Colin Blakemore
I can’t help wondering…was it really about the guinea pigs? Or was it mostly about being a Protester, an Activist, a Rebel. Was it more about tormenting people than about rescuing animals. I can’t help suspecting, just as I can’t help suspecting similar things about those four guys on July 7. Zealots are like that. That’s why zealots are mostly so horrible.
Some protests at Darley Oaks farm have been peaceful. But other activists launched a campaign of intimidation against the Halls, their family, staff and suppliers. Their tactics, denounced as mob rule by some in the medical research industry, included hate mail, malicious phone calls, fireworks, a paedophile smear campaign, paint stripper on cars and arson attacks. The protests appeared to culminate in the theft in October of the body of Gladys Hammond, mother-in-law of Christopher Hall from the churchyard in Yoxall.
That sounds to me like cruelty for the sake of it, not for the sake of a goal. Just like those shits who gather outside abortion clinics and torment women on their way in.
Colin Blakemore talked about animal rights and the opposition to it and public opinion on ‘The World Tonight’ last night. He talked to Jeremy about the same subjects in the interview in Jeremy’s book What Scientists Think.
Ninety-nine percent of physicians in the United States say that it is essential to use animals in medical research; and more than ninety-five percent of British physicians say the same thing. So whilst it is important to listen to maverick opinion, it is clear we shouldn’t put too much weight on it when one considers that the American Medical Association, the Royal Society, the British Medical Association, and the General Medical Council all state that animal experimentation is necessary.
He also talked both on ‘The World Tonight’ and in the interview about what a huge majority – 90% – of public opinion agrees that animal research is necessary, which is a large shift in opinion from what it had been.
The support from the media, in particular, was quite extraordinary and a big surprise; virtually the entire spectrum made strong statements about the importance of animal experimentation. So the debate served a useful purpose; it produced a kind of national solidarity, which was much needed. This is also reflected in public opinion. The latest opinion poll shows ninety percent of the population in support of animal research. It is significant that there is no other major issue where you get this kind of consensus; we still treat the issue of animal research as if it is highly controversial, as if the public haven’t made up their mind; but they have made up their mind.’
But, the interviewer pointed out, the opinion poll Blakemore is referring to phrased its questions in a particular way (as opinion polls do). ‘For example, one question asked whether people could accept animal research for medical purposes, where there was no other alternative. But, of course, it is precisely the claim of the animal rights lobby that there are alternatives to animal research.’
‘Well, if there are, let’s see them delivered by those people who claim that there are,’ Blakemore responds, when I put this to him…’If there are alternatives, let’s see them. We want them. I don’t know of a single person who uses animals in their research who wouldn’t rather use an alternative.’
The whole interview is interesting. They all are. The Susan Greenfield one is my favourite, but they all are.
Unfortunately public opinion is very easy to manipulate on this issue, and highly hypocritical too. The animal rights protestors like to frame the debate in terms of ‘animal torture’, because this gets a good negative response from the public, but lets face it, it’s not the rats and mice people are worried about but the fluffy rabbits and cute monkeys. You don’t see the meat industry getting much flack.
The scary thing is that within their little circles the protestors really believe that animal research produces no benefits – how convenient is that? – you think animal research is cruel, so should stop, but oh no! What about the benefits? Ah, there are no benefits, sorted. No conflict there then. It really makes my blood boil listening to them because they are so clueless about medical research, yet so damn convinced they’re right, trotting out silly arguments from evolution and suchlike, that just make them look stupid. And they’re so shrill you can’t explain to them how it is of benefit because they don’t want to hear. It’s enough to make me want to pick up a shovel and go help out building the Oxford animal research centre.
I also love the paedophile stuff, the public obviously aren’t sufficiently bothered by people that raise animals for research if you have to daub ‘paedophile’ on their car to have a go at them.
