Of Human and Non-Human Animals

Human Health and Animal Ethics New Website

2010-02-26T13:43:00.000-08:00

A new website has been started, called Human Health and Animal Ethics, which is specifically devoted to the subject of how protecting human health, far from being incompatible with defending animal interests in certain areas, is actually perfectly compatible with it.

This is because the main areas of animal exploitation, i.e. animal experimentation and animal farming for food, are those in which human health also suffers from those forms of abuse of animals.

Meat is generally bad for human health, whereas a vegetarian nutrition is the healthiest, as medical bodies and health authorities will tell you.

Similarly, the method of testing drugs and other substances for human use on other animals and of studying human diseases on animals has been consistently proven throughout the decades to be lacking of predictive value, extremely unreliable and therefore highly dangerous for human health, when its results are transferred to human beings.

This is why the tagline of Human Health and Animal Ethics is Ending animal abuse can seriously benefit your health.

Abruzzo earthquake forgotten victims

2009-04-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

The earthquake in the Abruzzo region of central Italy of a few days ago has affected animals too. Animals suffering from natural disasters have to rely primarily on the efforts of volunteers for their survival.

Italy’s largest organization for dogs protection, Lega Nazionale per la Difesa del Cane, is helping through its local section of L’Aquila in the distribution of food to the dog pound, to the only kennel of the area and to private individuals who need food for their own dogs or for strays they are looking after.

Through its website, aptly and hopefully named Cuccefelici (Happy Doghouses), the Lega Nazionale per la Difesa del Cane reports that its kennel in L’Aquila, holding 400 dogs, has been left intact by the earthquake because it has no brickwork buildings and all the dogs in it are safe.

Thanks to its volunteers and to the part of the staff capable of getting to work, the dogs have been looked after, fed and given water every day. Elderly and sick dogs are receiving all the necessary treatments as usual.

Whoever needs dog food can contact them by phone. They are also working in close cooperation with the local Veterinary Authority, who people can contact to report any lost, injured or trapped dog.

Even before the earthquake L'Aquila and its area had approximately 4,000 to 6,000 stray dogs, and this is the only public kennel of the district.

L’Aquila dogs protection people, together with the firefighters of the town of Paganica, have saved four female boxers that had been without food or water for days, trapped in a garden surrounded by rubble. The dogs, after being fed, will be returned to their human companion who has evacuated in a hotel on the Adriatic coast.

The local Veterinary Authority has also found many dogs who have been immediately transferred to the Lega Nazionale per la Difesa del Cane kennel in L’Aquila, where they are now still taken care of.

Despite that, in the region there is a real emergency of dogs and cats still locked inside homes or wandering alone after the death of their human companion, sometimes badly injured.

L'Aquila’s dog pound, the private kennel of the area and members of the public all rely on the dogs protection organization’s help.

Both food and medical supplies are insufficient. The dog food is now necessary in greater amounts, because the organization not only must feed the dogs in its kennel but is also donating dogs food to whoever needs it. Large quantities of dog food have been ordered from the usual supplier and already delivered but are still unpaid for.

So, what the dogs protection organization needs most at this moment is funds.

They need your help.

If you can help, you can send them money through Paypal from their website: Cuccefelici

Privacy Policy

2009-04-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

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No Meat World Day

2009-01-29T14:15:00.000-08:00

World Day for the Abolition of Meat

The 31 January 2009 will be the first World Day for the Abolition of Meat ever declared.

What does it mean and what will happen?

Local groups of activists will stage various events, with information stands, street leafletting, conferences, vegan dinners in restaurants, presentations, “mourning” demonstrations, photo exhibitions and nutrition pyramids in several cities in Europe and the rest of the world, in particular in France (Paris, Montpellier, Lille, Marseille, Besançon, Rennes, Millau - Aveyron, Metz, Mens, Die, and others), Italy (Milan and Florence), Switzerland, Germany, the Bahamas.

The purpose is to inform the public of how much suffering meat eating causes to non-human animals and how unnecessary it is to human beings.

A concerted effort of organizing events of the same kind in various parts of the globe is an effective way to draw the public attention to the subject.

The organizers’ intention is twofold: firstly to encourage vegetarianism and veganism as forms of boycotting the products of the animal farming industry, thus decreasing the demand for these products and as a consequence, as the market laws dictate, their supply; and secondly to explicitly request the abolition of meat production.

So the stress is both on the economic forces that are at the root of animal farming through the powerful means of consumers choice pressure and on the political and legal change.

The public are invited to reflect on this both as consumers and as citizens.

Soya and cancer

2008-12-02T12:45:00.000-08:00

A soya milk and tofu diet reduces the risk of breast cancer, according to research. In an epidemiological study, women who were eating a lot of soy and soy products were 60% less likely than women who ate the least soya to have the "dense" tissue associated with breast cancer.

The following are also types of foods and drinks that protect against cancer by minimising the risk of developing tumors.

Tomatoes. Studies conducted in USA have shown that 3 servings per day greatly cut the risk of prostate cancer. Not only fresh tomatoes have this beneficial effect, but even pizza toppings, pasta sauce and tomato ketchup.

Brazil nuts and grains. They are all rich in the trace element selenium. Trials have found that selenium supplements help cut the risk of prostate cancer.

Broccoli and cabbage. They are rich in glucosinolates, which some studies have shown to reduce the risk of cancer by 50%. They appear to be particularly effective against both breast and colon cancer.

Strawberries. They contain antioxidant chemicals called coumarins. Antioxidants protect against cancer-causing agents. Other kinds of fruits and berries, including raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, raisins and prunes, also destroy in the blood free radicals which promote cancer.

Green tea. It is rich in antioxidants, which are substances effective against carcinogens (cancer-causing agents). Only one cup per day is recommended.

Garlic. Studies in the USA have shown that people who eat garlic more than twice a week are only half as likely to develop colon cancer as those who do not eat garlic.

Water. Drinking lots of water helps reduce the risk of bladder cancer, because it dilutes the concentration of cancer-causing agents and cuts the time that they are in contact with the bladder lining. A minimum of 8 cups per day are recommended.

Italian Animal Rights Party forms a new alliance

2008-11-24T13:15:00.000-08:00

In preparation for the next European Parliament elections in June 2009, the Partito Animalista Italiano, Italian Party for Animal Rights, has formed an alliance with two other Italian parties: the Environmentalist Party and the Eurosceptics Party.

The new alliance will contest the European elections, which are now only a few months away, and has just joined the EUDemocrats, a Europe-wide, transnational party which has 6 members of the European Parliament in its midst and focuses on the issue of democracy in the European Union.

The new Italian coalition, called “Euro Scettici-Animalisti-Ambientalista”, has begun to get ready for the forthcoming European election and hopes to secure 1 or 2 seats in the European Parliament.

Does it sound ambitious?

"It’s entirely possible” replies Cristiano Ceriello of the Italian Animal Rights Party. “If the European election law, as it seems certain, remains the same, a party only needs 0.7 % of the national votes to elect a member of the European Parliament.

“According to the polls commissioned by us, our new alliance Euro Scettici-Animalisti-Ambientalisti should get 1.5% of the votes, which would allow us to gain 2 seats."

Vegetarian easy

2008-08-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

Easy vegetarian

Becoming vegetarian is one of the choices you can make that are most beneficial for your health.

And, believe me, it is easy to be vegetarian.

Many people are worried that it can be difficult to give up their favourite foods.

But in reality food is an “acquired taste” literally. Mostly, we like what we are used to. That, for instance, explains why people of different cultures and culinary traditions have diverse palate and appreciate widely dissimilar dishes.

Most emphatically, the idea that meat and fish are tastier than vegetarian meals is a myth. In many cases it is the herbs, spices and vegetables that give flavour to meat-based dishes.

Have you ever wondered why we humans can eat many vegetables raw, but very few, if any, kinds of animal flesh without first cooking them? Does that not point to a certain instinctive difficulty for our digestive system in dealing with meat and fish?

I have been a vegetarian for almost all my adult life. If I now should have meat in any form, very likely I would feel sick. This (which would probably apply to the generality of vegetarians and vegans) shows that it is not something inherent in a vegetarian diet which makes it difficult to introduce, but rather a general principle of our eating patterns: sudden change is disruptive at first and needs time to adjust.

This is often the case in matters of the senses. Think of music. How many times, upon hearing it the first time, did you have an immediate rejection for a pop song or a classical piece of music which later became a joy for your ears?

It may take time to love good music, and it may take time to love good food.

Easy steps to vegetarianism

My first piece of advice, therefore, is: take it easy, make the change gradually. Let your taste buds get acquainted with and used to the new flavours.

My second piece of advice: do not think in terms of renunciations, but of replacements. Next time you are thinking of having a burger, choose a vegeburger instead. Or have a delicious fresh sandwich with plenty of fresh salad vegetables and succulent but not fat sauces like those sold by Subway, for instance. You don’t have to do this every time at first, but you can start by opting for a healthier alternative, say, half of the times, and then gradually increase the frequency.

Just to realize how alien meat-eating is to our nature, and we believe that it is natural only because we have become accustomed to it, think of how food poisoning is almost invariably associated with meat or, more infrequently, with other animal products but extremely rarely with foods of vegetable origin.

Even touching raw meat, poultry or fish without washing your hands can spread bacteria and lead to food poisoning. And even reusing the same utensils, plates, dishcloths, teatowels and sponges that have come into contact with raw meat, fish or poultry (even indirectly, for instance by cleaning a surface which has touched them) is dangerous, because bacteria from the raw juices will contaminate other food.

This could help explain why meat workers, people involved in the meat industry, are the unhealthiest workers: in the USA about 25 percent of all employees of meatpacking plants have job-related injuries or illnesses, that is as many as 4 times the national average for all private industry sectors.

Candidates on animal rights

2008-06-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

The 2008 US presidential candidates should be assessed for their positions on animal issues as well.

Animal welfare has grown in importance in American politics in general and presidential elections in particular. Both candidates seem to have strong views on animal issues, albeit with some limitations.

Barack Obama and animal rights

The candidate for the Democratic Party, Senator Barack Obama, has been praised for his answer to a woman who asked him "What about animal rights?" during Obama's town hall meeting outside Las Vegas a few months ago.

Obama replied that he cares about animal rights very much, "not only because I have a 9-year-old and 6-year-old who want a dog." He said that he sponsored a bill to prevent horse slaughter in the Illinois state Senate and that he has been repeatedly endorsed by the HSUS (Humane Society of the United States).

"I think how we treat our animals reflects how we treat each other," he added. "And it's very important that we have a president who is mindful of the cruelty that is perpetrated on animals."

Good, diplomatic, generic way to answer a specific question; maybe Time's headline for this story, "Obama Pledges Support for Animal Rights", was a bit over-optimistic.

Still, he is considered a strong candidate on animal rights issues. He has co-sponsored new legislation to stop horse slaughter and export of
horses for human consumption, to upgrade federal penalties for dogfighting and cockfighting, to ban possession of fighting dogs and being a spectator at
a dogfight. He also signed a letter requesting increased funds for enforcement of
the Animal Welfare Act, Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and federal
animal fighting law. Sent letter to National Zoo expressing concern for
the care of Toni the elephant.

In his response to a questionnaire by the Humane Society Legislative Fund (which tries to pass animal protection laws at state and federal levels), Obama pledges support for nearly every animal protection bill currently pending in Congress, and says he will work with executive agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make their policies more humane.

He believes that there is a link between cruelty to animals and violence in society: "I've repeatedly voted to increase penalties for animal cruelty and violence... In addition to being unacceptable in its own stead, violence towards animals is linked with violent behavior in general... Strong [animal cruelty] penalties are important and I support them... As president, I'd continue to make sure that we treat animal cruelty like the serious crime it is and address its connection to broader patterns of violence."

But... he has not yet co-sponsored important animal welfare bills, like the Pet Safety and Protection Act.

Besides, I do not see how Obama can reconcile the position that he professes on cruelty to animals and his support for the right to hunt wild game.

In April 2007 he said: "I don't hunt myself, but I respect hunters and sportsmen". And: "I'm a strong believer in the rights of hunters and sportsmen to have firearms".

Am I too cynical if I suspect a little insincerity in his proclaimed love for animals here?

John McCain and animal rights

His opponent, Republican Party's candidate Senator John McCain, is also strong on animal rights issues, uncharacteristically for a Republican candidate.

McCain co-sponsored new legislation to stop horse slaughter, backed a bill to stop the shipment of live birds between states for the only purpose of cockfighting, supported a bill to stop the killing of bears by ending trade in their gall bladders and other viscera and organs.

Senator McCain also took a position against the fur industry, by voting to eliminate a $2 million subsidy for the mink industry. And he voted against allowing drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, saving the thousands of animals who lived there.

He earned scores of up to 75 percent on the Humane Scorecard.

But... he voted in support of an amendment to the California Desert Protection Act allowing hunting for sport in the Mojave National Park, and apparently he is a supporter of hunting in general.

Looks like both candidates are weaker on hunting grounds.

Besides, neither of them really seems to have said anything or taken positions on the major areas of animal abuse, i.e. animal experimentation and factory farming.

Against bullfighting Spain

2008-05-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

Barcelona is against bullfighting

Barcelona City Council took a historic vote when, on April 6 2004, it officially declared Barcelona, the capital of the region of Catalonia in Spain, an anti-bullfight city by 21 votes to 15, with two abstentions.

Two weeks before that resolution was passed, the city's Deputy Mayor, Jordi Portabella, had declared his opposition to bullfighting in front of hundreds of protesters, saying: 'Barcelona must act like a capital and be a pioneer in the abolition of bullfighting.'

Although the resolution does not ban bullfighting in Barcelona, it is nevertheless a landmark precedent, because Barcelona had historically been one of bullfighting's capitals, with 100 bulls being tortured and slaughtered every year in the city's bullrings in the bad old days, watched mainly by curious tourists.

However, a city council spokesman told the BBC that there has not been a large bullfighting following in the region since the 1960s.

Before the vote, nearly 250,000 people had signed a petition to ban bullfighting in the Catalonia region, of which Barcelona is the capital. In 2005 a law to ban bullfighting was proposed to the Catalan Parliament for the first time in Spanish history.

The majority of people in Barcelona are opposed to bullfighting and agree with Barcelona City Council's decision to declare the city an anti-bullfighting city, according to surveys.

The majority of those surveyed in Barcelona (63%) do not want bullfights to continue in their city, with more than half (55%) agreeing that Barcelona should declare itself an anti-bullfighting city.

Bullfights are viewed as cruel and non-educational by more than three quarters (76%) of those surveyed in Barcelona. In addition, the majority of the people in the city have never been to a bullfight (59%) and, of those that have, only 12.6% have been to one in the last 3 years. Overall, just 7% of all those surveyed see bullfights as being positive for Barcelona's reputation.

Of those surveyed in Barcelona, 98% agreed that animals suffer when mistreated and an overwhelming 96% thought that the suffering of animals for entertainment should be banned. These attitudes are similar to those revealed in previous surveys of people in Catalonia, the region of Barcelona.

