish to be bled the next time I come down with the flu.
ICXC NIKA
[url=http://ad-orientem.blogspot.com/]John[/url]
I am not in favor of cruelty towards animals. I have never researched it, but I suspect that there can be extremes in animal research. It is interesting that the article included details of car bombs but no details of what happens to the animals.
That said, I still must agree with those who refuse to put animal “rights” on the same level as human rights. I wonder what these same animal rights activists think about abortion of human babies. Does Dr. Singer think humans should be aborted? Isn’t abortion a worse crime than excesses in laboratory experiments with animals?
Not only does Peter Singer think that abortion is A-OK, #3, he thinks it’s okay to kill a “defective” infant that has been born.
[blockquote]Infanticide is the killing of babies and sometimes small children. This is a major goal of the third form of euthanasia. It involves killing infants who would never be able to live a functional life. Singer supports infanticide to a disturbing extent. To start he explains how the killing of infants does not hold the same merit as the killing of an adult. He rationalizes that since infants lack qualities like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness, which are some of the defining qualities of a human, that their lives are not as relevant. He also asserts that by euthanizing these children you could clear up the parent’s responsibilities , thus allowing them to have a normal, “happier ” child. Also, Singer makes a case for why the killing of an infant is no different than the abortion of a fetus. He states that no major cognitive change happens during childbirth to grant the infant any more of a claim at life than the fetus. [/blockquote]
[url=http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/274394/peter_singer_euthanasia.html?page=3&cat=9]LINK[/url]
It would be unfortunate to let the enormities of Peter Singer de-rail this thread, as he is not the only or only type of animal rights activist there is. How can anyone look at, for example, the photos in latest National Geographic of the drills (ape species) in West Africa whose hands so resemble ours, burning alive as their hair is singed off in the market? What happens to humanity when it allows itself to treat animals that way?
That is also not precisely the topic of this thread, I realize. It is useful to keep in mind that Peter Singer got his consciousness raised when working in an Australian abbatoir, as anyone might, and seems to have become ever more provocative (perhaps because it pays well and gives him a secure job?). None of that means that the treatment of animals in university labs is above reproach.
“Activist”. That would be like the very scholarly Cal Berkeley mathematician? The Unabomber? These folks are not “Activists”. The word is “Thug” or “Terrorist”.