Ophelia writes:
>I can’t help wondering…was it really about the guinea pigs? Or was it mostly about being a Protester, an Activist, a Rebel. Was it more about tormenting people than about rescuing animals. I can’t help suspecting, just as I can’t help suspecting similar things about those four guys on July 7. Zealots are like that. That’s why zealots are mostly so horrible.< I’m not entirely with Ophelia on this. I think these people probably got involved in the animal rights movement after reading/hearing of the suffering of animals in medical research (and in some cases having been shown undercover films from medical laboratories, most, if not all, from elsewhere in the world). That is, there’s probably genuine compassion for animals at the root of their feelings. The next step would be involvement in a *movement*, with the sense of purpose that gives. Then the realization that demonstrations, leafleting, letters to newspapers, etc, don’t have much practical effect, i.e., they don’t get what they want. These people are absolutely, one hundred percent, convinced they are right, and “they” (the powers that be) don’t take any notice. So what’s the use of ordinary protest, only more “active” methods will make people sit up and take notice, not to mention frighten and intimidate the people confronted and attacked. What we’re dealing with is a propensity for fanaticism, but that doesn’t mean they don’t *genuinely* feel concern for animal suffering (though of course, this involves belief in their own vastly inflated propaganda). So what I’m saying, both with regard to animal rights “activists” and young Muslimist terrorists, is that I don’t think it’s particularly valuable to downplay the part played by their conscious concerns (albeit highly exaggerated and largely paranoid respectively) and look for the “real” psychological motivation. Both come into the picture, their perceived grievances, brought to fever pitch by people they come into contact with, and their personal psychological propensities.
Before people start thinking that I desecrate graves in my spare time, I think that sort of behavior is disgusting. Having said that, I don’t think that the articles fairly represent the issues.
I live in Cape Town, so I don’t know what the real crazy’s think, but I’ve never met anyone who denies that animal research has benefits, the issue is how much suffering is caused to how many animals, and what are the benefits. The articles don’t really say, but given the horrible stories that one hears about, some info would be good. Some research on severely brain-damaged humans may also reap benefits, but the public wouldn’t stand for it, many animals’ rights activists find this confusing. The articles assume that animals are there for us to use and this begs the question.
Also, among my hippie vegetarian friends the meat industry is our principal concern, because this affects so many more animals. So I would suggest that many of the protesters are concerned with the meat industry and are perhaps less hypocritical than they first appear.
The fact that such a large majority of people don’t have a problem with eating meat or animal testing isn’t an argument against animal rights activists, and shouldn’t be so gleefully reported as though it is. At the risk of irritating with obvious clichés, minorities’ rights need protecting. Gays rights need protecting even if a majority doesn’t agree. So the issue is what rights do animals have. This isn’t addressed, it is only pointed out that the research is legal, which none of the activists dispute.
Here is a link that I found on B&W,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1272372,00.html
As Peter Singer says, the outcome of these events is unlikely to be positive for either side.
“I live in Cape Town, so I don’t know what the real crazy’s think, but I’ve never met anyone who denies that animal research has benefits, the issue is how much suffering is caused to how many animals, and what are the benefits.”
Well in the UK the majority of antivivisection groups, if not all of them, believe that animal research has no medical benefit. They will name check thalidomide at any opportunity (which is somewhat ironic since it was the thalidomide tragedy that lead to routine teratogenicity testing in animals). They also claim that somehow magical computer simulations can now replace animal experiments, god knows how. The so called ‘alternatives’ are a pipe dream for basic research in most cases, they could be developed for specific forms of toxicity testing on the other hand, but this is a concern of industry, not academic research.
“The articles don’t really say, but given the horrible stories that one hears about, some info would be good.”
Almost everything we know about the functioning of the human body comes from research in living animals – that good enough for you? I research human disease, on humans, but without the animal research into basic physiology all I’d have would be lumps of meat that I wouldn’t knwo what to do with.
Most animal research is done on dead animals (i.e. bought and then killed humanely). The stuff the oublic really don’t like is the small amount on primates. This is mostly brain research. A common example is work they did coming up with deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease. Briefly, there is an animal model of PD, caused by giving a drug that kills dopaminergic brain cells in a manner analogous to PD. The animal doesn’t exactly love having Parkinsonian symptoms but is a lot less distressed than most people would think for the obvious reason that animals don’t sit about engaging in existential mallaise, but rather try and find stuff to eat or shag (or shit on in the case of primates). So what they found out was that putting brain stimulators in certain parts of the brain helped to alleviate symptoms of this syndrome in the monkey. Again, experimental brain surgery sounds horrible, but I’ve done it to a few animals myself, and they’re up and around as if nothing has happened within a few hours (because they don’t know you’re going to do it, don’t know what you’ve done, and can’t tell if anything is different). Now this technique is becoming more and more common for relieving intractible Parkinsonian symptoms.
