pg. 2--Perspective: The Animal Rights Movement
by Brenda Shoss
To subscribe to Kinship Circle Letters for Animals, email: subscribe@kinshipcircle.org

The AR voice is also heard in Congress and at the pols. Campaigns & Elections magazine rated last year's animal-protection measures the leading referendum themes nationwide, in front of new drug programs, school vouchers, health-care improvements and others.

The 106th U.S. Congress assessed a record-breaking 15 pro-animal bills. Among those passed, the Dog and Cat Fur Ban outlaws the transport and sale of dog and cat fur products. Profit from "crush videos," (in which high-heeled women pulverize kittens, hamsters, chicks and turtles) is illegal. The Great Ape Conservation Act assures grants to protect endangered chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans from habitat destruction and poaching. The CHIMP Act institutes sanctuaries for retired research chimpanzees languishing in federally funded laboratories. Overall it was a good year for manatees, military dogs, police horses, sharks, mink, double-crested cormorants, stranded marine mammals and pets-on-planes-all of whom gained immunity from commercial exploits, abuse or hunting.

To achieve legislative and social reform, most activists are armed with little more than pens, computers, pamphlets and big mouths. The media trigger anxiety when they inflate isolated acts of animal rights violence. There are always extremists within any coalition. To malign a primarily peaceful movement for its few dissidents is no different than condemning all law enforcers for the corrupt actions of a few.

In "The Evil of Animal Rights," Epstein and Brook call SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) a terrorist-affiliated group who want to destroy the medical testing industry. But they fail to mention that Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a mismanaged laboratory ejected from the New York Stock Exchange, is responsible for an annual 180,000 animal deaths. In one HLS poisoning experiment, workers punched beagle puppies and flung them against walls. In another presumably post-mortem dissection, a technician sliced open the chest of a convulsing monkey. Last year, an investigation exposed HLS employees who were regularly intoxicated or stoned.

Such tests are non-essential "for the development of life-saving drugs and medical problems," as the authors assert. They go on to estimate that "animal rights terrorists commit more than 1,000 crimes annually," but do not substantiate their claim.

Traditionalists who cling to outdated ideologies give visionaries a forum for debate. When Epstein and Brook allege that tax-funded animal studies find cures for AIDS, cancer and other illnesses, one is compelled to ask, "How?" In fact, most advances come from modes that blend in vitro (test tube) technology with human tissues, computer systems, and population studies. Medical breakthroughs without animals include: Isolation of the AIDS virus, cholesterol's link to heart disease, cancer's tie with nutrition and smoking, the stroke connection with hypertension, and the discovery of penicillin, anti-depressants, and AZT for AIDS sufferers.

Pro-vivisectionists believe that animal tests are mandatory. Yet most overlook veteran researchers who have rejected the animal model altogether. "I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil," says Charles Mayo, founder of the Mayo Clinic.

In their zeal to define an entire philosophy as maniacal, the AR-haters have missed the point. Violence is violence-whether blood spills from a person, a deer, an otter or a hen. "The end of violence to animals and the end of violence to human beings must, in the final analysis, occur together as one event," writes Dr. Elliot Katz, president of In Defense of Animals (IDA).

MORE

About Kinship Circle | Mission | Donate | Kinship Circle Store | Animal Rights Ad Designs
Letter Library | Fact Sheets | Email List | Columns & Articles | Disaster Victims | Links | Home