"PETA a Cult" And Other Singer Monkey Research Fallout
I thought it was pretty significant that Peter Singer endorsed research on monkeys, and very invasive research at that--brain experiments. But the American media ignored the story, so I decided to kick up a little dust.
I was quite impressed with Gary Francione, who I interviewed by e-mail. He is a man of principle, integrity, and courage, calling PETA a "cult" and Singer "the leader of the cult." (I have heard stories!) Others who left the animal rights movement have called PETA a cult, but Francione is as solid an animal rightist as it gets, and for him to denigrate PETA in this way, to me, is significant.
My analysis points to the animal rights movement fracturing over ideology and tactics, and Singer's apostasy, I think, will further that process. Here's my conclusion:"...given Singer's prominence, his pro-research statement will surely undermine the general liberationist meme that animal experimentation is useless, as well as cruel, and hence an equivalent evil to the research conducted by Mengele in the concentration camps. Better still, his apostasy should exacerbate the movement's ongoing splintering, a development most earnestly to be wished. After all, the less effective animal-rights/liberation advocacy is, the less likely we will ever perceive human beings as merely another animal in the forest.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:42 AM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
The following letter was circulating on the Internet before Smith's story in NR appeared (and do doubt Smith could have obtained a copy from Singer himself, as other interested people have). The letter shows that the scope of Singer's "endorsement" is exaggeratted in Smith's piece.
The Editor:
Your story “Animal Guru Gives Tests His Blessing“ (Observer, 26 Nov.) suggests that my remarks in the BBC2 documentary Monkeys, Rats and Me: Animal Testing represent a change in my position on animal testing. That impression needs to be corrected.
Neither in my 1975 book, Animal Liberation,nor anywhere else have I ever said that no experiments on animals could ever be justifiable. My position has always been that whether an act is right or wrong depends on its consequences. I do insist, however, that the interests of animals count among those consequences and that we cannot justify speciesism, which I define as giving less weight to the interests of nonhuman animals than we give to the similar interests of human beings.
In our on-camera discussion, Professor Aziz claimed that experiments he had performed on a small number of monkeys had yielded major benefits for tens of thousands of people suffering from Parkinson’s disease. I replied that if the facts were indeed as he asserted and there was no other way in which the benefits could have been achieved such research could be justifiable. Whether the facts are as Professor Aziz claims I shall leave for others to debate.
Professor Aziz is quoted as saying that my remarks are “an encouraging sign”. Before he gets too encouraged, he might consider that in Animal Liberation,I suggested that a test for whether a proposed experiment on animals is justifiable is whether the experimenter would be prepared to carry out the experiment on human beings at a similar mental level – say, those born with irreversible brain damage. If Professor Aziz is not prepared to say that he would think such experiments justifiable, his willingness to use animals is based on a prejudice against giving their interests the same weight as he gives to the interests of members of our own species.
Whether or not the occasional experiment on animals is defensible, I remain opposed to the institutional practice of using animals in research because, despite some improvements over the past 30 years, that practice still fails to give equal consideration to the interests of animals. For that reason, I oppose putting more resources into building new facilities for animal experimentation. Instead, these funds should go into clinical research involving consenting patients and into developing other methods of research that do not involve the harmful use of animals.
Sincerely,
Peter Singer
Text taken from: http://www.peta.org.uk/feat/feat-oxford_experimenters.asp#letter3
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