“Some research on severely brain-damaged humans may also reap benefits, but the public wouldn’t stand for it, many animals’ rights activists find this confusing. The articles assume that animals are there for us to use and this begs the question.”
Well most people believe that animals really are here for our use, they also believe that severely brain damaged humans are not morally equivalent to animals – the fundamental weakness of Singer’s argument. The antivivisection groups have to push the line about research being of no benefit because they know that when faced with a them or us question most people will choose animal suffering over human.
“Also, among my hippie vegetarian friends the meat industry is our principal concern, because this affects so many more animals. So I would suggest that many of the protesters are concerned with the meat industry and are perhaps less hypocritical than they first appear.”
Of course many of them are concerned with the meat industry, but they will not concentrate their high profile campaigns on it because they know they public will not back them – people like very cheap meat and don’t want to have to think about where it comes from.
“At the risk of irritating with obvious clichés, minorities’ rights need protecting.”
Animals do not have rights, nor are they in any comprehensible sense a minority. They are, however, worthy of ethical concern, which is the origin of the UK’s animal research legislation, the tightest in the world, and much stricter than what a pet owner or a slaughter house can get away with.
“So the issue is what rights do animals have. This isn’t addressed, it is only pointed out that the research is legal, which none of the activists dispute.”
But note that they are not trying to change the law, they are trying to intimidate the animal researchers and associated industries. They are doing this because they know they would lose the public debate if they sought to change the law.
Love this line from Singer:
“But if, on the other hand, we think Darwin was right, and we are all here because of an unplanned process of evolution, there is no reason to assume that human interests should always take precedence over the interests of non-human animals.”
An exactly analogous extension of this reasoning is that animals deserve no special precedence over rocks. So maybe there’s a big obvious flaw in the argument, hmm, what could it be?
Stuart writes:
>I’ve never met anyone who denies that animal research has benefits, the issue is how much suffering is caused to how many animals, and what are the benefits.< I’ve heard numerous interviews with animal rights supporters, and Radio 5 phone-in programmes on the subject, and almost all of them deny that animal research has any benefits – generally on the grounds that results from animals cannot be transferred to humans. >The articles assume that animals are there for us to use and this begs the question.< I think this is expressed tendentiously. Researchers I have heard say that they only use animals with great reluctance, and would dispense with this kind of research if it were at all possible, e.g., by computer simulation. >Also, among my hippie vegetarian friends the meat industry is our principal concern, because this affects so many more animals. So I would suggest that many of the protesters are concerned with the meat industry and are perhaps less hypocritical than they first appear.< No doubt if questioned many (probably all) animal rights people would express concern about the meat industry, but I can’t recall this coming up when the issue under discussion is laboratory research on animals, so I doubt it’s the *principle* concern among the animal rights activists. After all, they don’t seem to run campaigns targeting abattoirs, at least, not to the degree they target anyone whose work is directly or indirectly related to laboratory research on animals.
Allen, my favourite case of animal rights activity was when they freed all the animals and stole the equipment from an academic group researching ways to improve the welfare of animals in mink farms.
“Well in the UK the majority of antivivisection groups, if not all of them, believe that animal research has no medical benefit”
Well, they are wrong.
“Animals do not have rights”
Animal rights activists believe they do. So this is the part that is in dispute.
“Well most people believe that animals really are here for our use”
Yeah, but again, animal rights activists think that most people are wrong.
“people like very cheap meat and don’t want to have to think about where it comes from.”
Again, nobody disputes that people don’t generally care about killing animals. I agree that this often leads to hypocrisy when people react violently to faily mild forms of testing.
“They also believe that severely brain damaged humans are not morally equivalent to animals”
This is more because of how WE feel bout it emotionally. Just like people often feel the same about blacks and Jews, it don’t make it right. I don’t think this is a weakness in his argument.
“Nor are they in any comprehensible sense a minority”
There are more women than men, but women are still discriminated against, that was kind of what I meant.
“But note that they are not trying to change the law”
You are right, everybody knows attempts to change the law would be futile (hopefully not always) which is why people protest. As I said, I don’t agree with the tactics used. In South Africa during apartheid, do you think any attempt by me (a non lawyer) to change a law would have been successful?