Spain towns and cities against bullfighting

It's not just Barcelona. A 2007 Gallup opinion poll showed that over 72% of people all over Spain have no interest in bullfighting.

Since Barcelona declared itself an anti-bullfight city in April 2004, councils in other 44 towns and cities in Catalonia have declared themselves opposed to bullfighting. Other Spanish towns, including Torello, Calldetenes, and Olot, which has the second oldest bullring in Spain, have done the same.

Some cities in Spain, among which Calonge, Tossa de Mar, Vilamacolum, and La Vajol, have outlawed all bullfighting and bull runs. In Mexico, bullfights have been banned in Jalopa.

La Monumental, once Barcelona's main bullring, now houses a bullfighting museum, and Las Arenas de Barcelona, another bullfighting venue, is being redeveloped as a leisure and shopping centre.

Help the organizations that campaign against bullfighting in Spain

These successes are due to the work of some associations, both Spanish and international.

One of the most active organisations in campaigning against bullfighting in Spain and Latin America is the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA)
.

If Catalonia is at the forefront of the abolition of bullfighting in Spain, it's also thanks to them.

You can help the fight against bullfighting by giving donations to WSPA, and in this way you can support WSPA
.

World Society for the Protection of Animals help with Burma cyclone

2008-05-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

When disasters strike, it is not just humans that suffer. Other animals suffer and die too.

Recent tragedies like the China earthquake and the Burma cyclone have affected huge numbers of animals.

What happens is that, in poor countries with extremely limited resources, the idea of giving priority to human victims means that other animals are left without any help, even when the human survivors depend on them for their livelihoods.

A leading international animal welfare charity’s work: WSPA

There are, luckily, organizations that are dedicated to helping animals internationally and are particularly needed in the case of calamities, as well as in campaigns to stop several forms of animal abuse on a daily basis.

Perhaps the most active association in this field of aiding animals in natural catastrophes is the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA)
.

Disaster management is one of the categories of WSPA’s activity, and one of the reasons is that they say that animal welfare is a vital part of rebuilding of communities after a disaster.

In the event of the cyclone in Burma, an emergency veterinary team from the World Society for the Protection of Animals was in Thailand awaiting entry authority to cyclone-struck Myanmar to ascertain and then relieve the suffering of a large number of animals.

“No-one else, Governments, humanitarian NGOs or owners have the resources to care for these animals, most of which are owned by poor impoverished families” is the grim diagnosis of Philip Russell MBE (Member of the British Empire, an honour given by the Queen), Director of Disaster Management of the WSPA.

The association’s emergency response team is involved not only in first aid and veterinary assistance but in trying to stop the spread of diseases, by separating animals into temporary holding pens. Humid conditions, endemic diseases like Foot and Mouth, animals’ weakened immune systems, and overcrowded camps all contribute to a contagious environment where disease develops and spreads quickly. WSPA is there to help with veterinary checks and to introduce preventative measures, in particular vaccinations, antibiotics and de-worming.

Emergency food is also necessary, as it is improbable that there will be food for surviving animals.

“WSPA works to align animal welfare and humanitarian agendas to reduce poverty, hunger and disease in humans. Equally, by complementing humanitarian efforts in this way we increase the number of animals we protect,” explained Russell.

If you wish to help, you can give donations to WSPA, and in this way you can support WSPA
.

Animals Count party for animals

2008-05-10T11:24:00.000-07:00

A much-needed animals political party called Animals Count (supermodel Twiggy, pictured right, is among its supporters) has run in the recent London local election on 1st May, with a candidate for the Greater London Assembly, Jasmijn de Boo, and received 1,828 votes.

Considering that Animals Count contested only two London boroughs in the south of the city, Lambeth and Southwark, the fact that it was a new party and the limited budget available to it, 1.12% of the total votes was not a bad result.

“In a sense we are comparable to independent candidates in other constituencies, which typically received around 700 votes.” Jasmijn says. “Under the first-past-the-post-system people tend to vote more strategically rather than intuitively. Our result demonstrates that nearly 2,000 people in this constituency alone care so much about animal issues that they overcame their wish to vote strategically. I am confident we will grow and that the European Parliament elections in 2009 offer a real opportunity for Animals Count.”

There was fear that Animals Count, which is active in England, Wales and Scotland, would split the Green Party vote, although, given that party policies on animals, I cannot see how that can be a bad thing. However, the Green Party candidate for Lambeth and Southwark in fact gained 0.64% more votes than in the last election.

European political parties and elections

What is also interesting about this relatively new party is its Europe-wide scope. Its founder and chair, who was the candidate in the London elections, Jasmijn de Boo, is Dutch and was an active member of the highly successful Dutch Political Party for the Animals, which gained two seats in the General Elections in November 2006, nine seats in the Provincial Elections in March 2007 and one seat in the Senate in June 2007: a world first!

A similar party in Spain, Partido Antitaurino Contra el Maltrato Animal (party against bullfighting and maltreatment of animals - PACMA), won over 41,000 votes in the elections on last 9th March. Just over 61,000 votes would have been enough for a seat.

Similar political parties for animals also now exist in Germany, France and Canada.
"Animals Count aims to be part of the next big development in European politics," says Jasmijn. "We want to make London the world's leading city for animal protection."

Animals Count now has its eyes on the European Parliament elections, to be held in June 2009, and has already started preparing for them. This is a clever move, since early preparations are key to success.

The Dutch Party for the Animals (PvdD) was truly successful in the 2006 national parliament elections, and Animals Count wishes to use similar tactics and methods in the upcoming European polls.

In particular, it wants to imitate the PvdD’s use of state-of-the-art methods, like promotional video clips aired on TV and on its website, and use of celebrities who endorsed the PvdD and were the list-pushers (at the bottom of the list). The animations and clips were forwarded to members all over the country resulting in over 180,000 votes for the Party for the Animals.

Animals Count already has the support of several celebrities, including supermodel Twiggy (pictured above), legendary Queen’s guitarist Brian May who is also a scientist, actor Nicholas Ball, writer Jeffrey Masson, poet Benjamin Zephaniah, Prof. Robert Garner of Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, and psychologist Dr. Richard Ryder.

In the run-up to the European Parliament (EP) elections Animal Counts intends to develop similar interesting, innovative campaign ideas. It is aware of competing with multimillion pound budgets of larger parties and the only way to get noticed is through media and email campaigns.

“The European Parliament is THE place to be represented as a political party for the animals” claims Jasmijn, “the Common Agricultural Practice (CAP) dominates the agenda (80%) and 50% of the European budget is spent on farming. This has huge repercussions on farmed animals in Britain (and obviously other Member States). Other important Directives include the Zoo Directive, the 86/609/EC Directive on the Use of animals in experimentation (currently under revision), the Transport Directive, etc. Many domestic laws are based on European guidelines; hence the importance of having a voice in the EP.”

Cancer and animals

2008-04-29T12:33:00.000-07:00

Cancer relates to questions of animal ethics in two major ways:

1) Animal experimentation

2) Human nutrition and lifestyle.

Let’s start with animal experimentation. This broad field branches out into two main areas in association with cancer:

a) animal testing of carcinogenicity (cancer-inducing quality) of substances

b) cancer research on animals to find cures for humans.

Animal testing of carcinogenicity

Carcinogenicity studies on animals are used for all kinds of compounds, in particular synthetic substances, pesticides, food additives and all sorts of other chemicals. They, especially pesticides tests, have been largely instigated by the environmentalist movement, which has created, since Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring onwards, a public hysteria about a phantasmic connection between human cancer and man-made chemical substances in the environment.

The crude reality is that animal tests are a totally inadequate means of finding out whether a substance causes cancer in human subjects not just because of the important obstacle represented by species difference but also, more specifically, because of the extremely high dosages to which lab animals are subjected over a short period of time, as opposed to the low levels (mostly residues) to which humans are exposed over a long time.

Half of all the substances administered to animals at these near-toxic levels are carcinogenic in the test subjects, purely because of the local damage they cause in virtue of their massive amounts. Many of these chemicals are well-known for not causing cancer in humans at all.

What increases the risk of cancer in humans is something completely different, and we’ll get to that when we later discuss nutrition and lifestyle.

Of all the substances in our environment, one of the most seriously and lethally carcinogenic is asbestos, and here animal experiments have continuously misled researchers into believing that asbestos was safe simply because lab animals subjected to it did not develop the deadly form of cancer that we have known for decades to plague asbestos workers: mesothelioma. So, thanks to animal research, legislative measures to ban asbestos were delayed in the West by several decades, while workers and their families kept getting ill with asbestosis and tumors which could not be replicated in animals and therefore, so researchers thought, animal experiments had not “validated” the asbestos-mesothelioma causal connection.

Cancer research on animals

Cancer research on animals consists in taking healthy animals, mostly rodents, and trying to make them ill with cancer by various artificial means, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, in order to test on them possible treatments designed for humans. When researchers “luckily” succeed in making a healthy animal develop cancer, the tumor is not the same as the human one that it is supposed to model.

First of all, the aetiology of the disease is completely different. The causal mechanisms that induce cancer in humans are practically impossible to reproduce in a lab using animals. The most frequent causes of human cancer by far, as we shall see in more detail when we examine lifestyle, are smoking habits, bad nutrition choices, alcohol-drinking, lack of exercise, and all of these causal factors accumulate over a long period of time, often a lifetime, gradually and slowly. Lab animals, on the other hand, have to be made sick quickly, and they do not naturally indulge in all those cancer-risky lifestyle habits of which so many humans are so fond. So the means to induce cancer in them are necessarily artificial, different from the human causes, and designed to produce a rapid response.

Some common human cancers, like prostate, rectal and colon cancers, are rare in rats and mice, the cancer researchers’ favourite (most used) species. So experimenters have to labour particularly hard to inflict these tumours on rodents.

Regardless of the causes, moreover, cancer is not the same disease in different species of animals, human included. Cancer is not, strictly speaking, a disease, but an umbrella encompassing several ailments, according to the distribution of the various cancer sites. But animal tumours are not the same entities as human ones, even when they affect the same sites or are given, for reasons of convenience, the same name.

For instance, human bowel cancer affects a different part of the intestines (the colon or large bowel) from rats’ bowel cancer (the small bowel). And the mechanism of colon cancer in the two species is dissimilar: humans die because the cancer metastasizes, namely spreads to other parts of the body, whereas rats die because the colon is obstructed.

So, basically cancer researchers are studying something completely different when they use animals. The latter are not models of human cancer at all.

As a consequence, it should come as no surprise to learn that many of the various cancer treatments making the headlines, which have been tested on animals and found to be effective in them, turn out to be, when later administered to human subjects, ineffective or even harmful.

Human nutrition and lifestyle

We do not yet know how to cure cancer. Despite some improvement in therapy, this often fatal disease remains elusive to understand and refractory to cure. However, we know an awful lot about the risk factors that increase the probability of contracting cancer. Of all the areas of cancer research, the greatest progress has been made in cancer prevention. To stop cancer from developing in the first place remains the best option that we have.

And this, from many viewpoints (except perhaps if you consider laziness, addiction and force of habit), is extremely good news. Because all the major causes, or risk factors, of cancer are entirely under an individual’s control. They all pertain to a person’s lifestyle.

First comes tobacco, by far the major contributing factor to cancer incidence rates.

Then comes diet. We know very well what a cancer-preventing nutrition (and preventing other major diseases too) should be. Medical authorities and health experts advice is simple: avoid completely certain kinds of meat (namely, cured or processed meats like bacon and sausages), eat as little red meat as possible, reduce all types of meat and animal fats, replace them with proteins and fats of vegetable origin, and eat more fresh fruits, vegetables and grains.

And here we come to the other connection between cancer and animal ethics.

It looks like both our health and our morals point in the same direction. There is no real conflict of interests: what is good for us is also good for other animals, who could be spared the life-long torture of imprisonment in factory farms and the short but agonizing experience of the slaughterhouse.

Carcinogenicity studies on animals

2008-04-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

This page has moved here:

Carcinogenicity Studies on Animals

Thalidomide tragedy, side effects, history

2008-04-11T16:47:00.000-07:00

What is Thalidomide

Thalidomide was one of the greatest cases in history of a drug disaster tragedy being caused by animal research.

First of all, Thalidomide had been tested on animals extensively prior to its marketing.

Even now, despite the clinical evidence to the contrary, British health authorities like the Medical Research Council maintain that the vast bulk of evidence from laboratory and animal tests is against thalidomide having any genetic effects.

The tragedy caused by Thalidomide in the 1960s was due to its teratogenic effects, ie effects on the foetus. Teratological effects of drugs were little known then. They were brought to public attention because of the Thalidomide tragedy on humans, therefore only after it. How on earth could animal researchers have thought of those effects before the disaster?

Even after the Thalidomide caused birth deformities in humans, researchers tried to reproduce the same effect in dozens of species of lab animals without success.

Take a look:

"As a consequence to the thalidomide tragedy there has been a marked upsurge in the number of animals used in testing of new drugs. Also drugs are now specifically tested on pregnant animals to supposedly safeguard against possible teratogenic effects on the human foetus. Vivisector's claim that if such tests were carried out prior to thalidomide's release, birth deformities in humans would have been discovered. This is of course sheer nonsense. 'In pregnant animals, differences in the physiological structure, function and biochemistry of the placenta aggravate the usual differences in metabolism, excretion, distribution and absorption that exist between species and make reliable predictions impossible.' (15) (Dr Robert Sharpe, former senior research chemist.)

"In fact when the link between human foetal abnormalities and thalidomide was established (through clinical observation), the world-wide explosion of animal testing, using a large range of species, proved very difficult to duplicate the abnormalities. (16) Writing in his book Drugs as Teratogens, J.L. Schardein observes: 'In approximately 10 strains of rats, 15 strains of mice, eleven breeds of rabbit, two breeds of dogs, three strains of hamsters, eight species of primates and in other such varied species as cats, armadillos, guinea pigs, swine and ferrets in which thalidomide has been tested teratogenic effects have been induced only occasionally.' (17) Eventually after administrating high doses of thalidomide to certain species of rabbit (New Zealand White) and primates could similar abnormalities be found. However researchers pointed out that malformations, like cancer, could occur when practically any substance, including sugar and salt, be given in excessive doses. (16)" [my emphasis]

Thalidomide's history in the USA

Some apologists of animal experimentation say that the reason why Thalidomide was never approved by the FDA (Food and Drugs Administration, the US agency responsible for drugs licensing) in the US is that the FDA reviewer had previous experience in animal research and had refused to clear the drug for sale until better documentation of its effects were provided.

The reality is that the FDA reviewer in question, Frances Oldham Kelsey, had doubts about Thalidomide's safety because of side effects shown in human clinical trials.

