Simulposted with Thomas Paine’s Corner
by Gerald Hoffman & Camille Marino
When animal rights activists have published the names and contact information of individuals who torment, mutilate, and kill animals they have been accused of employing tactics of harassment and intimidation. But vivisectors currently have no rational basis to fear actual violence being directed at them or their families, since the animal rights movement has been amazingly restrained in its response to the atrocities that are committed daily against animals. It is clear that it is not violence but transparency that vivisectors have an interest in avoiding. To simply expose what they do to animals and to communicate it in plain language and vivid images is often enough to bring condemnation from much of the general public.
Daniel Vasella -- Head Office Novartis International AG CH-4002 Basel Switzerland Tel: +41 61 324 11 11 Fax: +41 61 324 80 01
Publishing names and contact information allows for communication; it allows for exactly the kind of “productive dialogue” that Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella recently has feigned support for. I say “feigned” because in the same statement that Vasella urged animal activists to engage in “productive dialogue” he also suggested that anyone who sent him critical emails was associated with criminal activity. Productive dialogue is difficult at best when attempts to initiate it are deemed criminal. Clearly, dialogue is not a sincere goal of Mr. Vasella. It’s common knowledge that vivisectors evade dialogue and have consistently refused to debate Dr. Jerry Vlasak, Dr. Steve Best, Dr. Ray Greek and countless others.
J. David Jentsch: Office phone: (310) 206-0718 / Office fax: (310) 206-5895 Office email: jentsch@psych.ucla.edu
Further evidence of how vivisectors despise transparency can be found in how they describe attempts by activists to obtain public records. Acquiring public records provides a window into the macabre world of the animal laboratory. Vivisectors have spoken out loudly against such tactics. Dario Ringach and David Jentsch recently described public records requests as “legal, but harassing”. That is, they acknowledge that there is nothing illegal about the tactics of activists, that activists pursuing such documents are acting within the law, but Ringach and Jentsch still feel harassed simply because what they do to animals is being shared with an audience more compassionate than their colleagues. Indeed, animal advocates can share this information with the very people who in most cases are funding the experiments via their taxes. This openness is perceived as a threat.
Unable to operate secretively, a certain number of vivisectors have opted to take a public stance and to purportedly defend themselves and their colleagues. P. Michael Conn and James V. Parker authored The Animal Research War as a way to characterize the vivisectors in this so-called war as victims. In addition, to high profile animal tormentors such as Conn, Parker, Ringach and Jentsch, a petition in favor of animal research has been circulated by pro-vivisection organizations and has thus far garnered over 10,000 signatories.
The public nature of this petition means that vivisectors and their supporters are now publishing their own names online; a tactic scoffed at when done by animal rights activists. Activists should not hesitate to take advantage of this petition and to use it as a directory. The petition is essentially a list of people who are without shame, who are willing to take a public stance in favor of the continued suffering and death of animals in laboratories. The signatories are people who not just support but who are actively advocating the continuation of violence toward animals.
The petition is both a directory of people whose minds need to be changed (and in many cases whose behavior needs to be changed) and is an open call to violence by vivisectors against nonhuman animals. While vivisectors present themselves as victims (perhaps because someone chalks their name on a sidewalk or calls them a “killer” after they do in fact kill); in truth they are the aggressors.
Please select as many names from the petition as you see fit and contact these individuals as soon as possible. Some common names may be difficult to trace to the particular individual but many names will not be difficult (particularly if they have listed educational credentials or academic titles with their name).
It is only just the someone who opts to take a public position in favor of violence toward animals receive some negative feedback from more compassionate individuals such as the many dedicated activists who read this blog. Anyone who openly advocated racism, sexism, or pedophilia would be thoroughly criticized…this is an appropriate response to those who advocate vivisection.
Do not hesitate to call the bluff of Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella when he claims to seek “productive dialogue” and begin contacting the names on this list.
View the full list of signatories to the petition here.
A few random names:
1) Gregory Lawson, DVM, PhD, DACLAM: See UC General Information and from the Campus Directory – Mailing Address: Gregory Lawson, UCLA DLAM, BOX 957372, 10833 Le Conte Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90095-7372 Email Address: glawson@mednet.ucla.edu Phone: (310) 794-0256 Fax: (310) 794-0285 Beeper: 310-206-8477×93395
2) Heida Maria Sigurdardottir
Graduate Student – Department of Neuroscience - Room 320, Sidney Frank Hall, Providence, RI 02912. Email: heida_sigurdardottir@brown.edu, Phone: (401) 477-4240 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/heidamaria?_fb_noscript=1
.