“An exactly analogous extension of this reasoning is that animals deserve no special precedence over rocks”
Umm… most people I know wouldn’t eat dolphin, chimp, gorilla… this is not just because you cant find them in the grocery store and would be expensive. They are morally opposed to it, that’s where they draw the line. Others draw the line further down the food chain. If you think that animals have rights you are not committed to the idea that Einstein and the tick that I pulled off my dog the other day have the same moral status. Just like speed limits, the absence of a really principled place to draw the line doesn’t mean we should have no speed limit or ban cars. The reason that humans have a greater moral value than animals is because of the characteristics that make us persons. Most humans are persons, but some lose their personhood and can even lose their right to life. Chimps display some characteristics of persons, cats less so, and so on. So Singer is not committed to the idea that we are morally equivalent to rocks.
Maybe I am not a good spokes person for the animal rights movement, I am probably not extreme enough, even for many of the peaceful protesters. I don’t have issues with the very idea of animal testing, I have no doubt that we should do SOME research on animals, but that wasn’t really my point, my point is that the articles were assuming what animal rights activists deny. That is begging the question.
“so I doubt it’s the *principle* concern among the animal rights activists”
I didn’t say it was, just MY friends. Just trying to deflect the charge of hypocrisy. But since I don’ share many of the views of the protesters maybe i should just shut up.
“so I doubt it’s the *principle* concern among the animal rights activists”
I didn’t say it was, just MY friends. Just trying to deflect the charge of hypocrisy. But since I don’ share many of the views of the protesters maybe i should just shut up.
“So Singer is not committed to the idea that we are morally equivalent to rocks.”
He may not be (and in fact isn’t) but his argument in that piece was:
“But if, on the other hand, we think Darwin was right, and we are all here because of an unplanned process of evolution, there is no reason to assume that human interests should always take precedence over the interests of non-human animals.”
The reason that it can be extended to rocks is that it implies that because we all evolved there are no morally relevant differences between different evolved organisms. If you accept that evolution -can- lead to morally relevant differences then the argument fails. You say that “Just like speed limits, the absence of a really principled place to draw the line doesn’t mean we should have no speed limit or ban cars.”, but drawing lines is exactly what he is arguing against – he wants to say that you cannot draw a line. If you can draw a line we are arguing about whether or not it is right to draw the line between humans and other animals, or whether it should be in a different place, but if you concede that, then ‘speciesim’ is a nonsense, you have already accepted that some species are more deserving of moral concern than others, you just haven’t specified which.
Peter Singer’s concern that extreme activism like this will cause damage to the animal rights movement is correct. Already it has. Already, people focus on the ignorance, arrogance, violence, etc. of the activists, when the important issue that needs debate and attention is the suffering and rights of animals. It seems that some people have closed their minds to this debate.
Yes, some activists will claim that there are no benefits of animal testing, while scientists will claim that it is benefitial and justifiable to test on animals. Yet a moderate, rational, and concerned thinker would admit that there are possibly and probably two (or many) sides to any argument. We need to be honest when we address issues and face all facets, admitting to ourselves that they exist even though it makes us uncomfortable.
I realise that most people would choose animal suffering over human and other people’s suffering over their own. We all protect our own. However, ideally society through the law, should look to protect people’s (and animals’?) rights objectively based on ethical principles and beyond personal interest.
Animals are seen to be morally inferior, yet the most terrible, large-scale acts of atrocity have been committed by humans.
As Stuart said, just because there is a majority view (or cultural practice), that does not mean it is correct – end of debate! For instance, most of the world for centuries of human history agreed upon the inferiority of women and their subjugation to patriarchy. This was so much taken for granted that even women believed and propogated these ideas. Yet these ideas have been challenged and though they were (and still are) met with hostility the women’s movement has made significant positive changes in the last 100 years. To say that “Animals do not have rights” without giving arguments is to assert something as fact which is probably based on personal feeling. This assumtion like all assumptions should be challenged. I thought that was what Butterflies and Wheels was all about.
Animals need to be protected because like children, and oppressed people, they have little control over their lives. Anyone who has pets and pays attention to them must be aware of their individual personalities, preferences and ways of expressing themselves. And though they do not think about existential issues, neither do many humans. Many humans wish only to survive, be comfortable, have things, food, fun, sex, companionship. These are all pretty basic things that I think we share with many animals.