The FDA website is very clear on this. In Frances Oldham Kelsey: FDA Medical Reviewer Leaves Her Mark on History it says:

"In December of 1960, three months after Richardson-Merrell submitted its application, the British Medical Journal published a letter from a physician, Leslie Florence, who had prescribed thalidomide to his patients. Florence reported seeing cases of peripheral neuritis, a painful tingling of the arms and feet, in patients who had taken the drug over a long period of time." [emphases added]

And here is another biographical note on Frances Kelsey:

"Dr. Kelsey continued to resist, pointing out in February 1961 that a study in England had indicated the new product caused 'a serious side effect on the nervous systems of patients who took the drug repeatedly,' so she asked for assurances that such side effects wouldn't occur. By May she had developed a theory that if thalidomide caused paralysis of the peripheral nerves, the drug probably would cause greater damage to the developing embryo." [emphasis added]

Better control

The answer is: better control of the effects of medicines after they have been marketed.

"We need to encourage doctors and drug companies to watch for, report and take note of side effects in order to protect patients properly. If proper drug surveillance techniques had been available in the 1960s the thalidomide problem would have been picked up much earlier. We still don't have proper post marketing trials in place." (from the source above)

Testing on humans is going to happen anyway, because any new drug which is marketed is an unknown, due to the unreliability of previous animal testing.

Let me repeat: you cannot make an unreliable method reliable by counterexamples.

Even if you happen to encounter cases where animal tests results have not been refuted by their application to humans, this does not alter the unreliable status of the method.

There are cases where there is a correspondence between human and non-human animals. But how do we know that? Because we transferred the results of animal testing on humans. That is, for all practical purposes, we tested them on humans.

It is an unavoidable fact.

The greatest scientific event of the millennium

2008-04-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

Never before have I had such a clear feeling that animal experimentation has its days counted, and that supporters of vivisection have started seeing the writing on the wall.

As important as penicillin, double helix and computers

The most prestigious scientific body in the world, which advises the US government on scientific issues, the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, has released in June 2007 a report entitled “Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: a Vision and a Strategy”.

The report was commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), another US federal body, responsible for thousands of safety (toxicity) tests on animals each year.

It is nothing short of revolutionary, and whoever knows the facts about animal experiments will realize its immense importance. Especially for people who know how much the American scientific establishment has historically been the most staunch supporter of animal research, this new report will be a blow.

The report’s authors convey very well its revolutionary meaning and the feeling that we have reached a turning point in biomedical research, in the very way they start it:

“Change often involves a pivotal event that builds on previous history and opens the door to a new era. Pivotal events in science include the discovery of penicillin, the elucidation of the DNA double helix, and the development of computers. All were marked by inauspicious beginnings followed by unheralded advances over a period of years but ultimately resulted in a pharmacopoeia of life-saving drugs, a map of the human genome, and a personal computer on almost every desk in today’s workplace.

“Toxicity testing is approaching such a scientific pivot point. It is poised to take advantage of the revolutions in biology and biotechnology.” [emphases added]

The report says:

“Advances in toxicogenomics, bioinformatics, systems biology, epigenetics, and computational toxicology could transform toxicity testing from a system based on whole-animal testing to one founded primarily on in vitro methods that evaluate changes in biologic processes using cells, cell lines, or cellular components, preferably of human origin.” [emphasis added]

Non-animal methods outperform animal tests

The superiority of non-animal methods of testing substances for toxicity to humans, compared to animal methods, is acknowledged by the report:

“The envisioned change is expected to generate more robust data on the potential risks to humans posed by exposure to environmental agents and to expand capabilities to test chemicals more efficiently. A stronger scientific foundation offers the prospect of improved risk-based regulatory decisions and possibly greater public confidence in and acceptance of the decisions.” [emphases added]

The report admits that the current animal method of testing has not been evaluated for its usefulness but rather used by inertia:

”The current system is the product of an approach that has addressed advances in science by incrementally expanding test protocols or by adding new tests without evaluating the testing system in light of overall risk-assessment and risk-management needs. That approach has led to a system that is somewhat cumbersome with respect to the cost of testing, the use of laboratory animals, and the time needed to generate and review data.” [emphases added]

There is acceptance in the report of the well-known problem that the extremely high levels of doses to which lab animals are subjected are a further element of unreliability and lack of predictive value of animal tests, given the huge discrepancy with the actual, much lower, doses of chemicals to which humans are exposed:

“Moreover, the vision will lead to a marked reduction in animal use and focus on doses that are more relevant to those experienced by human populations.” [emphasis added]

The report’s vision is that eventually non-animal strategies will completely replace animal-based toxicity tests and revolutionize safety testing.

The report recommends advanced non-animal methods using in vitro human cell lines in combination with computational methods and epidemiological studies. These new methods should also be employed in other areas of biomedical research currently using animals, and there is reason to hope that the new report may influence that development too.

The reference in the report to “paradigm shift” as the description for the new vision outlined there echoes Brute Science: Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation (Philosophical Issues in Science), a revolutionary book written by a philosopher and a biologist. The book uses science historian Thomas Kuhn’s concept of “paradigm” to explain the “sticky” nature of scientific enquiry, the prevailing scientific dogmatism which often makes change in normal scientific activity between “revolutions” so difficult. That echo seems to indicate that this report has taken on board criticisms made by the anti animal experimentation camp, to which the book generally belongs.

The future has already started

This milestone report comes at a crucial moment in the history of toxicity testing. The European Union has last year approved a new Regulation called REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals) which will require the largest mass animal testing programme in Europe’s history. It has just started and will see the testing of 30,000 chemicals on an estimated 10 to 50 millions animals.

This programme is closely watched by the US and the rest of the world as a pioneering enterprise. So it is the right moment for Europe to introduce the new methods and the new vision that this report so clearly recommends. Otherwise REACH could be an incalculable waste of money, time, resources without any benefit but possible harm to humans, and a totally pointless, immense source of animal suffering. Non-animal tests would provide more reliable data, produced more quickly and at an enormously lower cost than animal tests.

The “Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: a Vision and a Strategy” report, which has the purpose of guiding future research policy, has already had a momentous application: a Memorandum of Agreement was signed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology Program and the National Institutes of Health on 14th February 2008 aiming to end animal testing of chemicals and drugs.

Another cause for much happiness is that the hugely influential anti-visection Italian-Swiss author, the great Hans Ruesch, who wrote Naked Empress or, the Great Medical Fraud and many other books on animal experimentation, was able to see what appears like the beginning of the end for animal experimentation before he died on 27th August 2007, aged 94. He started me on this path when I was 17 years old and read his books.

This post is also a tribute to his memory. He can rightly be called the founder of the modern scientifically-based anti-vivisection movement. We will continue the fight that he began.

Vegetarian cats

2008-04-05T20:01:00.000-07:00

With cats, giving them a meat-free diet is more difficult, whereas it is relatively easy to have vegetarian dogs. But it is not impossible to convert cats to vegetarian nutrition either.

A vegetarian lioness

In the case of felines as well, we have a "wild" model to look to. In America, in the '40s, there was a clamorous case of which the whole country and the world press talked. A lioness, Little Tyke, kept with other animals by a family in a ranch in Washington state, refused to eat meat. Georges Westbeau, her "adoptive father", in the book Little Tyke (A Re-quest book) (originally published by Pacific Press Pub. Assoc., 1956 and now reprinted) recounts that she was an extraordinarily tame animal, who lived in domestic peace with the herbivores of the ranch.

Little Tyke was also exceptionally healthy: one of the most experienced American zoo curators visited her and called her "the best specimen of the species" he had ever seen. The Westbeaus were still worried, because scientists kept saying that a lion cannot survive without meat. But despite their prolonged efforts, they could never make their lioness eat it. When in 1955 Tyke appeared live on the TV programme You asked For It, all America got emotionally involved in this modern tale of the Gubbio wolf. Unusual as the case of Little Tyke is, it clearly shows that even the most carnivorous of animals can live well without meat (and prefer it to boot).

Domestic cats' nutrition requirements

But what about domestic cats? It has long been thought impossible to convert these not easily deterred meat-eaters to vegetarianism. Many of those who accept a meat-free nutrition for dogs do not consider it suitable to cats. In this field we must thank Barbara Lynn Peden, an American supporter of a vegan diet for dogs and cats, who did not give up but started a really pioneering work. The book she wrote, Dogs & cats go vegetarian, documents the struggle she fought with tenacity and determination to solve the problem of finding a balanced diet for domestic felines without resorting to animal foods.

Her research starts with the recognition that cats do have special nutritional requirements. First of all they cannot transform beta-carotene, which is found in plants, into vitamin A (as do humans and dogs); therefore they need a pre-formed source of vitamin A. This problem has not presented great difficulties, though, because, even if a direct vegetable source of vitamin A does not exist, it's easy to find it as a nutrition supplement in tablets.

More complicated has been the question posed by taurine, an amino acid not essential for humans, whose body can synthetize it, but essential for cats. After months of research and toil among scientific literature, transoceanic conversations with biochemists and discussions with vets and dietologists, the obstinate Barbara has succeeded in finding a totally vegan source of taurine, first in an petroleum by-product and then in an organic, renewable resource.

The other two nutrients which have demanded a special enquiry and a series of trial and error attempts have been the arachidonic acid, a fatty acid which generally mammals (but, alas, not cats) synthetize from linoleic acid, and another fatty acid of the series ω3 (omega 3). Both are present in the seaweed Ascophyllum.

How to turn cats vegetarian or vegan

So, after all the obstacles had been overcome, Barbara Lynn Peden has put together these substances in one supplement, and called it "Vegecat". This only needs to be added to the pussy's meal. Furthermore, to make it even more precise, Barbara and her husband have developed a series of recipes on the computer, using a model of 47 nutrients taken from the latest knowledge on cats' nutrition (the same has been done for dogs). They have selected easy to find ingredients, like soya, rice, hazelnuts, wholemeal bread, oats, oil, vegetables, brewer's yeast, and have come out with a variety of recipes suited to every kind of vegetarian nutrition: lacto-vegetarian, ovo-vegetarian, vegan and crudist. The nutrients which were not to be found easily in the foods themselves have been added to the supplement Vegecat, so that to use the latter and to follow the recommended recipes guarantees a balanced and complete diet. Vegecat can be ordered from the Vegan Society or directly from the American producers.

Kitties, as everyone knows, are a bit fussy about food, and it's not easy to get them to change even a tinned food brand. Vets call the attachment to a particular food "fixed nutrition preference", and recommend a gradual change to something new. The ideal would be to add some of the new food to the old one, and then increase the dosage little by little, until one is totally replaced with the other over a few days.

Barbara Peden has the following advice to give: "One recipe may be preferred over another. Our own cat ate her lentil-based food just fine for many months, until we tried chickpeas. We found that she likes chickpeas so well that, if we gave her lentils after that, she'd 'hold out' for chickpeas. So, try different recipes until you find one he likes".

Although many are still perplexed, the view that cats, respecting the due precautions, can be vegetarian is now accepted by various scientific literature, among which a recent report of the United States' National Research Council, which says: "A pure source of taurine can be added to vegetable diets... A much higher level of zinc is needed if a dietetic regime of vegetable protein is followed".

UK government’s animal experimentation cover-up is unlawful, court rules

2008-04-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Making decisions on animal research is impossible if the relevant information is not disclosed. This is true for decisions to be made both in public policy and by the so-called people in the street.

This is why this recent event is an important victory.

The UK’s Information Tribunal on 30 January 2008 ruled that the government’s
withholding the details of the animal experiments it licenses in the country is against the law because it violates the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), introduced in January 2005.

The case was brought by the BUAV (British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection) after the Home Office refused to reveal basic information about animal experiment licences: experiment’s purpose, what is to be done to the animals, how the applicants proposed to limit animal suffering and, crucially, how they proved it was essential to use animals rather than alternatives in their intended experiments. The BUAV was not looking for information on who is involved or where the research is occurring.

This ruling now means that the government will have to disclose much more information about what is done to laboratory animals, for what purpose, and what consideration has been given to non-animal alternative methods.

Andre Menache said in an interview:

“The other difficulty especially in the UK is this obsession with secrecy. The Freedom of Information Act came into effect in 2005 with respect to animal experimentation. I can tell you that the Home Office simply laughs in your face when you try and obtain information from them about animal experiments using the Freedom of Information Act. They simply say, ‘Sorry we have this information but we can't give it to you because of the activities of a small group of people who may endanger the safety of the researchers and institutions.'

“All this talk about transparency I'm afraid it's not happening and if it is happening then it's not happening fast enough. I would say transparency is a good thing but it's like passing a law which sounds good but it's unenforceable.”

Maybe now we can be a bit more optimistic than that.

Animal experimentation public opinion. An Update

2008-04-04T15:54:00.000-07:00

A mixed bag of updates on the front of public opinion on animal experiments.

UK opinion polls on animal research

A UK national public opinion poll conducted by YouGov and published on 23rd July 2007 showed that 80 per cent of the British public supports a ban on experiments which cause suffering to animals.

The poll was sponsored by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Before regarding this as a victory for the anti-vivisection movement, we should consider that results of opinion polls tend to vary according to on whose behalf the research is conducted.

A similar UK national poll conducted by TNS and commissioned by the BUAV (British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection) in 2003 revealed that 76 per cent of the British public thinks that the Government should, as a matter of principle, prohibit experiments on any live animals which cause pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm.

At the same time that the BUAV survey was conducted, other vivisection opinion polls were giving very different results. The reason of these variations lie in the way questions are formulated and how sympathetic to a certain cause the questioner is, because this latter fact influences the respondent’s answer by creating a certain expectation.

Besides, on the subject of animal research the people who have definite views - always against or always in favour - are few, with the absolutely favourable ones being fewer than the absolutely opposed. The vast majority do not have enough knowledge of the topic to develop an informed opinion, and therefore are particularly susceptible to the wording of the question because in that wording a certain amount of information is perceived to be hidden and a guide to the answer is found. Usually questions on complex issues like this are preceded by a statement, which gives away the position of the questioner but at the same time is used by the people polled as a help in making up their mind.

Consider this question:

“Non-animal research methods have replaced many tests previously done with animals. These are used if the Government judges them to be as good or better than animal methods.
The organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) estimates that the Government spends up to £10 million each year on developing non-animal research methods and that the Government's total science research budget is around £5,000 million per year.
On the basis of this information do you think the Government should:
Increase the allocation of funds for developing non-animal research methods
Leave the funding unchanged
Decrease the allocation of funds for developing non-animal research methods
Don’t know”.

Now consider this:

“How strongly do you agree or disagree with this statement: I agree with animal experimentation for all types of research where there is no alternative?”

The first gives ample information that strongly suggests that animal experiments could be replaced if only there were a political will. The second does not seem a “leading question” as the other does, but it is exactly that, only more subtly, because it assumes, and conveys the impression, that there are cases where no alternative to animal experimentation exists, whereas this is entirely to be demonstrated; however, only a respondent who has devoted time and effort to study the issue would spot that (or a respondent intelligent enough to understand that the question’s underlying assumption is wrong in principle, even before one knows the relevant facts).

