There's been a spate recently of animal rights extremists setting things on fire and blowing things up when they don't like what's happening in universities and companies that are trying to save lives. There's a word for this: terrorism. Predictably, extremists get mad when you call them what they are, and in a previous post about an animal rights terrorist getting sentenced, a commenter crawled out of the woodwork and asked me whether these people really should be considered terrorists.
The answer is a clear and obvious yes. The FBI has recently upped the ante on such terrorist (Daniel San Diego), and it's about time.
Because I expect other woodwork-commenters to appear when my blog shows up on their Google news sites, I'll post just one rejection of the old activist canard that all the research can be done with computers now: no, it can't. I do drug research for a living, and if that were the case, we must just do animal research because we hate cute furry little critters, right? It would make research incredibly cheaper if we could just cut out all the animal testing, and let the chips fall where they may when we inject the treatment into a human for the first time. If drugs should go straight from labs into humans, tell you what - why don't you send me your email, and you can be the first to try them out for me. Don't everyone jump at once!
Let's be clear: these animal-rights terrorists are standing in the way not only of the free market to find cures to diseases, they're standing in the way of the right of all research institutions, including (especially) our nation's universities, to pursue scientific research that results in medical advancements.
Fortunately there are groups like Pro-Test, a pro-research, anti-terrorist organization, and this organization recently staged a support rally at UCLA. UCLA was recently the victim of such a terrorist attack (totally underreported by mainstream media) so a show of support for research and freedom of inquiry is especially needed there.
Support medicine, support democracy, support the free market: support animal research.
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2 comments:
Your problem is you use cute critters. I think you'll find the number of people opposed to 'cruelty' against a particular species is directly proportional to the cuteness of the species. Have you considered naked mole rats?
You're exactly right. Octopi may be smarter than rats but no one is worried about them if they're not furry with whiskers. And unless people are worth less morally than animals, the whole issue is a non-starter.
And in fact I have written about naked mole rats!
http://cognitionandevolution.blogspot.com/2009/03/naked-mole-rats-live-long-time.html
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