But I think the important thing here is, though we should not condone the intimidation tactics of activists, we should not loose sight of the issues surrounding animal treatment and their rights. We should not imagine that all people who are concerned about animals’ wellbeings are irrational people who would prefer to throw a brick through someone’s window rather than have positive debate and progress in this arena. In fact many people who are concerned about animals are scientists themselves, like me.
“You are right, everybody knows attempts to change the law would be futile (hopefully not always) which is why people protest. As I said, I don’t agree with the tactics used. In South Africa during apartheid, do you think any attempt by me (a non lawyer) to change a law would have been successful?”.
That is a very tendentious comparison. In what way are the situations comparable? The reason the law could not be changed in the UK is that most people agree with the status quo. The reason the law could not be changed in South Africa was that the majority were denied a vote. Now you could say that animals are being denied a vote here, but I’m not sure how they’d exercise it. If all you are saying is that, if you believe in something strongly enough, then you will pursue all means necessary, I don’t think your analogy was helpful.
“my point is that the articles were assuming what animal rights activists deny. That is begging the question.”
But the articles don’t all assume that. The article linked in the N&C post takes a one side say this, the other side say that approach, e.g.
“a decision which will hearten protesters and depress scientists who believe there is no alternative to using animals in medical research.” and “…John Holmes, spokesman for the Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs campaign,…said…”If you are a budding activist and you disagree with animals being incarcerated, being used to test cosmetics and weapons, you may, as a sentient human being, think ‘I am sick of this and I am going to chuck a brick through a window.’ I can’t justify it but I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand it.”
It essentially begs the question on both sides by allowing their assumptions to go unchallenged.
>>”They also believe that severely brain damaged humans are not morally equivalent to animals”
“This is more because of how WE feel bout it emotionally. Just like people often feel the same about blacks and Jews, it don’t make it right. I don’t think this is a weakness in his argument.”
Not quite. Singer likes to pretend that there are (a) lots of brain damaged humans of a level of sentience not unlike monkeys, dogs etc. (note that Great Apes already have additional protection) and (b) the reason we don’t experiment on these humans is that we are speciesist in our concern for the sanctity of a human body that can’t suffer over an animal that can.
He is wrong for a variety of reasons. First of all, there are vey few humans of animal levels of awareness, people with brain damage or learning disabilities are almost without exception supremely more aware than animals. There are some humans in persistent vegitative states, or very very low functioning (quasi-vegitative states). Now why don’t we experiment on them? Because we don’t know how much they can feel, they seem bad, but they are damaged humans, it is impossible to know how much function they retain, because we are concerned about what other humans will think, do or feel – family (we can’t even get at the dead bodies), but also the dehumanising effects of experimenting on other humans, and finally because our society is founded upon rights and roles in society that actually transcend personhood and even life – we are not allowed to say simply that because someone is low functioning they lose these rights because even their death allows their wishes to retain their force. And I guess the corollary is that brain damaged people are so rare and heterogeneous they wouldn’t be of much use.
PM
He is saying that species isn’t the relevant moral criteria. In this sense, if we find a tapeworm that is highly intelligent has great capacity to suffer, its moral status changes, regardless of the fact that it is a tapeworm. We assume that no tapeworm have those characteristics and act accordingly. Anyway species is not the relevant point. We can draw lines, but not purely based on species membership. In this sense the fact that within species animals tend to have similar abilities and characteristics helps to determine the moral significance of the individual animal.
stuart, I totally agree with Singer that species membership per se is not the relevant moral category, but at the end of the day it comes down to the same thing. Speciesim is only a valid charge if there are no relevant moral differences between the members of species, and there are. Singer is trying to scrabble around the boundaries where the species-property/individual-property mapping breaks down to show that we in fact only look at the species membership for the moral consideration. I think he is wrong, because most of the time his examples don’t work, and in the few cases where they do there are additional concerns over and above the question of suffering that have to be taken into account. That we are not simply looking at species can be seen from the way we harvest organs from brain dead humans.
“That is a very tendentious comparison”
well… my point was things were wrong and I (as a white voter) couldnt change anything. maybe by various (possibly illegal) protests i could have changed things (im 24 so i actually couldnt have really).
“The reason the law could not be changed in South Africa was that the majority were denied a vote”
laws were changed before blacks could vote.