The lesson to learn from all this is that public opnion on this issue is not easy to assess without a bias inherent in the method of assessment which will skew the results (who is familiar with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics will see here another example of the observer’s interference with the subject). So, when for instance animal experimenters and their apologists make statements about widespread public support for animal research, we must remember that the members of the public are only responding to the sort of data (or pseudo-data) that they are feeding them.

USA opinion polls on health charities and animal research

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, in July 2005 another poll conducted in the USA found that 67 percent of people said they were more likely to donate to a health charity that has a policy of never funding animal experiments than to one that does and 57 per cent said they would never donate to a charity that finances animal experiments.

Again, though, the sponsor of this investigation was an organization which opposes animal experimentation, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).

Two more surveys had been previously conducted on the same subject. All three were held by Opinion Research Corporation International of Princeton, New Jersey, on behalf of PCRM. The percentage of people giving the above answers had increased regularly over the past 10 years, and the highest increase had been among the older generation, since the youngest were already mostly supporting humane donations even in previous polls.

The generation gap is a welcome result, showing that younger people are more opposed than others to animal experiments and therefore indicating a future trend away from support to vivisection.

This age-related difference in response to questionnaires on animal research very probably explains why opinion polls conducted online regularly favour anti-vivisectionist views in comparison with offline ones. The demographics of internet users, who belong disproportionately to younger age groups, are at work here.

This result is in harmony with what we know, i.e. that youngsters are more sensitive to animal issues generally, as other data show, for instance in the much higher percentage of vegetarians among teenagers and people in their 20s than in other age groups.

End to animal testing historic agreement

2008-03-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

A momentous decision of great historic significance has been made by three US agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Toxicology Program (NTP) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

On 14th February 2008 these government agencies have signed a “Memorandum of Understanding”, i.e. a legal document about an agreement among parties, aiming to end animal testing of chemicals and drugs for human use. The implementation of this ambitious plan will take years, but it is certainly an earthshattering event.

Considering that the USA is the country where the highest number of animal experiments are performed in the West (although, as always with vivisection, the exact figures are difficult to know) and the one whose scientific community has the greatest power, and also considering that these three agencies have been among the biggest funding bodies of animal testing, the news seems almost too good to be true.

But it is true. It appears that the various scientific inadequacies, best summarized in the lack of predictive value, of the animal experimentation method have finally been acknowledged by American regulatory agencies at the federal level.

Even the head of the NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute, Francis Collins, is involved in the new plan and said in reference to animal testing: “It was expensive, time-consuming, used animals in large numbers, and it didn't always work” [notice that wonderful use of the past tense].

PETA thinks that his invovement is a good sign, and adds: “…it’s going to take an intense, focused effort on the scale of the human genome project to get the job done.”

The federal agencies' new agreement is the product of work started in cooperation in 2005 by the EPA and the NTP to speed up toxicological testing. The recent, breakthrough decision was preceded last June by a study by the US National Research Council, which shows that a clear change of direction has been taking place. The study said:

“Recent advances in systems biology, testing in cells and tissues, and related scientific fields offer the potential to fundamentally change the way chemicals are tested for risks they may pose to humans. …The new approach would generate more relevant data to evaluate risks people face, expand the number of chemicals that could be scrutinised, and reduce the time, money, and animals involved in testing.”

There is a reference here to the non-animal methods which, according to the newly-announced agreement, will replace animal testing: essentially, in vitro cultures of human cells and tissues and computer-driven testing machines.

The EPA has already started evaluating 300 chemicals with the new techniques.The first phase should be finished this year, saccording to the director of the National Center for Computational Toxicology Robert Kavlok.

Thousands of chemicals can be tested at the same time by a method that uses a glass tray with 1,536 tiny wells with the width of a fraction of a millimeter. Each well holds a few hundred human cells grown in a test tube. A testing machine, guided by a computer, drips a different chemical into each well and after some time it shines a laser through each well to count the remaining cells. A computer analyzes the toxicity of each compound depending on how the cells react. All the data discovered will be put into a public database.

The agencies will begin by testing compounds previously tested on animals to confirm that the alternative tests using cells are accurate.

The best piece of news is perhaps all in this comment by Elias Zerhouni, director of the NIH. He said that animal testing won't disappear overnight, but the agencies' work signals the beginning of the end.

Carcinogens, food poisoning and meat

2008-03-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

Cancer-causing substances

Meat contains a number of carcinogens. These include the nitrites used in meat processing, and residues of the many antibiotics routinely used in modern factory farming. Hardly surprising, then, that vegetarians have a 30% lower cancer rate than meat eaters, although carcinogens are not the only reason of this great difference in cancer incidence between the two groups.

Plant foods contain several substances which are believed to protect against cancer. Indoles, lignans, isoflavones, protease inhibitors and others have all been shown to be potent anti-carcinogens and may play an important role in the lower cancer incidence among vegetarians.

In contrast, cooked meat and fish contains carcinogens known as heterocyclic amines (HAs). These are present at high levels in the urine of people consuming cooked meats and have been shown to be metabolically active in humans. Evidence suggests meat-derived HAs may play a role in breast, colon and pancreatic cancer (Snyderwine 1994).

Food Poisoning

Studies have demonstrated that 53% of bovine carcasses and 83% of pig carcasses were contaminated with E coli. 18% of raw chicken from Britain and 64% of imported poultry contained salmonella. In a 1996 study, more than half of UK-bred chickens purchased from retail outlets contained campylobacter.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are more than 20,000 E. coli infections from meat every year in the United States.

Meat and milk account for most of the food poisoning in Britain, some of which lethal. Bacteria, which become resistant to the antibiotics that are continually pumped into farm animals, are passed on from livestock to human consumers, along with foecal contamination. Many cows in Britain's herds are infected with mastitis, the catarrh-like discharge which is not curbed by antibiotics. British milk is among Europe's worst: a diluted solution of hormones, antibiotics and pus.

Mesothelioma and asbestos

2008-03-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

What is mesothelioma?

Mesothelioma is a form of malignant cancer affecting the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most internal organs of the body. The mesothelium has different names in different parts of body.

The disease’s most common forms are peritoneal mesothelioma and pleural mesothelioma. In the former, cancer cells develop in the peritoneum, the lining of the abdominal cavity.

In the latter, which is the most widespread form of mesothelioma, the affected site is the pleura, the membrane surrounding the lungs and lining the chest cavity.

Mesothelioma is a rare cancer, which in humans is almost invariably caused by exposure to asbestos, a material used in various sectors, in particular in the building industry. Most people (70-80 percent) who develop malignant mesothelioma have worked in jobs where they inhaled or were exposed to asbestos particles, asbestos fibres and dust.

As in all cancers, in both peritoneal mesothelioma and pleural mesothelioma cells multiply in excess and without control.

Mesothelioma prognosis is usually not good; it is a fatal disease, and death often occurs within twelve months after diagnosis.

Mesothelioma treatment exists, in the forms of surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy, but it has not so far been successful. Mesothelioma is generally resistant to treatment.

Malignant mesothelioma and asbestos: what delayed recognizing the link?

The link between cancer and asbestos in humans became known on the basis of clinical studies in the early 20th century, so much so that the first lawsuits against asbestos manufacturers were in 1929.

Following this discovery, researchers extensively tried to induce cancer in laboratory animals by exposing them to asbestos. The results of animal experiments were disappointing, because the painful lesions which were produced in animals disappeared after asbestos was withdrawn, so in them, unlike in humans, the disease was not permanent.

The current prevailing paradigm of biomedical sciences is such that only tests on animals in laboratory conditions can confirm or disproof a hypothesis. This is what scientists have been trained to believe. So if, say, a correlation between a chemical substance and the development of a disease is observed in human subjects through clinical studies of patients or epidemiological studies (surveying large numbers of people), that is not considered scientific evidence until it is “validated” on some other animal species in the controlled conditions of a lab.

This reliance on animal research has had the effect that the biomedical establishment did not believe in the link between asbestos and human cancer for several decades.

In 1965 the Annals of the New York Academy of Science “reassuringly” wrote:

“…a large literature on experimental studies has failed to furnish any definitive evidence for induction of malignant tumours in animals exposed to various varieties and preparations of asbestos by inhalation or intratracheal injection”. [my emphasis]

But the human-based evidence continued to grow. Many epidemiological studies have over the years established an association between exposure to asbestos and the development of several conditions, including diffuse pleural thickening, lung cancer, carcinoma of the larynx, asbestosis, gastrointestinal tumours, peritoneal mesothelioma and pleural mesothelioma.

The link between asbestos and mesothelioma was finally accepted and led to legislation banning asbestos in many Western countries.

But it was only in the late 1970s and 1980s that this occurred. In 1989 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned all new uses of asbestos.

So animal tests delayed the introduction of these safety laws by several decades. This is a recurring pattern: something similar happened when animal experiments failed to confirm a connection between smoking and lung cancer in humans, and preventative measures in that area were delayed by many years.

Mesothelioma symptoms may appear as long as 30 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos. This explains why, despite a ban on asbestos use in the West, the incidence of malignant mesothelioma is still increasing.

The half vegan monks who are the world's healthiest people

2008-03-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

In Italy we have a saying which translates into English as “discovering hot water”, i.e. discovering the obvious.

The medical world has recently found, through a series of in-depth, comprehensive studies including a 10-year study, that one of the healthiest groups of people on earth eats fresh food, mostly vegetables, fruits, pulses and grains, in moderation, in a stress-free environment, within a close supportive community.

These lucky guys are the monks of Mount Athos, in Greece.

They are vegan for more than half of the year, and predominantly vegetarian the other half.

Despite their average venerable age, the 2,000 monks living in 20 ancient monasteries have virtually no heart disease, no cardiac arrests and no strokes, a zero-incidence of Alzheimer’s disease which astonished the researchers conducting the various studies, and unusually low rates of cancer, which in the case of prostate cancer is 4 times lower than the international average. The latter finding is even more remarkable when you know that the monks in that particular investigation were aged between 50 and 104. Their rates of lung, bowel and bladder cancer are zero.

Mount Athos monasteries, called by the British Guardian newspaper “a land without butter”, follow some simple rules.

Monks never eat meat, and only very sporadically eat fish. The bulk of their diet is rice, pasta, bread, pulses, fruits, vegetables, all entirely seasonal and home-grown in the monastery’s gardens.

More than 200 days of the year, including all Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and some religious periods like Lent and Advent, are called “abstention days” and strictly vegan, with only one meal per day.

The rest are non-fast days, on which dairy products, eggs, fish and home-brewed wine can be had. In moderation.

Each meal lasts 20 minutes, after which a bell rings and the monks have to leave the table.

Some of the monks’ favourite dishes are pasta with tomato sauce (who can blame them), rice with boiled greens and leeks, beans with oil, an aubergine, tomato and potato stew called "briam toulou", and chickpea patties.

Since 1994, scientists have regularly tested the monks for cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s, some of the West’s most feared diseases, and found astounding low or even zero rates of them.

According to scientists, the single most important factor in the monks’ low cancer incidence is their high intake of plant foods.

Professor Haris Aidonopoulos, urologist at the University of Thessaloniki in northern Greece, said that the key seems to be a diet with plenty of plant proteins, free from meat. It has been proven, he continued, that a dietary intake of protein from lentils and beans prevents the absorption of toxins.

Claire Williamson, nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, concurs: “Using pulses as a source of protein is something we could all learn from. We tend to rely more on meat, fish, eggs and dairy for protein. Pulses are great for variety, and they provide lots of fibre and iron.”

Pulses, like peas, beans, lentils, soya, chickpeas, are also a low-fat source of protein.

Michalis Hourdakis, a dietician with Athens University, added: “Meat has been associated with intestinal cancer, while fruit and vegetables help ward off prostate cancer.”

“The monks have perfected the typical Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fruit, vegetables, olive oil, bread, cereals and legumes and low in meat” said Maria Hassapidou, Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at Thessaloniki in Greece. “On Mount Athos, they have gone one step further by forfeiting meat and only occasionally eating fish, which means they have a very low intake of saturated fats and a high intake of Omega-3 fatty acids, both of which help further to prevent the incidence of cardiovascular disease.”

Junk food diet is killing UK's pets, say vets of leading charity

2008-03-07T13:26:00.000-08:00

This problem is not strictly speaking an animal rights one, but it shows how bad eating habits are spreading from humans to their non-human companions. Some time ago I would have said that what follows confirms the unhealthy effects of a meat-and-high-fat-based diet on human subjects, but now my awareness that this type of inference does not travel across species differences is more acute and therefore I am more cautious about extrapolating this way.

Huge food portions and junk food are making our pets obese and causing serious illness: this is a warning from one of Britain's leading pet charities, The Blue Cross.

The charity revealed that at least 20% of the pets it treats at its animal hospitals across the UK are now overweight. Indeed the problem is now so great that many Blue Cross hospitals have had to set up weight clinics. The Blue Cross's hospital staff think that the number of overweight pets they see now has more than doubled in the past 10 years.

The problem is so widespread that the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelt to Animals), the British main animal welfare association, has created a special website, for it, http://www.petsgetslim.co.uk: the above picture is its introductory graphic.

Burgers, hot dogs, curries, even baked beans and pizzas are responsible for the increase in pets' weight. High fat, high sugar diets and huge portions of pet food, says the charity, are causing pets to become seriously ill. Most overweight pets will have a health problem which has been caused by or exacerbated by their weight. It's very sad because many of these pets no longer have a decent quality of life as they have great difficulty doing the simplest of things such as walking or breathing.

Vets at The Blue Cross animal hospitals connect the increase in obesity among the British public and the same phenomenon in their pets. Not just cats and dogs - they see overweight budgies and rabbits too. They even had to put a pet rat to sleep after he became so obese from being fed curries that he could barely move: this case exemplifies the extent of the problem.

In the last few years Blue Cross vets have seen a rise in the number of pets with diabetes which they believe is a direct result of diet. Diabetes, respiratory problems, arthritis, heart disease and skin complaints can all be caused by animals being overweight.

The Blue Cross believes that the problem can often derive from a lack of education about which foods are suitable and unsuitable for their pets. Recently at a Blue Cross hospital a client brought her very overweight dog in. The dog had chronic joint problems, not helped by his excess weight, and is on anti-inflammatory drugs to help keep him comfortable. The dog's human companion was adamant that she was feeding her dog a sensible diet. However she did say that she had problems giving her dog the tablets, so every day she bought a chocolate bar to hide the tablets in.

So, there is a need to educate people on what they should and shouldn't be feeding their pets; The Blue Cross's weight clinics have also that function, and the charity has produced leaflets with advice. You can see them on its website http://www.allaboutpets.org.uk where you can also vote in the survey "Is your pet overweight?" which is on its homepage at the moment.

Big changes for free-range hens & chickens in EU law & UK consumers demand

2008-03-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

Good news on the free range front for hens and chickens. This year has started on a positive note in Europe and the UK with a series of news that promises well and has seen the involvement of the media in a useful role.

