animal rights

[Marco Anglesio]

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Doug Henwood wrote:

> All you animal rights folks out there, every time I've seen a cat 
> devour a mouse - with evident glee - I've wondered why we should give 
> them any more consideration than they give each other.

If I might echo Gordon, it is because we can. 

If I might expand on that, it is because we should. To treat animals with
barbarism - to be crueller than we could be - demeans us, just as to treat
other human beings with barbarism demeans us. These offenses strike me as
being part and parcel of each other; as one might recall, one of the signs
of a budding psychopath is a history of animal abuse.

Historically, animal rights movements are tied to children's rights (in
the UK, the same MP was responsible for founding both). What is mildly
interesting is that animal rights came first. However, the same sentiment
is behind both, it seems; that those less powerful have, while not equal
rights to humans, rights of their own other than those priviledges given
or withdrawn by whim. It is a sentiment any worker could agree with, I
think.

I am by no means an animal rights advocate. When I was at Queen's, I
worked for the university security dept, albeit briefly, and one of our
many jobs was monitoring the "animal care" units in the biology,
psychology, and medical buildings. I studied psychology, where animals are
used extensively for experimentation. I see nothing wrong with any of
this. How it was done, perhaps.

The worst offenses against animal rights, those that advocates trot out on
demand, seem more like fishing expeditions for knowledge than good
research. So, it seems, do the worst offenses in the name of medicine
against human rights. It seems that we have as much to worry about in the
character of our researchers as the condition of our lab animals.

marco

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>         Marco Anglesio          |   There is no premature anti-fascism.  <
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