“The reason the law could not be changed in the UK is that most people agree with the status quo”
still dont make it right. my point is that sometimes most people agree with the status quo
when they shouldnt.
“It essentially begs the question on both sides by allowing their assumptions to go unchallenged”
i agree, question begging happens on both sides, its that same in the abortion debate, and many others.
“He is wrong for a variety of reasons. First of all, there are vey few humans of animal levels of awareness”
this is getting to the heart of this issue where the debate should really be. i’m no expert.
“but also the dehumanising effects of experimenting on other humans”
this still displays a speciecist attitude. the point of the comparison is not to start chopping up defective humans, but to treat animals with the respect appropriate to their abilities.
I had a very brief relationship with an activist who had worked for a short while in a research lab, and who had leaked aspects of the interior layout to some radical anti-vivisection ALF pals of hers who later on liberated several thousand lab mice… to the wild. She was, frankly, poorly educated, mentally disturbed (I soon found out), having been abused as a teenager, angry, and smoked too much pot for her critical faculties to work. After leaving school at fifteen she had trained in animal husbandry and was used to working for a pittance in some pretty dire conditions, including a commercial kennels, where the dogs were malnourished. She was miserable, and felt animals to be more ‘honest’ than people; she frequently asserted this. An understandible position for an abused vulnerable young adult to take. She also believed just about any foolhardy conspiracy theory you put in front of her, but imprtantly, most of her pals were of this type of mental wreckage. The only capitalist edifice they could readily recognise was the one with PUPPY BELSEN writ large in blood above its gates. They had a common cause though; unity even. The same crowd that camped in filth outside Huntingdon Research labs as it was known at the time, throwing rocks and paintstripper at workers’ cars; the same crowd who wanted the owners dead, and who took baseball bats to them outside their homes. Let’s get the picture straight about these useless tossers – I hope this admittedly anecdotal evidence helps do this.
PM- you mentioned the liberated mink in Oxfordshire – it was worse than that; they were liberated into a river the ecosystem of which contained no known predator. Environmentalists (that is people with an actual knowledge of science, rather than dumb, reflexive pillocks on the ALF) were outraged that such a criminally violent and potentially lethal introduction of an alien species to such a delicate habitat could have occurred.
The ALF people are led by sophists, more intelligent than the dimwit foot-soldiers and gullible misfits, but they certainly still have no background in science. They get plenty of airtime though. It’s a free country ! Unless, that is, you want to improve the lot of the human species through reasoned enquiry and ethically acceptable investigation.
“this still displays a speciecist attitude. the point of the comparison is not to start chopping up defective humans, but to treat animals with the respect appropriate to their abilities.”
Does not. I’m worried about effects on fully competent humans (e.g. the effects of dehumanising experimenters) because they are ultimately deserving of more ethical concern because of their abilities. I’m doing exactly what Singer wants, its just that I have answered his challenge in a different way to how he would have wanted me to. He says to be consistent we should treat brain damaged humans like animals, or animals should be treated like brain damaged humans, I pick the former, he wants the latter. you can’t have your cake and eat it, you want me to worry about suffering and capacities, and I have, and I’ve made my decision, and it is ethically consistent, it is “respect appropriate to their abilities” it’s just not what you would want.
Nick S, mink are bastard little animals (though they do look cute) and seem to outcompete native predators anywhere in the UK. When they liberated them in the New Forest, they came through towns en mass, nice.
On the issue of animal liberation silliness, I’m still amused by the big campaign against the new Oxford animal research lab – “Hell No! We don’t believe in spanking new and immensely superior housing for animals that will just be kept and experimented on in worse conditions elsewhere in the University”
TLT writes:
>Animals are seen to be morally inferior< I think “morally inferior” is the wrong expression here. Since animals cannot conceptualize right and wrong, morality doesn’t apply to animal behaviour. So it is not the case that animals are seen to be morally inferior. >We should not imagine that all people who are concerned about animals’ wellbeings are irrational people who would prefer to throw a brick through someone’s window rather than have positive debate and progress in this arena. In fact many people who are concerned about animals are scientists themselves, like me.< As are, from the evidence of hearing their views, the great majority of scientists working in animal research laboratories. A different point. From the article linked by Ophelia: “…John Holmes, spokesman for the Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs campaign,…said…”If you are a budding activist and you disagree with animals being incarcerated, being used to test cosmetics and weapons, you may, as a sentient human being, think ‘I am sick of this and I am going to chuck a brick through a window.’ I can’t justify it but I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand it.” “being used to test cosmetics and weapons”? Coming from a non-violent animal rights campaigner this gives some idea of the emotive flavour of their campaigning. The use of animals for testing cosmetics in the UK has been banned since the mid-1990s. As for animals used to test weapons, I have no knowledge of that, though I suspect that if this were the case we would have heard more about it. Note that Holmes omits to mention here animals used for research into disease, not because he’s not against it, but his mindset is always to push the most emotive (even when erroneous) part of their message.