EU confirms 2012 ban on battery cages

First, on 8th January 2008 the European Commission has upheld the decision made in 1999 by the European Union when it passed the Laying Hens Directive (1999/74/EC) to ban battery cages for hens by 2012 in all its member states. There will be no postponement, the Commission said in a published report.

There had been fears that the date of 2012 could be delayed, due to pressures from egg industry lobbies in many EU countries that continued for many years. The International Egg Commission had previously issued statements saying that the EU Laying Hens Directive sent a ripple around the world, with the global battery cage industry fearing a domino effect in other countries like the USA, Canada and Australia.

18 million is the number of hens still kept in battery cages a year in the UK, and over 200 million each year in the EU.

The European Commission’s report in January concluded that the cost of switching to cage-free eggs could be less than one cent of a euro per egg, but the higher welfare standards could give EU producers a commercial advantage over non-EU competitors.

“There is clearly a growing market for animal welfare friendly products,” states the report. “Recent Eurobarometer surveys on consumer attitudes to animal welfare revealed that the majority of respondents would be willing to pay more for eggs sourced through animal welfare friendly production systems.”

Explaining the reasons for the decision to uphold the ban, EU Commissioner for Health Mr Markos Kyprianou said: “The commission listened to the demands of EU consumers and has taken concrete action to improve the welfare of laying hens”.

And this brings us to the second good news item which highlights the power of the media when they get involved in animal issues.

UK consumers switch to free-range due to media coverage of factory farms cruelty

In the UK there has been a massive change in consumers habits following TV programs and newspaper coverage of poultry factory farming.

In January 2008 Channel 4, a major British TV network, broadcast a series of food programmes with celebrity chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver launching a high-profile campaign to show the general public what battery cages and broiler sheds mean for the animals. At the same time the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) placed advertisements in national newspapers to create what appeared a coordinated campaign. The Independent, a major UK national newspaper, published secret footage from an intensive farm exposing the cruelty inflicted on broiler chickens.

The effects of this have been huge, and perhaps unpredicted.
Sales of free-range poultry shot up by 35 per cent in January 2008 compared with January 2007, while sales of factory-farmed chickens slumped by 7 per cent, according to a survey by the market research company TNS. The trend has continued throughout February as well.

Supermarkets shelves have been emptied of free-range birds, causing complaints from frustrated shoppers eager to embrace the movement away from factory farming.

The increase in free-range chickens sales would have been even higher if producers had been able to keep up with the demand.

“But the new national sales data suggests that shoppers' priorities have shifted dramatically. If the TNS data was extrapolated to the rest of the UK, it suggests sales of factory-farmed chickens dipped by 10 million, while shoppers bought 4.4 million more free-range chickens. Overall, chicken sales were down by 4.8 per cent, perhaps because many people, when faced with an absence of free-range chicken, simply bought no chicken” writes The Independent.

Sainsbury's supermarket poultry department agreed with the picture of roaring free-range sales: "Sales are up 50 per cent year on year so it means we are selling more free-range than we have ever sold. It's also fair to say sales would have been much greater if we had stock to meet demand."

At the same time, several major British supermarket chains, Sainsbury's, Morrison, Co-op, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose, will stop selling battery eggs or have already done so. Something similar is happening with the sale of intensively-reared broiler chickens. Within just two years, UK supermarkets could be selling only eggs laid by barn, free-range and organic free-range hens. The Co-op has also set a target of 2010 for being cage-free on all egg ingredients of all its own label products.

Hellmann's UK has made a groundbreaking decision to become free-range on all its mayonnaise by June 2008. A company representative had been questioned on its use of battery eggs during one of the Channel 4 programs on factory farming.

The tidal change in consumers demand has made front page news.

Chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who hosted some of the anti-factory-farming shows, intends to make a new television programme on chickens later this year. He said: "I am delighted we have helped create this change and I am delighted that, two months after the show, there appears to be no letting up.”

Growth in animal farming increases disease risks for humans, says FAO

2007-11-19T09:58:00.000-08:00

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has issued a serious warning against animal farming, especially intensive animal farming, for its risks to human health in a report entitled Industrial Livestock Production and Global Health Risks, published in September 2007 .

“The risk of disease transmission from animals to humans will increase in the future due to human and livestock population growth, dynamic changes in livestock production, the emergence of worldwide agro-food networks and a significant increase in the mobility of people and goods,” writes FAO in this policy brief [emphasis added].

Excessive concentration of animals in large scale industrial production units should be avoided, said Joachim Otte, FAO livestock policy expert.

The FAO stresses the reality of the enormous growth in both demand for meat and industrial animal rearing in recent years due to their expansion in Third World countries. In Asia, South America and parts of Africa, traditional animal farming methods are being replaced by intensive ones.

“These developments have potentially serious consequences for local and global disease risks, which, so far, have not been widely recognized by policy makers,” observed Joseph Domenech, FAO Chief Veterinary Officer.

Internationally, pig and poultry productions are the fastest growing and industrializing of all animal farming sectors, and industrial pig and poultry productions depend on a great movement of live animals. The movement of animals and the concentration of a high number of confined animals increases the likelihood of transfer of pathogens (disease-causing agents). In addition, confined animal houses produce a lot of waste, which may contain great quantities of pathogens and is disposed of on land without treatment, posing an infection risk for wild mammals and birds.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 virus is now a major international concern, but the ‘silent’ circulation of influenza A viruses (IAVs) in poultry and pigs should also be closely monitored globally, said FAO. Some IAVs are now widespread in commercial poultry and pigs and could lead to the emergence of a human influenza pandemic.

Although generally speaking this is in no way earth-shattering news in the sense that it’s what the animal rights movement has been saying for decades, it’s interesting to note that the body responsible for issuing these warnings is now a United Nations organization, with no concern for animal equality but purely for human health.

Eating bacon and sausages every day increases cancer risk by 20%, new authoritative report says

2007-11-01T14:13:00.000-07:00

A comprehensive, authoritative, 517-page new study published this Wednesday by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research points to three major lifestyle factors contributing to a much greater danger of contracting cancer: obesity, alcohol and not least red meat, especially processed or cured meats.

The cancer risk from processed meats is now considered to be comparable to that from smoking as a long recognised risk for lung cancer.

Eating 50 grams of cured meat a day increases the risk of colorectal (bowel) cancer by 21%. Compare that to tobacco: smoking 20 cigarettes every day increases the risk of lung cancer 20 to 40 fold.

The study simply recommends to avoid all processed meats like bacon, ham, sausages, salami and similar meats. For them there is no safe level of consumption, says Martin Wiseman, project director of the report.

This report represents the most comprehensive review of the evidence on the subject, and is considered a landmark. It is the result of five years of work by nine teams of 21 scientists who are world experts on cancer, who reviewed 7,000 studies on diet, weight, exercise, and their links to cancer.

Several types of food carry a risk of tumour, but nothing is as dangerous as cured or processed meat, because the bad effect of red meat is enhanced by the curing process. Bacon, ham, sausages, salami are particularly harmful.

It’s nothing fundamentally new. In fact the conclusions of the study are in harmony with the dietary recommendations of the World Health Organization, medical bodies, health experts, governments health departments: eat lots of fruits, vegetables and whole grains and reduce or avoid red meats, dairy products and fats if you wish to protect yourself against heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

But it’s something that most people still do not know well enough.

The American Institute for Cancer Research also published a survey of 1,000 American adults showing that the majority do not understand these risks. 71 per cent of the people interviewed still incorrectly think that pesticides are a major cancer risk, whereas in fact they are not even remotely the biggest culprit, given the infinitesimal amount in which they are normally ingested by human consumers. There is no evidence that pesticides are a risk factor in cancer.

But the “nice” foods that the general population of the West has grown up believing to be good for them are actually the worst killers, comparable to tobacco.

Of the people polled in the survey, just 38 per cent was aware of the link between cured meats and cancer, and only 49 per cent knew that diets poor in fruits and vegetables increased the risk of cancer.

"Americans are increasingly likely to attribute cancer to factors over which they have no control, and for which no proven links to the disease exist," the survey concludes. "This reflects an 'everything causes cancer' mindset".

It’s easy to see why: it’s harder to take control over one’s life, and make difficult choices and changes. This despite the fact that lifestyle causes of cancer are actually good news, because they mean that we can influence our future at least to a certain extent.

"We need to think about cancer as the product of many long term influences, not as something that 'just happens,'" said Dr Walter Willett, a nutrition expert at the Harvard School of Public Health in Massachusetts.

Incidentally, the new study on nutrition advises to avoid dietary supplements, which could represent a problem for vegans.

New Global Network Against the Fur Industry

2007-10-23T11:17:00.000-07:00

There is a new international network of organizations against fur, which includes groups and individual activists from the animal rights/liberation movements from various countries: Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom.

It is called Global Network Against the Fur Industry, it was formed this autumn and it’s started its activity with a campaign against the ESCADA group.

Escada is a high fashion international company, with headquarters in Aschheim/Munich, Germany. It is involved in many stages of the process of fur garments production and sales: from designing its own collections to producing them in its own factories, to selling them in its own shops, in shop-in-shops and in concessions in department stores.

The ESCADA Group owns a sussidiary company called Primera, which in turn owns other brands: apriori, BiBA, cavita and Laurèl. All these companies and brands use fur for their collections.

There are 240 ESCADA stores all over the world, mainly in Europe (130), Asia (86) and North America (25), with a few in South America, Africa, Australia. In addition, there are the stores of other brands owned by the company: almost 400 stores, mostly in Europe but also worldwide.

The choice of ESCADA as a target is due to the fact that this is a company which has a huge influence on the catwalks of the world; if Escada stops using fur, this will send a signal to the fashion industry as a whole.

The Global Network Against the Fur Industry has organized a first weekend of international action against ESCADA’s fur trade on 12th – 14th October 2007. Many protests have taken places worldwide.

In Florence, the Escada store remained closed all day on Sunday 14th October, to avoid bad publicity in view of the protest, with consequent loss of revenue. As a result, the campaigners moved their protest to a department store, COIN, to force them to stop selling fur following the example of two other major Italian department stores chains, La Rinascente and UPIM.

The ZARA, Guess, H&M campaigns show how important global cooperation of anti-fur organizations is and how effective it can be in changing the policies of major retail groups.

Visit the Global Network Against the Fur Industry new website.

Human health and animal ethics

2007-10-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

Human health and animal ethics posts

Human health & animal ethics: an introduction to this Category

Mesothelioma and asbestos

Carcinogens, food poisoning and meat

The greatest scientific event of the millennium

Thalidomide tragedy, side effects, history

Carcinogenicity studies on animals

Cancer and animals

The half vegan monks who are the world's healthiest people

Eating bacon and sausages every day increases cancer risk by 20%, new authoritative report says

Growth in animal farming increases disease risks for humans, says FAO

Meat workers health problems

Human health & animal ethics: an introduction to this Category

2007-10-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

Of all the major areas of animal exploitation, two of them, animal experimentation and farming, have two fundamental characteristics in common, which will make them, in my opinion, the real battleground on which the case for animal rights and equality will be fought.

What vivisection and farming have in common is: 1) they involve an enormous number of animals, far superior, at least in the case of farming, to other areas of animal abuse; 2) there is an appearance (I underline “appearance”) of genuine conflict between the liberation of animals from these two forms of abuse and human health, which in many people’s minds, unfortunately, justifies them on moral grounds.

For this reason I’ve created a special category in the current blog, Human health and animal ethics, to explore this assumed conflict between human and non-human animal interests. In animal testing, the conflict is purported to be in the fact that renouncing it would deprive medicine of an irreplaceable tool of immense value, or at least this is the claim. In animal farming, the conflict is said to derive from the fact that humans need to eat animal flesh products to stay healthy, believed by many people to be true despite the repeated assertions to the contrary by the most prestigious medical authorities and organizations in the world, who say that the opposite is true and vegetarianism is indeed a healthier option.

All other forms of animal exploitation do not involve any real, important human interest. Nobody can claim that they will die or become ill without a fur coat (not even Eskimos), if they don’t attend circuses, if they don’t visit zoos, don’t go fishing or hunting.

The lame excuses of some of these animal abusers, like hunters justifying torturing foxes to death because they are “pests”, are only seriously believed or appeared to be believed by themselves and their close supporters.

But with vivisection and animal farming, the belief that they are necessary for human health is widely held by a majority, so it needs to be addressed with empirical and logical instruments. I’ll do that in this category, which has the advantage of tackling both major areas of animal abuse with one common approach useful for both, and I will also explore the tricky question of whether veganism can really be suitable for human health: on this issue I have to say that I am not convinced myself. People wouldn’t need vitamin tablets to supplement a vegan diet if the latter were an appropriate, fully well-balanced diet. And if you look at it from a naturalistic viewpoint, the human species is not a herbivorous species: we use a similar argument against meat-eating when we say that humans are not a carnivorous species, so it seems to me that, if we are intellectually honest, we recognize that the argument cuts both ways.

San Marino bans vivisection

2007-10-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

Maybe a small step, but it seems highly significant to me: the Republic of San Marino, an independent state lying entirely in north-east Italy, has abolished all experiments on animals.

This tiny country on the Adriatic Coast, which already has the record of being the oldest republic in the world, now can be proud of another record in the history of civilization: to be the first country on the globe to totally forbid animal experimentation.

In February of this year the Associazione Sammarinese Protezione Animali (A.P.A.S.) presented a law proposal supported by citizens’ signatures to ban vivisection, which on the 20th September 2007 has been approved by the General Council, San Marino’s legislative body.

Now San Marino can call itself a “cruelty-free country”, at least as far as animal experimentation is concerned.

"We are very happy of this result, so good and quick" say Marina Berati from NoVivisezione.org and Massimo Tettamanti, Europe manager for I-CARE (Centro Internazionale per le Alternative nella Ricerca e nella Didattica), who, along with Stefano Cagno from Rome’s Lega Anti-Vivisezione, have been helping to achieve this outcome, "and A.P.A.S. volunteers have been extremely determined and successful. From now on San Marino will be off-limits for chemical and pharmaceutical companies carrying out animal tests and for all research institutions, both public and private, often funded by unaware members of the public, which base their research on vivisection".

A.P.A.S. Press Office says that thanks to this new law, which heavily punishes animal experimenters, San Marino Republic will represent a pole of attraction for companies using methods alternative to vivisection, which are better, more reliable and cheaper too.

I don’t know how many animal tests were conducted in San Marino before the introduction of this law. But I don’t think that the number of animals saved is the only issue here. I believe that this is a breakthrough anyway, because it establishes a precedent and has great historical significance, morally and politically.

Ethical wool

2007-08-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

There is a British company producing wool garments, Izzy Lane, that is actually doing good to animals. So, if you like wool but don’t want to contribute to the exploitation and abuse of sheep, here is the solution. In the words of the founder, Isobel Davies, in her interview to London’s Sunday Times Magazine, “The more successful our clothes are, the more sheep we can save.”

