UC Davis Animal Researchers Threatened with Death
Bomb threats should be called what they are: Death threats. Animal researchers at UC Davis are being threatened. From the story:
Police at UC Davis are on high alert while they are investigating a threat made on a controversial Web site targeting two of the university's researchers.This should be condemned unequivocally by everyone, regardless of their beliefs about the use of animals in research. But the silence from most leaders of the animal rights movement continues to be deafening.
According to UC Davis spokesman Andy Fell, the "Revolutionary Cells Animal Liberation Brigade" posted on a Web site that they had sent mail bombs to the UC Davis researchers late Saturday. The researchers work at the California National Primate Research Center, which conducts tests on primates to try and benefit human and animal health. The center does studies on HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, asthma, autism and Alzheimer's disease.
Remember, letter bombs were the murder weapon of choice of the UNABOMBER. Such threats may or may not be empty, but they are terrorism.
Labels: Animal Rights. Terrorism.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 11:39 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Well, we should be finding out right sbout now whether they actually did send them.
Often they don't actually make good on the threats, Ianthe, but it's terrorism nonetheless. A year or two ago persons unknown published a statement that they had contaminated pomegranate juice because the juice company was doing nutritional testing on animals. The juice was recalled and tons of it destroyed, but no contaminated juice was ever found.
Also, AR's have sent dangerous materials (razor blades) to primate centers in the mail before, so that lends this particular threat some weight.
This illustrates why making threats, even idle ones, is not protected free speech. A threat like this MUST be taken seriously by the recipient, so the threat will have a material effect even if false.
(Not to mention that if/when they DO send something, innocent postal employees will likely be at more risk than the intended recipient.)
It would be nice if SOMETHING worked, though, and without its being able to be called terroristic.
Peaceful protest has worked. Few chimpanzees are used anymore in medical research due to public pressure. The Three Rs seek to reduce the number of animals used in research. Some products advertise that they are "cruelty free" and benefit therefrom.
Animal researchers are now forced to subtantially justify their experiments, and that is good.
So, we are moving toward the use of fewer animals. Actions such as this actually undermine the cause. And if a researcher is ever killed--which could happen--woe betide the consequences to the animal rights movement!
Which is why, even if one has no sympathy for researchers, I cannot understand why greater efforts are not made within the movement to stop this kind of thing.
The day that not even one non-human animal is used in research and all funding for it stops is the day when utilitarianism and the death culture can begin to be reversed.
Fewer, in some research, isn't enough, and there is much more now than even someone who favors animal research could justify. Researchers make their livings via grants for "studies" that can't be obtained without having the animals available, in an ambition-driven, competitive atmosphere of immaturity and self-interest. Ego, greed, careerism dominate there just as they do in the utilitarian atmosphere of hospitals today. What happens to the animals ends up happening to us too.
Animal rights people have so much to fight on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves that they don't have time to try to tell others in their movement what to do and how to do it. In addition, every movement, e.g. feminism, civil rights, etc. has its spectrum from radical to mainstream to conservative, using various tactics, in various arenas, and sometimes acts of civil disobedience have been what seem to have been an essential element of their progress.
I agree that there would be some backlash if a researcher were killed, and I'm certainly not advocating that anyone be killed or injured, but not sure that it would entirely set the movement back; nor do I think the researcher would be worth going to prison, or even getting a death sentence, over, and that's what would happen. But stopping the use of animals in laboratories would, and breaking into a laboratory, exposing to the public what goes on there, saving any animal that could be saved, disrupting things, etc. would be worth the prison term for such property, etc. crimes; worst downside there for the animal rights movement and the animals is that the person courageous enough to do it is unavailable for a while. There would not be "cruelty-free" products if certain things had not been exposed to the public that involved tactics the companies did not welcome. Not too long ago, someone in my city had to go to jail for breaking into the egg factory of the local supermarket empire and getting photographs; many non-animal-rights people applauded him and protested his incarceration. Progress happens in small steps, but every act that brings attention to the need for more humanity has an impact, and the overall task is gargantuan.
Utilitarianism and the death culture not correspond to the animal rights movement. They grew out of the same things that the animal rights movement is fighting. The intention of the animal rights movement is not to lower the status of humans or to raise that of animals; it's not about status at all. It's about humanity and not doing things that are illogical because they end up being harmful to humans as well. How often have we heard, "Nice to helpless animals, children, and old ladies"? Goes along with respect for the disabled as well. Mention one, the others are all implied as well. That's why human exceptionalism, at least in the form in which it can be effective in fighting the death culture, and animal rights are NOT at odds with one another.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home