3) Jason (openly advocates the maniacal torture on innocent animals imprisoned in labs)
4) Bruce W. Kennedy, MS, RLATG, CMAR – California Biomedical Research Association: P.O. Box 19340, Sacramento, California 95819 Website: www.ca-biomed.org Phone: (916) 558-1515 Fax: (916) 558-1523
5) Duwayne Brayton. In the time-honored tradition of violent cowards everywhere, Duwayne hides in anonymity while spewing a relenless message of hatred and oppression against nonhuman animals: Animal Rights Extremists Are At It Again. Duwayne is a 33-year old social sycophant who plays with dirty diapers and fancies himself a thinker. NIO welcomes any credible information about this terrorist; his email address is: duwayne.brayton@gmail.com
.
Please sign & cross-post: Petition Florida to Incorporate a Humane Education Curriculum
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“Seriously, I am not trolling the subject. I just find it ironic that you are arguing against text that might as well be understood as in support of your views depending on how you define “inhumane and ethical”.”
Ah, but you ARE trolling. You’d just rather I pretended otherwise.
Once again, the petition in question claims that animal experimentation is justified because humans derive benefit from it.
No ARA will sign such a document, regardless of any claims of humane treatment.
And those claims carry no enforcement weight whatsoever. They’re meaningless, and you know it.
I’m generally in favor of species preservation, but not in a manner that serves some human interest. Given that humans are generally responsible for creating the conditions that lead to species endangerment, where there’s a legitimately altruistic end being served, fine.
The problem is that even here human interference tends to create more problems than it purports to solve.
As for flies and mosquitoes, you’re again attempting to justify your chosen behaviors based on the instinctual behaviors of nonhumans. You aren’t instinctually driven to hunt; you’re making a choice to do that, for your own entertainment.
…choice to experiment, sorry; I’ve got several discussions happening simultaneously, and the default position tends to fall back on “if other animals do x, I get to do x.”
No, you don’t.
“Once again, the petition in question claims that animal experimentation is justified because humans derive benefit from it. ”
No, it just claims that scientific progress HAS been made (past) because of animal research. That is a historical fact, tough luck.
“And those claims carry no enforcement weight whatsoever. They’re meaningless, and you know it. ”
So what? I don’t care about that… I ONLY care about the wording of the petition. Having done computational linguistics the lack of definition to state a clear intent with “humane and ethical” just outshines anything else this petition has.
The fact that two people have different opinions of what humane and ethical is (see this discussion) means that two different signatures carry different weight … and most likely NOT the intended weight of the people that wrote the petition.
“where there’s a legitimately altruistic end being served, fine”
Welcome to the gray zone … it’s a difficult place to live in.
“The problem is that even here human interference tends to create more problems than it purports to solve. ”
Thats a bleak look on the thought to be good work many people do. See, being human is being faulty… admitting my own faults is pivotal to my success in human society.
“You aren’t instinctually driven to hunt; you’re making a choice to do that, for your own entertainment.”
I do not consume food for my own entertainment, I do it for my survival. Just as you can survive exclusively on plants it has been shown that you can survive exclusively on meat. Somehow attributing choice as uber-evolutionary is just an illusion.
But whatever, I really don’t want to get into that debate because I know we don’t have the same view there and never will have. My take on this petition remains the same:
I could sign it viewing “humane and ethical” as equal to “leave animals alone” and be linguistically correct while someone else could have some other view … and be as linguistically correct reading the petition as I was.
THIS is my problem with the petition and THAT is also my problem with your criticism of the petition. You are effectively campaigning against a petition that could further your agenda just as it could any other animal research agenda. If you were to pick it up and lobby for “humane and ethical” as “leave them alone” … you would be more successful at what you are doing than you are now.
I know I am right about this, not because I “feel right” but because I can prove it. The proof lies as I’ve repeatedly tried to state; the definition of “humane and ethical” is open to interpretation … which results in an open ended petition that fails to deliver a specific message.
The irony is that A specific message within that open endedness is “leave animals alone” … therefore logically you are campaigning against your own agenda when you speak against the face value wording of the petition.
Yes, I do understand that the authors of the petition most likely did NOT INTEND this to be open for interpretation like this and their message was most likely supposed to be something else. However it isn’t… unless they add a definition of what they consider to be humane and ethical.
Please please, just read carefully what I am typing. How I am pointing out a flaw in the wording of the petition and the results of that error. That is my ONLY message, whatever else I have said can be left aside as a difference in opinions on a different matter. The intention for my comments here were PURELY to point out this logical error in the petition.
You’re playing meaningless semantic games, and you know it.
Once again, the petition in question claims that animal experimentation is justified because humans derive benefit from it.
No ARA will sign such a document, regardless of any claims of humane treatment.
Logic, I don’t quibble with your abstract interpretation of the linguistics. I’m pointing out that it simply doesn’t MATTER.
No one – except for perhaps you, and a few others – will even care that you’ve caught them in some abstruse logical flaw.