This is because Isobel Davies, former member of the indie band Edith Strategy and now 45, had the idea of starting a label selling knitwear made with wool from sheep rescued from slaughter.

She became a vegetarian at 17 when she first met a vegetarian and discovered that it’s not necessary to eat meat. “From that second,” she says, “I never touched it again.”

The idea for the label Izzy Lane originated when Davies discovered that British farmers were discarding the wool from slaughtered sheep while Britain imports wool from Australia and New Zealand. She thought of using British wool and at the same time saving animals from the meat market.

So, now, whenever they hear of sheep going to be slaughtered, her company Izzy Lane buys them. They buy sheep destined to the abattoir for being male, lame, too old, or having ”blemishes” like black spots.

Her flock of Wensleydale and Shetland sheep is now living happy lives (if not treated like breeding machines, they can live for 15 years or so) in their Sheep Sanctuary. In July, when they shear them, the sheep “are relieved to be rid of their fleeces and seem rejuvenated”, as Davies put it.

Isobel says on her company’s website izzylane.co.uk: “As a longstanding vegetarian I have always been confronted with the argument that sheep would not exist if we didn’t eat them. Izzy Lane hopes to demonstrate an economic model whereby sheep can exist, be valued and have a place in our world without becoming meat. It offers another way.”

Meat workers health problems

2006-12-13T16:26:00.000-08:00

Meat is not just bad for the animals slaughtered, of course, and for the humans who consume it. It’s bad for the humans who work in the meat industry too.

Few people realize that, in a country like the USA, meatpacking is the most dangerous occupation.

In the year 2000, about 25 percent of all employees of American meatpacking plants had non-fatal occupational injuries or job-related illnesses: that is as many as 4 times the national average for all private industry sectors.

In addition, serious injuries and illnesses (measured by lost workdays) in the meatpacking sector are almost 5 times the national average in all private industry sectors (14.3 percent versus 3 percent).

The frequency of disorders associated with repeated traumas, mainly back problems and tendinitis, is an astonishing 30 times higher than the private-industry national average. This is the effect produced by the working pace of some modern slaughterhouses, which “process” as many as 400 cattle per hour, and in which some workers make up to 10,000 repetitive knife cuts every day.

So much for the idea that man is a “natural” meat-eater. Meat seems to be associated with diseases and unnatural lifestyles wherever it occurs.

Christmas Anti-Fur Week at Harrods

2006-12-11T11:06:00.000-08:00

CAFT (Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade UK) is organising a fur week of action in the run up to Christmas next week at Harrods, in Knightsbridge, London, Europe's largest department store, and the last one in the UK to still sell real fur.

Harrods has over a million square feet of floor space, and has large amounts of real fur throughout the store, made from a wide variety of animals including fox, beaver, mink, chinchilla, wolf, coyote, rabbit and squirrel.

In recent years, CAFT has successfully campaigned to persuade the few remaining department stores in the UK selling fur, Harvey Nichols, Selfridges and then Liberty, to adopt fur-free policies.

That left Harrods as the only department store selling fur. In October last year CAFT launched the Harrods campaign, and within two months, Harrods went to the High Court to obtain an injunction against CAFT and three named individuals, applying to have the protests moved away from the store.

Anti-Fur activists have been carrying out regular protests outside Harrods.

Now, to persuade Harrods to stop selling fur, the campaign intensifies and there will be protests every day in the week leading up to Christmas, a vital time of the year when the store makes a large proportion of its annual profits.

Whether or not you can make the protests, please politely email, phone, fax, write to Harrods during anti-fur week (see below for details) to request that it takes the compassionate decision to stop the sale of all real animal fur and adopt a fur-free policy. Remember to point out that fur farming is illegal in the UK, so the store should come into line with the wishes of the British public and the democratic will of Parliament.

Harrods Ltd 87-135 Brompton Road
Knightsbridge London SW1X 7XL
Telephone 020 7730 1234
Fax 020 7581 0470
customer.services@harrods.com

Harrods Corporate Service
corporate.service@harrods
+44 (0)20 7225 5843

Other email addresses
Ladies.fashion@harrods.com
service@harrods-casino.com
direct.mail@harrods.com

If you get any replies please forward them to:

CAFT
PO Box 38
Manchester M60 1NX
0845 330 7955
caft@caft.org.uk

Vegetarian dogs

2006-12-06T14:24:00.000-08:00

Can dogs be vegetarian? Judging from the fact that in England more than 50,000 best man's friends are fed on the vegan product Happidog Supermeal, the answer should be 'yes'. Among them, are many dogs of celebrities.

Everyone knows that Paul and the late Linda McCartney's dogs were vegetarian. And what about the pop singer Howard Jones, who says: "I spoke to my vet before I put my dog Benny on a non-meat diet and we worked out his meals together. Benny was seven then, and he's certainly as fit as any other dog".

Script-writer Carla Lane, who dreamed up British TV's The Liver Birds, Solo, Butterflies and Bread, is another case. A vegetarian for 40 years, she said: "I've always had vegetarian wolfhounds. My previous wolfhound Egor lived on a vegetarian diet from the age of five onwards. The vet advised the diet after he had a haemorrhage and a stomach complaint. "Wolfhounds normally live for six to nine years, but Egor lived a very long and full life and was healthy right to the end. His eyesight and teeth were perfect. For two years he lived with a rather racy heartbeat, which is all the more reason why it was exceptional that he should have lasted. He loved being a vegetarian dog. He never showed any interest in bones at all".

Not everyone agrees, though. Desmond Morris, the animal behaviour expert, is opposed: "It's not only wrong; it's cruel and stupid too. Dogs are natural carnivores, and to deny them meat and substitute vegetables means that they lack a vital part of their diet". His opinion is shared by many.

Yet, to base the argument purely on the concept of "carnivore", both in the sense of belonging to this order of mammals and of meat eater, does not help because this concept, taken as an absolute barrier beyond which it's impossible to go, does not mean much. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, explains: "Although the word "carnivores" means meat eaters, the diet of these animals ranges from an exclusively meat-eating one to an almost totally vegetarian one. Some Ursidae (bears), Procyonidae (racoons) and Canidae (dogs) depend very much on vegetation, and the giant panda lives almost entirely on bamboo sprouts". For jackals, close relatives of our Fidos, fruits form an important part of their diet; coyotes, wolves and foxes consume great amounts of fruits and berries even in times of the year when it's not difficult to find something to eat, which indicates a genuine predilection for these foods.

The idea that domestic dogs are perfectly healthy on a vegetarian diet is now, anyway, the most commonly accepted by vets and pet experts. The RSPCA is fully in favour. Its chief veterinary officer agrees that it is quite possible to feed a dog on a vegetarian diet: "However, you do have to be careful to get the right balance of protein, vitamins and minerals. If you are proposing to turn a dog from a meat and biscuit diet to a vegetarian one, it is best to consult your own vet and to introduce the change gradually".

Neil Wolff, American vet and Chairman of the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights, says: "Dogs and cats on vegetarian (or close to vegetarian) diets often do better in terms of coat condition, kidneys, liver and heart. With geriatric animals we often supplement with additional vitamins, amino acids, anti-oxidants or herbs".

The UK Vegetarian Society has received so many requests of advice on dogs' menus, that it has published an information sheet on the subject. A typical day should be divided into two meals: breakfast (morning or midday) and dinner (afternoon or evening). For breakfast, dogs should be given wholegrain cereals (for example muesli) with milk, adding, if necessary and according to taste, honey or dried powdered yeast. For dinner, pulses like baked beans or cooked lentils, or textured vegetable protein, or nutmeat, or else, for lacto-vegetarians, eggs or cheese, adding to the whole lot raw or cooked vegetables. The guidelines remind owners that dogs need some hard foods to chew to exercise their gums and jaws: suitable for this purpose are raw whole carrots, cabbage stumps and apples, and hard wholemeal dog biscuits.

Dr. Alan Long, of the Vegetarian Society, warns: "You must know your dog and what he likes to eat and follow his liking. A dog does not have a vast stomach area for fibrous foods, so watch he doesn't get fat. Try him with vegetables, wholewheat bread or toast, and make sure he has oil in his diet for a shiny coat and keep him fit by giving him lots of walks. "It's easier to start a puppy off. At eight weeks old introduce sloppy baby foods, cereals, gruel and mixed savouries. You can then introduce eggs, milk and cheese, remembering a puppy needs more food in proportion to its weight than a dog".

There are cases in which a vegetarian diet is recommended by the vets themselves. Skin allergies and digestive problems are often caused by meat. The ingredients used in the preparation of some dog foods are slaughterhouse by-products unsuitable for human consumption, such as diseased or damaged parts of the slaughtered animal, chicken feathers, horse hair and other refuse. Recent research has shown that the consumption of great quantities of these impurities contribute to gastro-intestinal and allergic diseases. Some skin disorders, such as itch and loss of hair, have been effectively cured simply by improving the animal's nutrition. The American product Nature's Recipe, for instance, has been formulated just for dogs with skin disorders. It contains soya flour, rice flour, potatoes, carrots, salt, spices, with a number of vitamins and minerals added.

Singer's ambiguity on vivisection is damaging to animals

2006-11-28T13:27:00.000-08:00

The BBC programme Monkeys, Rats and Me: Animal Testing, shown on 27 November 2006, does not, as one could have easily predicted, fulfill any of the promises declared in its press releases.

It does not “attempt to determine if these experiments are effective”: it actually rather takes their effectiveness for granted, blindly accepting the words of experimenters without any search for independent evidence.

And it, or its presenter, does not “have a ring-side seat at the heart of the conflict”, especially it does not have a balanced, unbiased position giving equal weight to both sides of the “debate”.

Throughout the programme we heard only one voice arguing the case for the animals, that of animal rights activist Mel Broughton.

Other than that, and the occasional shouting of demonstrators, the show consisted in a long succession of pro-vivisection voices.

Among the latter, unfortunately, one has to list that of Peter Singer.

It was not entirely a surprise, knowing Singer’s utilitarian position that, to put it simply, “the end justifies the means”, that is, if an experiment can demonstrably save more lives of higher value by sacrificing fewer lives of lower value (and the calculation of suffering is similarly in favour of the experiment being performed), then it should be carried out.

The rights’ view in ethics is certainly superior to the utilitarian one, in my opinion.

So, Singer has made statements that have resulted in headlines like “Animal guru gives tests his blessing” in The Observer of November 26, 2006, which says:

“Monkey research has benefits, equal rights philosopher admits.

“One of the most important figures in the animal rights movement has publicly backed the use of living creatures in medical experiments. The endorsement - by the philosopher Peter Singer, who coined the phrase Animal Liberation and whose Seventies book on the subject led to the creation of the animal rights movement - has surprised observers.

“Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton, is renowned for insisting animals should have equal rights with humans but is quoted, on camera, backing research in which experiments on monkeys are carried out to develop surgery for Parkinson's and other patients.

“'It is clear at least some animal research does have benefits,' Singer admits on Monkeys, Rats and Me: Animal Testing, which will be screened on BBC2 tomorrow. 'I would certainly not say that no animal research could be justified and the case you have given sounds like one that is justified.'

“The admission has delighted scientists, including the Oxford surgeon Tipu Aziz, the doctor involved in this work. 'It is a very encouraging sign,' he said.”

The Tipu Aziz in question, the programme forgets to mention but we’d better remind people, is the same man who, in an interview with The Guardian on March 4, 2006, defended cosmetics tests on animals:

“In an interview with the Guardian, Tipu Aziz said: "People talk about cosmetics being the ultimate evil. But beautifying oneself has been going on since we were cavemen. If it's proven to reduce suffering through animals tests, it's not wrong to use them. To say cosmetics is an absolute evil is absurd."”

Obviously for Aziz, the only ethical question about cosmetics testing on animals seems to be the Islamic problem with women’s wearing make up and similar ways of “beautifying oneself”. The moral issue of the treatment of animals is so far away from his frame of mind as Islamabad is from London. He is so remote from this type of problem that he has totally misunderstood it, and believes that the battle to fight is against people who think that “cosmetics is an absolute evil”.

So, when he started one of his many utterances during yesterday’s programme with “I don’t think there’s an issue”, I knew exactly what he meant. Animal welfare is not an issue for him.

And this is the kind of man whose words Singer took at their face value, without a challenge, when he said something to this effect: “You are the expert, so you will know whether your experiments are useful and justified”.

It took Singer two minutes to make up his mind on the matter. Wow! What a philosopher! What about saying “You are presumably an expert, but you are also the person with powerful vested interests in the continuation of your experiments”?

As for the other two most recurrent pro-vivisection voices in the show, one, Laurie Pycroft, is a school drop-out. The other, Colin Blakemore, is notorious for having carried out “experiments” in which he blinded kittens by sewing their eyes shut from birth: needless to say, those experiments never led to any “medical breakthrough”.

An in-depth study of his vision research on animals concludes:

“we found no evidence that our understanding amblyopia's causes or treatments have improved as a consequence of this research”.

I just hope that Singer’s views were misrepresented by selective quoting, a well-known journalistic and propagandistic tool. He may have added something which in fact he has written many times, ie that Aziz should not perform on non-human primates experiments that he would not be prepared to perform on humans of equal or inferior intellect and/or sentience, perhaps orphaned infants. That at least would avoid the speciesist bias.

Either way, Singer’s opinions are easily misreprented in this way, and he’s giving the media and the vivisection lobby powerful weapons.

Peter Singer’s ambiguity on the issue of vivisection is extremely damaging to the animals’ case.

The fact that Singer was given a voice on this programme, but none of the many people who have strong medical arguments to oppose vivisection were heard, makes one think who is tame and who is a powerful enemy of the vivisection lobby.

Post hoc, propter hoc - a common fallacy of vivisection apologists

2006-11-22T13:08:00.000-08:00

The reason why so many claims made by defenders of vivisection are unfounded or plainly false is, I think, the following.
They make the mistake of thinking that "post hoc, propter hoc" (after that, therefore because of that).

For example, they may say that a certain cure or drug has been found "because" of animal experimentation, when in fact it could be that it was simply found "after" (unfortunately) time and money was devoted to animal experimentation.
The example of effective rehydration for diarrhea (mentioned some time ago in a letter to Peter Singer in The New York Book Review) seems a good one.

Bruce Max Feldmann says in answer to the letter to Singer:
"Rothman claims that oral fluid rehydration of Third World diarrheas is a treatment ‘based on many years of animal experimentation.’ To the contrary, in the three seminal papers on oral fluid rehydration for severe human diarrhea there is not a single reference to oral fluid rehydration experiments in laboratory animals with diarrhea. What really happened was that some more-creative-than-average health professionals said to themselves: ’Hey, wait a minute. Third World people are dying right and left from diarrheas. And intravenous fluids and fluid administration equipment necessary to save their lives are not affordable. So why not at least try oral fluids, even though we've been taught that they aren't much use in severe diarrhea. Maybe they'll help.’