“The scientific director of Europeans for Medical Progress today spoke strongly against the building of the proposed primate experimentation lab in Oxford. The lab’s construction has so far been halted for just over a year by popular protest.
According to Dr Jarrod Bailey, scientific director of Europeans for Medical Progress, 82% of GPs believe that animal experiments produce medically misleading results. Europeans for Medical Progress is an independent organisation of scientists and medical professionals that has prepared a petition calling for an independent investigation into the scientific merits of animal-based medical research.
“As someone who has spent years looking for a scientific justification behind animal experimentation, I think ‘fraud’ is the right word,” Dr Bailey announced. He stated that although animal research has been “involved” in every major medical advance (as the pharmaceutical industry claims), its involvement has been incidental at best – and often a serious setback to scientific advances.
“All progress on AIDS has been despite animal experiments, which have produced misleading results,” he said. He also said that research into cancer, stroke, multiple sclerosis, parkinson’s disease and other serious illnesses has been distracted and delayed by scientifically invalid and ultimately misleading results from research using animals to model human responses. Even the notoriously conservative US Food and Drug Administration describes animal experimentation as “using 20th century technology for 21st century problems”.
Dr Bailey said that using animal experimentation causes deaths through the release of drugs incorrectly found to be safe in animal trials. Adverse drug reactions is the fourth largest single cause of death in the UK.”
And see pics: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2005/07/319879.html
And an account of their rally:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/07/319859.html
PM. “We don’t believe in spanking new and immensely superior housing for animals that will just be kept and experimented on in worse conditions elsewhere in the University”
Er quite – not exactly joined up thinking is it?
Allen
“As for animals used to test weapons, I have no knowledge of that, though I suspect that if this were the case we would have heard more about it.”
Well sod it. How about starting with firing highly trained suicide-mink out of canons – straight at the ALF protesters ?
Wow – lively discussion. So lively that I haven’t read it yet. But I want to mention that it occurred to me (belatedly) that (as Allen hints) I left out an important aspect of the whole subject, which is how research animals (and food animals) are raised. Accepting a (perceived) necessity of using animals for medical research is one thing, and raising them in horrible conditions is another. Perhaps it’s economically impossible to raise them in livable conditions – perhaps there is no profit unless they are squeezed into horrible boxes – but if so, that raises ethical issues. So…I need to add that. Don’t want to give an incomplete account.
PM cites Dr Jarrod Bailey, scientific director of Europeans for Medical Progress as saying “that using animal experimentation causes deaths through the release of drugs incorrectly found to be safe in animal trials. Adverse drug reactions is the fourth largest single cause of death in the UK.”
As they read here, Dr Bailey’s comments are misleading. The testing of drugs on animals is only the first stage. They cannot be released for public use until studies are undertaken on humans.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that the pharmacological testing on humans is always foolproof, but this would be the case regardless of whether or not the drugs were tested on animals beforehand.
Quality,
Bailey et al 2002 (J Clin Endocrinol Metab 87(4):1717-28):
“Western blotting of nonpregnant, pregnant nonlaboring, and spontaneous laboring tissues with the anti-CREB/anti-CREM antibody and the ATF-2 antibody (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc., Santa Cruz, CA)…”
Hmm, now I wonder how antibodies are made, surely they aren’t made by injecting poor ickle bunny wabbits and mouseys with icky stuff to provoke an immune reaction are they? Lets hope they weren’t polyclonal or ascites!
“I had a very brief relationship with an activist… She was, frankly, poorly educated, mentally disturbed (I soon found out), having been abused as a teenager, angry, and smoked too much pot for her critical faculties to work.”
Sounds like Nick and I know the same woman. Had she done a lot of meth, too?
Karl – she wrote the formula…