Read point 1. Just read it. Not with an eye toward finding the logical hole you’ve found, but as a layperson might.
What you’re missing is that even though a large number of the signatories of this petition may be scientists or folks with a relatively educated background, the petition *itself* is not targeted at a scientific audience.
That’s why it’s short and written in what turns out to be slightly clumsily phrased, but otherwise plain english.
The animal rights movement has been somewhat effective at shining a spotlight on some instances of fairly horrific abuse at HLS and other labs, and the vivisection industry has an image problem. This petition, and others like it, are a *marketing effort* aimed at the general public, as is UCLA Pro-Test *itself.*
They aren’t speaking to others in the scientific community when they do these things.
They’re speaking to the layperson, the general public.
Read it as if you were THAT person, instead of someone with a background in linguistics and formal logic.
“Read it as if you were THAT person, instead of someone with a background in linguistics and formal logic.”
Anyone reading into the linguistics must read the text as THAT person to ensure that the message is conveyed accurately.
The fact is that “humane and ethical” can and is understood differently by every reader. Sure there is a most common average understanding but within the various details of definition you will find conflicts.
What you must acknowledge, just as the authors of the petition, is that these details must be defined in presentation and criticism. Pointing at any one person in the signature list and condemning that persons definition might just be condemning your own. The simple possibility that this can be the case means that IT MATTERS. It is called hypocrisy.
You CAN criticize the authors of the petition, but NOT the signers – unless you have other sources that define their understanding of the petition.
I haven’t criticized anything but the petition itself, through any of this. I don’t especially care one way or the other about the intentions of the authors or the signatories; that’s a useless rabbit hole to dive down that will go nowhere at all.
No babble, you personally haven’t but the criticism of the petition has by “randomly” picking names from the signature list and digging up detailed contact information. So much for “leave (human) animals alone” eh?
But the whole point ISN’T to leave *human* animals alone. You’re trying to rest on yet another version of personal choice justification. The choice to harm and kill animals for our purposes is not ethically justifiable. We want that to stop.
So we’re advocating and using various forms of activism to try and wake up the general population.
It’s not about changing the minds of Pro-Test. They’re immaterial, save as a means to an end. It’s about opening the eyes of the general public.
We *can* change human behavior, and get humans to make more ethical choices.
We say “leave the (nonhuman) animals alone” because they *don’t* have a choice, in this. They don’t consent to what we’re doing to them. Humans *do* have a choice.
“We say “leave the (nonhuman) animals alone” because they *don’t* have a choice, in this. They don’t consent to what we’re doing to them. Humans *do* have a choice.”
You might call it inconsequential … but the people that got their detailed contact information DON’T have a choice about that. “Means to an end” eh?
That’s absurd!
If they didn’t CHOOSE to actively advocate violence, their names would not be on a directory of abusers.
Logic, look: humans know better. Other animals may or may not make ethical considerations. Absent a useful means of communicating with them, it’s pointless to speculate.
But humans know better.
We can make ethical choices.
So we’re going to do whatever we can to get people to wake up and make better, more ethical choices.
So long as the researchers aren’t harmed, mere annoyance is mere annoyance. That’s not important compared to the suffering of the animals being used in research.
Directory of abusers? … which one is that? Is that the petition we have been talking about?
Let me be absolutely clear about this:
“That animal research is morally justifiable provided animal welfare remains a high priority and no valid non-animal alternatives are available.”
There is NOTHING in the petition that promotes violence. No one who is signing the petition is even remotely hinting that that signature is somehow supporting violence.
… as for Babble, sure… it does somewhat conflict with the view of “leave animals alone entirely” (excluding saving species in extinction and all that). I have noted though that animal research can be done without the animal ever being aware that it is being inspected… which is a legitimate understanding of the quote I provided.
Again, the wording of the petition is so open ended that any signature pair might have a hugely different opinion on what it means to sign the petition.
… because of that randomly picking signatures from that list means you could just as well be picking on someone with views and opinions about animal research that are near identical to your own.
And yes babble, we do make ethical choices … which I have pointed out is at the core of the petition. If I were to sign this petition I would expect whoever read the petition to assume MY ethical and humane understanding. I can however not be certain that people do that and as a result I didn’t sign. It would have to be clearly stated exactly what is meant by humane and ethical for me to agree or disagree before I sign.
Yes, we make ethical choices … but they are very very very different from person to person. Some people believe it is justifiable to kill another human being (take death sentance for example) … that would categorize as “humane” I guess. I don’t agree.
Some people would consider it ethical to omit the reason of death on a memorial …
Taking a stand for one cause or understanding of what ethical and humane means is noble and all that, but DO NOT assume to know what my or anyone’s views on that are unless they are explicitly stated. By randomly picking names from that list you are assuming to know. This is a simple logical fact…