"Well, oral fluids did help—a lot; tens of thousands of lives have been saved as a result. So Rothman's example to argue the importance of animal research illustrates precisely the opposite point — Singer's point: more of the world's limited medical resources should be allocated to immediate human life-saving efforts and to non-sentient animal research; less resources should be expended on animal research of questionable ethics and dubious value."

Here's a good example of how probably someone had jumped to the conclusion that a treatment had been found due to animal experimentation, because maybe there had been considerable resources devoted to animal experiments, but the actual solution was found in another way.
So a link which did not exist was established.

I suspect many cases will be of the same kind.
Post hoc, propter hoc is a very common fallacy.
We tend to assume that, if a fact follows another fact, the second was caused by the first.
See, for example, the idea that psychotherapy "cures" only because people after some time feel better: they probably would anyway (spontaneous remission).

The way vivisection apologists talk about animal experiments sometimes is a bit like this.
Suppose that someone, a traveller, has taken a long and tortuous route to get somewhere, not knowing that there was in fact a simpler, direct, shorter one.
He may then say that it was only thanks to that long route that he got to his destination.
Well, it's true. But the fact that he actually got to his destination through that route says nothing about alternative routes he might have taken which could have been more effective.

In the case of animal experimentation, furthermore, in many cases the link between the route taken and the results achieved is not so obvious but is on the contrary highly speculative.
When alternative methods are looked for, they are often found: I said “often”, but I would say “always”.

A well known example. Years ago the campaigner Henry Spira tackled Revlon over their use of rabbits to test cosmetics for potential eye damage, and exerted enough pressure to persuade the company to put $750,000 into the search for alternatives. Having seen the public relations disaster that Revlon had narrowly averted, Avon, Bristol-Myers and other major American cosmetics corporations soon followed suit. Though it took ten years for the research to yield the desired results, they did find what they were looking for: alternative methods. And so many cosmetics corporations can now truthfully state that their products are not tested on animals.

RSPCA Freedom Food under scrutiny

2006-10-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

Apparently the RSPCA (for non-Brits: it is the UK’s main animal welfare organization and one of the oldest in the world) is under scrutiny for its Freedom Food campaign.

The animal protection charity has just published a report to coincide with its Freedom Food's Farm Animal Week (25 Sept - 1 Oct). Entitled Everyone's a winner, the 30-page document describes the terrible conditions in which chickens reared for their meat (broilers) are kept on intensive farms.

It then compares the Assured Chicken Production (ACP) standard (Red Tractor logo), the chicken industry’s own assurance scheme, covering over 90% of UK chicken producers, providing a “baseline”, the minimum requirements that allow factory farming of poultry to go unchallenged, with the RSPCA Freedom Food scheme.

It goes on to say that the the RSPCA standard is better not only for the welfare of chickens, but also for the consumers and the producers and retailers, hence the title of the report.

The problem is that farms that had been certified by Freedom Food have been found in the past guilty of neglecting their animals, and have been the subject of BBC Watchdog investigations. Animal rights campaigners say Freedom Food is still large-scale industrial farming with terrifying consequences for animals.

In fact, organic (certified by the Soil Association) and free-range broilers have a better life than Freedom Food birds, but these are reared in better conditions than is the norm for the industry and its own ACP standard.

This week's Observer article on broiler chickens

2006-09-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

This week The Observer's supplement Food Monthly Magazine carries a good article on the conditions in which broiler chickens are reared and the RSPCA's Freedom Food scheme.

Of course it is not going far enough because it is not promoting a vegetarian diet, but it is good for a wide-circulation Sunday paper to devote space to the welfare of farm animals. I usually don't like The Observer, but in this case I have to say: well done.

A letter to Cancer Research UK

2006-09-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

Some health charities ask for donations to help people with diseases and disabilities and then spend the money they receive from a trusting (sometimes gullible) public to fund horrific experiments on dogs, rats, mice, primates, rabbits, hamsters, pigs, and other animals.

Instead of wrecking animals’ bodies in the application of a highly unreliable experimental method in pursuit of an impossible scientific answer, compassionate charities concentrate their funds on the research which holds the best hope for treatment: with humans. They know that we can find treatments through modern methods in alternative to vivisection, and they finance only non-animal research.

One of the charities which do fund animal experiments has written to me. This was my reply to them.

You can use this letter, indeed I encourage you to use it.

Letter to Cancer Research UK:

We have received a letter from your organization asking for funds. We want to inform you that we do not support your charity in any way, because you fund animal experimentation. This is a highly immoral practice, no less criminal than murder and torture. We find hypocritical that an organization that claims to be a charity and to take the moral high ground can fund such a criminal practice. You should take example from the charities which do not conduct or fund experiments on animals, such as Caring Cancer Trust, New Approaches to Cancer, Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research and many others.

Sincerely,

Signature

Are pesticides saving animals' lives?

2006-09-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

"Kenya plans massive elephant translocation to ease human-wildlife conflict." We constantly hear news like this. In Africa in particular, animals living in the wild have to "make room", one way or the other, for a growing human population which uses low-yield, traditional agricultural methods and therefore requires much more land than if it used high-yield, modern methods involving pesticides.

Elephants and gorillas, among others, are always losing habitat to humans.

We know that occasionally birds and other non-human animals accidentally eat the pesticides and are killed by them.

The question is: what kills more non-human animals, pesticides or the alternative to them, the farming techniques which require much more land and destroy much more wildlife habitats?

Pesticides may be more good than bad for non-human animals.

Animal tests responsible for Elephant men drug disaster, UK official body says

2006-08-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

The so-called “Elephant Man drug victims”, the 8 healthy volunteers affected by the TGN1412 drug trial disaster of last March in the UK, have just been told to expect early death. A medical assessment by immunologist Professor Richard Powell indicated that they face contracting cancer and other fatal diseases.

This is the umpteenth disaster caused by the bio-medical research establishment’s obstinate reliance on animal testing.

The drug in question, TGN1412, had indeed been tested on animals, as is unfortunately always the case, including non-human primates.
The company conducting them claims that these experiments showed the drug to be safe.

The result of the investigation into this incident by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK government official regulatory body, says:

“…this product showed a pharmacological effect in man which was not seen in preclinical tests in animals at much higher doses” (emphasis added).

In their report, the MHRA found no deficiencies in the drug’s animal, pre-clinical and clinical work: everything was in order, including dose measurement and administration. In short, the MHRA thought that the actions of the companies involved did not contribute to the serious adverse reactions.

Similarly, German Regulatory Authorities inspected the production, manufacture, testing, storage and distribution of the material, and found no deficiencies which could have contributed to the tragic adverse events.

The MHRA concluded that the most likely cause of the adverse effects in trial human subjects was an unpredicted biological action of the drug in humans.

When tested on animals, then, the drug had appeared to be safe in animal models, but researchers have observed that there are reasons why these may not be indicative of the response in humans. Other similar drugs, tested safe on animals, have previously shown side effects in human trials.

Even the British Medical Journal is starting to see the writing on the wall for animal research:

“Why were all eight volunteers given the drug at the same time? Several observers have asked whether minimal standards should include observing a single dose in a single carefully monitored individual, rather than relying solely on dose as a function of animal lethality.” (emphasis added)

And the BMJ goes on to say:

“Relative lack of severe toxicity in animal models should never be construed as a guarantee of safety in man, as the story of thalidomide taught us.” (emphasis added)

In Britain the Early Day Motion 2088, a new bill tabled by the Member of Parliament David Taylor, argues for more government funding for new technology advances, such as micro-dosing, which would make human testing far safer and accurate.

Vivisection opinion polls

2006-07-27T06:09:00.000-07:00

Looking at MORI polls of public opinion in the UK on the subject of animal experiments, you think you've spotted a clear trend but then you realize it's not so simple.

There have been 3 MORI polls on the subject in the last few years: 1999, 2002, 2005.

Comparing the data, the trend seems to be going badly for anti-vivisection.

In the 2005 survey, 75% of the GB population responded that they can accept animal experimentation so long as it is for medical purposes: the corresponding percentage in 2002 was the same 75%, but in 1999 the figure was only 64%. Correspondingly, fewer people than before disagree with that statement: 14% in 2005, 15% in 2002, 24% in 1999.

A similar proportion (76%) say they can accept animal experimentation as long as there is no unnecessary suffering to the animals (it was 69% in 1999). 72% of adults claim to agree with animal experimentation for all types of medical research where there is no alternative (61% in 1999).

Something must be wrong, though, because in 2005 53% (58% in 1999) said they can accept animal research only for life-threatening diseases, which seems somehow odd in view of the 75% accepting animal experimentation so long as it is for medical purposes: clearly the questionnaire used in this poll, allowing respondents to agree or disagree with a number of statements (some of which limit the significance of others) gives results which are not as clearcut as it seems prima facie.

That response of 53% accepting animal research only for life-threatening diseases is relatively positive for the anti-vivisection cause, which qualifies the magnitude of that other datum: 75% accepting animal experimentation so long as it is for medical purposes.

Anyway, another depressing result is that fewer respondents in the poll now report a lack of trust for the regulatory systems in place, compared with before. In 1999, 65% of people agreed with the statement "I have a lack of trust in the regulatory system about animal research". By 2002 this had dropped to 50% and in 2005 to 36%. And the proportion actively disagreeing with this statement has grown from 11% (in 1999) to 19% (in 2002) to 37% in 2005.

In 1999, 29% said that they trusted scientists not to cause unnecessary suffering to the animals being experimented on. In 2002 this figure had increased to 39%, and in 2005 it is 52%. The corresponding figures for the proportions who disagree with this statement are 56% (in 1999), 44% (in 2002), and 31% in 2005.

52% of participants expect that the rules in Britain on experimentation are well enforced, compared to 22% who think they are not. The agreement figure has risen from 29% in 1999 and 40% in 2002; and the disagree figure has decreased from 41% in 1999 and 29% in 2002.

On the other hand, online opinion polls often produce opposite results. Check these:

Sky

Mister Poll

Irish Health

BBC

True, online opinion polls are not necessarily reliable but that also applies to all opinion polls: what makes a survey reliable is the methodology used, not just whether it is done on the internet or offline.

We can make a number of conjectures. The MORI 1999 survey was conducted for the Medical Research Council, but the MORI 2002 and 2005 surveys, markedly more favourable to vivisectors, were conducted for the so-called Coalition for Medical Progress (CMP), an organization which the National Anti-Vivisection Society described as "an extremist group of vested interests representing a very narrow area of medical research", responsible among other things for the online petition in favour of animal testing also signed by the Prime Minister Tony Blair.

We know that one of the reasons why opinion polls have limited reliability lies in the way questions are formulated and in the attitudes of the pollsters towards the respondents. So, a different sponsor for the poll may produce significant differences.

Another factor which may have had an impact, producing different results over the years, could be the diverse composition of the population polled, due to the great influx of immigration to Britain of the last few years.

Last but not least, we could also ask ourselves whether certain tactics of direct action or other methods, perceived by the public to be means of intimidation and overly aggressive, might have alienated sectors of public opinion.
The rise of new pro-vivisection groups, like Pro-Test for instance, seems to be another sign of this.

One thing which I've noticed is that the veil of secrecy that once surrounded vivisection, as far as public opinion and popular culture are concerned, has now dropped.
Some time ago, in films and on the TV the words "animal models" or "experiments on mice" were taboo and never uttered: the reference was always to an unspecified "research" or "scientific studies".
That taboo seems to be gone now.

I find this significant because "popular culture" is indicative of the public mood. What I think it shows is that the public has now been exposed to the issue of animal experimentation enough to be de-sensitised: it's got used to it.

The end of the secrecy could be a good thing: it could mean that the debate over vivisection is now more widespread and centre stage. Or it could mean that people are more accepting of animal experiments, as the MORI polls seem to indicate, in which case maybe we have to review something we've done wrong.

Fen-Phen drug combination: another case where animal studies misled research

2006-07-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

Weight-loss drugs fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, used in the fen-phen combination, caused heart valve problems in patients. Cases of primary pulmonary hypertension stopped the use of the Fen-Phen drug combination as a weight-loss aid.

Some sources say that the combination had been tested on animals (specifically, dogs and cats) and it was safe for them, others say that the individual substances had been tested on animals but they had not been extensively tested on animals in combination.

Gina Kolata reported in the New York Times of September 16, 1997, on fen-phen:
"Why weren't these problems [heart valve abnormalities] noticed before? Dieters in Europe had used Dexfenfluramine for decades. Dr. Friedman [an FDA official] said he could only speculate. No one had initially thought to examine patients' hearts, he said, because animal studies had never revealed heart abnormalities and heart valve defects are not normally associated with drug use." (emphasis added)

Health benefits of vegetarian diet

2006-06-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

There are many reasons to be vegetarian purely to improve your health and to diminish the risk of contracting the diseases that kill most people in the Western world.
Research shows that in many ways a vegetarian diet is healthier than that of a typical meat-eater.
The vegetarian diet falls closely into line with the recommendations issued in two UK government-commissioned reports by the National Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy.
And, for food poisoning and diseases spread from farm animals, should vegetarians be concerned about BSE? As far as we know, there are no cases of cow pus, blood or prions being observed in rice, oat or soya milk.

So, I've collected here some authoritative sources on the subject.

* British Medical Association: "A vegetarian diet confers a wide range of health benefits. Research has proven that vegetarians suffer less from many of the diseases linked to a modern Western diet: obesity, coronary heart disease, hypertension, type II diabetes, diet-related cancers, diverticular disease, constipation and gall stones."

* The American Dietetic Association: "Scientific data suggest positive relationships between a vegetarian diet and reduced risk for several chronic degenerative diseases and conditions, including obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and some types of cancer. Vegetarian diets, like all diets, need to be planned appropriately to be nutritionally adequate.
"POSITION STATEMENT
"It is the position of The American Dietetic Association (ADA) that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, are nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases."

* A major report by the World Cancer Research Fund in association with the American Institute for Cancer Research published in 1997 provides the most comprehensive world-wide review of diet and cancer research, presenting dietary guidelines for prevention, public policy recommendations and a thorough review of the scientific evidence.
Here are the report's main findings:

High intakes of animal protein might increase the risk of a number of colorectal, breast and endometrial cancers
An increase in animal fat consumption may increase the risk of lung, colon, rectum, breast, endometrium and prostate cancers
Diets high in milk and dairy products may increase the risk of prostate and kidney cancer
Protein of plant origin from cereals and pulses is as good as protein of animal origin
The typical Western-style diet was condemned with these words: "...within the last 50 years, the trend has been to invest in the very resource-intensive rearing of animals. The consumption of fatty meats and of meat, milk and other dairy products has also been promoted with the incorrect message that such foods are especially healthy. Increasing consumption of meat and fatty foods will lead to a massive increase in incidence of a large number of diseases that are expensive to treat. It reflects the impact of widespread perceptions of a cultural link between affluence and Western lifestyles. Traditional diets, when adequate and varied, are likely to be generally more healthy."

From "Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer: a global perspective". World Cancer Research Fund, 105 Park St, London W1Y 3FB. Tel: +44 (0)20 7343 4200. American Institute for Cancer Research, 1759 R St NW, Washington, DC 20009. Tel 001 709 329 7744. Fax 001 202 328 7226

* From Encyclopædia Britannica:
"Medical and nutrition professionals around the world continued to examine the health benefits of low-fat, high-fibre diets. One style of eating that was receiving a major share of attention was the diet of the Mediterranean region, where the population had traditionally enjoyed low rates of heart disease and some cancers. In 1994 an international group of experts interested in traditional eating patterns developed the Mediterranean diet pyramid as a model for healthful eating. The Mediterranean pyramid called for a largely plant-based diet. Cheese, yogurt, and olive oil were included with fruits, vegetables, and grains as foods that could be eaten daily, while red meat was to be consumed only a few times a month... Meanwhile, in France investigators from the Lyon Heart Study demonstrated that a Mediterranean-style diet was effective in reducing the risk of further heart problems in individuals who had already experienced a heart attack. Some 300 patients were encouraged to increase their consumption of grains, fruits, and vegetables and to eat less red meat and more poultry. The butter in their diet was replaced by a spread rich in alpha-linolenic acid, which some experts believed to have cardioprotective effects. During a follow-up, which averaged 27 months, there were three coronary deaths and five nonfatal heart attacks among those on the diet, compared with corresponding figures of 16 and 17 in a similar group that received no dietary advice.
"The health benefits of a vegetarian diet were substantiated by the results of a 12-year survey conducted by nutritionists in London and Oxford, England. Comparing the fates of more than 5,000 British meat eaters with those of some 6,000 who were not meat eaters, the investigators reported a 40% lower rate of death from cancer among the vegetarians. Those who did not eat meat also had a markedly lower rate of atherosclerotic heart disease, though this was at least partly attributable to their much larger proportion of nonsmokers."

* From Baby and Child Care (1998 edition) by Benjamin Spock, M.D., considered the greatest authority on baby and child care:
“If a mother drinks cow’s milk, which I do not recommend, some of the cow’s proteins will actually pass into the breast milk and actually irritate the baby’s stomach. … The nursing mother’s daily diet should include the following nutrients: (1) plenty of vegetables, (2) fresh fruit, (3) beans, peas, and lentils, and (4) whole grains. Another good reason to get your nutrition from plant sources is that animals tend to concentrate pesticides and other chemicals in their meat and milk. … Traces of these chemicals can easily end up in a mother’s breast milk if she eats these products. Plant foods have much less contamination, even if they are not organically grown.” (pp. 113-114).

* Cornell University's nutritional biochemist Dr. T. Colin Campbell, director of the renowned "China Project" (a long-term study of the relationship between diet and health):
"The vast majority, perhaps 80 percent to 90 percent, of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age, simply by adopting a plant-based diet."
Dr. Campbell has also shown that excess animal protein actually promotes the growth of tumors; and most people on a meat-based diet consume 3 to 10 times more protein than their bodies need.

A vegetarian diet not only helps prevent heart disease, it can also reverse it without drugs and their side effects.

* A study of patients with advanced heart disease was published in the British Lancet, the most prestigious medical journal in the world, in 1990, by Dr. Dean Ornish, S.E. Brown, L.W. Scherwitz, et al., "Can Lifestyle Changes Reverse Coronary Heart Disease?".
Dr. Ornish put a group of patients on a completely vegetarian diet, which was less than 10 percent fat. They were also asked to begin a moderate exercise program, walking a half hour every day, and were taught relaxation techniques. Patients in this group found that their chest pain disappeared and their cholesterol levels dropped at a rate comparable to that of cholesterol-lowering drugs, without the side effects. Because the patients felt so much better, they were motivated to stick with this program. The plaques that had been growing in their hearts for decades actually started to dissolve within one year.

Prostate cancer has been strongly linked to meat consumption. In a study of nearly 48,000 men aged between 40 and 75, those eating red meat five or more times a week were 2.6 times more likely to suffer from prostate cancer than those who ate it once a week or less (Giovannucci, 1993b). Mills (1989b) also noted a link between meat consumption and prostate cancer risk.

Some of the world's leading sporting champions are vegetarian, so veggie food is certainly good for muscles. People who follow a varied, well-balanced vegetarian diet are eating in line with current nutritional recommendations for healthy eating, as most vegetarian meals tend to be low in fat and high in fibre.

Animals victims of road traffic

2006-06-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

Going out on a drive can sometimes turn into a nightmare.

Along country lanes, roads, major thoroughfares and motorways alike lie the bodies of many, too many, wild animals whose paths humans have unfortunately crossed.

Only a few days ago a saw a little rabbit lying dead on the side of a motorway coming into London from the East. S/he (I never say “it” when referring to a non-human animal, and I think it’s wrong to say that: it influences us to see them as objects) must have been hit by a car only recently, because the shape and colours of the body and fur were still clearly visible.

The brown, still shiny coat gradually getting lighter in colour until it became white on the belly was a crying reminder of all the things that could have been in the rabbit’s life, a tragic symbol of all the beautiful features with which nature had endowed him/her, a harrowing sign of the tremendous waste and loss that had been caused.

Animal equality may be a better name

2006-06-08T04:58:00.000-07:00

The expressions “animal rights” and “animal liberation” have both become unfortunately associated in a large part of public opinion with what the public considers, rightly or wrongly, terroristic tactics, intimidation and violence.
A Google site search of many media websites will reveal that this is the case: “animal rights” will come up almost always followed by “terrorists”.

“Animal equality” is perhaps a better name, because it encompasses all the internal, sometimes little more than semantic, differences among the various philosophers, activists and organizations who are, after all, fighting for the very same cause.

These distinctions may appear more important than they actually are. For example, moral philosophers of different schools of thought might provide different justifications to outlaw human slavery, but in the end they agree on the most fundamental principles.
Something similar happens within the animal equality movement.

Animal equality

2006-06-06T10:54:00.001-07:00

Ethics (or moral philosophy: the two are synonims, the only difference being that the former is a word of Greek origin, the latter of Latin) is the rational exploration of what is right and wrong, what ought to be and what we ought to do.

Any moral theory must have a theory of moral status, defining moral agents (beings who act on moral grounds) and moral patients.

Not all beings are moral patients, ie not all beings should be considered when we make moral decisions. Some beings, like inanimate objects, don’t pertain to the moral sphere because they don’t have the characteristics that would make them affected by an action in a subjective sense: in a word, they experience nothing. They, therefore, have no interests.

So, what beings belong to the sphere of moral concern and why?

Animals, both human and non-human, both as individuals and species, possess a very high number of characteristics.

The overwhelming majority of these characteristics have no effect on the moral status of their owner: having a certain hair colour, or thickness of fur, or being able to fly, walk or swim, are examples of such characteristics.

What characteristics are relevant to ethics, then?

Although there is no absolute agreement on this among moral philosophers, there are several characteristics which are generally recognised as the likely candidates.

Moral philosophers may disagree on their specific lists of characteristics, but most characteristics will appear on most philosophers’ lists. That is: the school of moral philosophy A, utilitarianism for instance, will give more importance to sentience, whereas the school of thought B might give more importance to rationality. But basically, the characteristics of moral relevance are a circumscribed number.

Sentience will appear on almost every philosopher’s list. Sentience is defined as awareness of sensation and the ability to feel pleasure and pain.

Other candidate characteristics include memory, self-consciousness, oral language, a sense of justice, intelligence, ability to communicate, concern for others, playfulness.

Almost all these characteristics are variable. Different individuals have them in various degrees.

Human beings, too, greatly differ in their possession of them. Some human beings don’t possess some of them at all.
Newborn, mentally retarded, severely senile, brain-damaged humans fall into this category.

On the other hand, many capacities that have been proposed as a demarcation line between humans and non-humans have turned out, on closer scrutiny and as our knowledge of animals progresses, not to be unequivocally unique to humans.

Many other animals possess them in some degree. Examples of these behaviours and characteristics are the development of complex family ties, a system of morality, advanced social rules, problem solution, the expression of emotions, wars, sex for pleasure, abstract thought.

If we wish to restrict our definition of what is necessary to be included in the sphere of moral concern to higher characteristics, such as self-consciousness, oral language or a sense of justice, then not all human beings possess them, so some human beings will be excluded from the moral sphere of consideration.

If, on the other hand, we decide to broaden our definition so as to admit characteristics like capability of feeling pain, then non-human animals must be included into the moral sphere too.

There is no way to escape this iron logic.

Online poll on the circus' treatment of elephants

2006-06-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

There is a poll now on AOL News about elephants in circuses.

The question is:
What's your opinion on the circus' treatment of elephants?
It's fine 52%
It's abusive 48%

Of over 55,000 voters, a slight majority (52%) has voted that It's fine, so take a second of your time to vote in order to get the balance right.
Every vote counts.

And please inform others of the poll.

Via Easy Vegan Info.

How the myth of vivisection is perpetuated: asymmetry between new drugs and withdrawn drugs

2006-06-04T10:29:00.000-07:00

Over-the-counter painkillers such as ibuprofen can double the risk of a heart attack: this was the warning given by researchers on 1st June 2006 in the UK after the publication of a study by the British Medical Council, which analysed the results of 138 trials involving 140,000 patients.

There is a problem with the perception of drugs by public opinion, which goes to the heart of animal testing and how the myth of its usefulness is perpetuated, with the help of the media.

In a word, the problem is: asymmetry.

There is an asymmetry between the ways new drugs and withdrawn drugs are respectively treated.

When a newly-developed drug is introduced into the market, it is saluted by great media fanfare and at that moment, implicitly or explicitly, an association with the animal research involved in its development is formed in the mind of the public.
“Look at the enormous benefits of animal experiments” is either said directly or somehow this message is tacitly conveyed (after all, “everybody” knows that).

On the other hand, when a drug is found to have serious (or even fatal) side effects and is either withdrawn or warned about, the fact does not make headlines, sometimes is not even mentioned in the news, and in any case there is no equivalent “look at what disasters animal research causes” message trumpeted.

So, an association is formed in the public mind between new, good (because we haven’t yet discovered their harmful effects) drugs and animal testing; but no corresponding association is formed between bad, disastrous or withdrawn drugs and animal testing.

We must not forget that all drugs are extensively tested on animals before being marketed, and therefore every time a drug causes serious problems it is undisputedly a failure of animal experimentation as a method.

Victory over vivisection on medical grounds will advance the ethical case

2006-06-04T08:31:00.000-07:00

How should we fight vivisection?

We know that there are unassailable arguments, on both ethical and scientific grounds, to oppose it.

But what is the best, most effective strategy to use: to pursue the moral route or to follow the medical path?

Personally, although we should use both, I think that the medical arguments will win the battle. Am I over optimistic?

Perhaps. But only a few years ago all cosmetic companies were saying that they couldn’t do without animal tests, and now many major cosmetic corporations are eager to proclaim that they don’t use animal testing.

The same, I think, will happen to the rest of animal experimentation, because the scientific arguments of vivisectors are really and simply wrong.

If vivisection were ended for medical reasons, ie for the selfish reason of its being misleading and dangerous to humans, would that be a defeat for the battle for animal equality?

Far from it. It would be exactly the opposite.

I’ll explain why.

If there is one area where animal and human interests do appear to be genuinely in conflict, it is animal research.

Nobody can seriously claim that wearing fur coats, hunting foxes, going to circuses with performing animals and the like satisfy important needs and necessary desires, when compared to the suffering and death that they cause.

Even animal exploitation for food is not a necessity, given that, not only we can survive without eating meat and animal products, but in addition we survive better, on a healthier diet, that way.

Animal research, on the other hand, touches an area where important human interests are at stake: fighting disease.

If we can show that this conflict of interests is only apparent, we will have achieved a major victory which will go beyond having ended vivisection, although that in itself, since vivisection is one of the worst evils, will be of enormous importance.

With that victory, we will have demonstrated that the justification for the ruthless use (the philosopher Harlan Miller used the word “consumption”: I like that) of animals has no foundation. If it has no foundation when something vital like the fight aginst disease is at stake, it will be much more difficult for our opponents to resort to similar excuses in other fields.

We will always be able to use that victory against vivisection to show that we humans can live without the need to kill, damage and impose suffering on other animals in any major, intentional way.

The strange case of smoking animals, tobacco companies and research - Part I

2006-05-24T14:05:00.000-07:00

British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently said that he would sign a public petition in support of animal testing in research. And the ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, almost as if in reply, claimed: “Animal Tests Are Unreliable and Cruel”.

The debate over animal research has never been as public and centre stage as it is now.

There are both medical and ethical reasons to ban animal testing. Most people are mainly interested in the medical aspect, so I’ll focus on that here.

First of all, it’s no good to say that animal research is essential because researchers say so. People in the biomedical field are part of animal research, have a vested interest in it, and therefore their views are biased in favour of it. So it’s important that the public, who after all have to bear the consequences of it (and in many cases pay for it through taxation as well as by buying its products), make up their own mind.

Animal research is unreliable in the extreme. Let’s analyze one particularly important and significant example, before giving general arguments to back it up.

Smoking and cancer

The link between smoking and lung cancer was discovered by the British scientist Sir Richard Doll in the 1950s, by means of a study of human lung cancer patients in twenty London hospitals. He used the epidemiological method, i.e. the statistical study of diseases in human populations. The practical application to medicine of this all-important discovery had been hindered and delayed by animal research. Why?

First, because animal experiments had previously failed to demonstrate this link and they had ruled it out. Medical researchers were dismissive of Doll’s discovery. They had already tried to trigger cancer in animals using tobacco tar but had failed, they pointed out. Only later was it shown that their experimental procedures contained serious errors.

And then, even after Doll’s theory was published, animal researchers tested it by trying to reproduce the carcinogenic effects of smoking in animals. Some of this animal research was funded (you may guess) by tobacco manufacturers. Look at what they said: "No clearcut case against cigarette smoking has ever been made despite millions spent on research ...The longer these tests go on, the better our case becomes." (Phillip Morris, 1968)

It took 50 years to induce lung cancer in laboratory animals forced to breathe tobacco smoke (remember those pictures of rows of smoking beagles with cigarettes fixed in their masks?), thus delaying the health warning to humans and resulting in millions more unnecessary deaths.

In the end, it was the so-called British doctors study, a prospective clinical trial which ran from 1951 to 2001, that provided convincing statistical proof that tobacco smoking increased the risk of lung cancer. Doll’s study has provided the foundation for all other research into the impact of smoking cigarettes on health. It has arguably helped to save millions of lives.

This was a particularly important discovery, because it shows the role of lifestyle in cancer prevention (it actually paved the way to other discoveries linking cancer and diet) and, as we know, prevention is better than cure. There is here an analogy between the animal research lobby and the tobacco manufacturer's lobby, an analogy that goes beyond the fact that in this case they formed an “unholy alliance”.

Some smoking experiments on animals, intended to disprove its link with lung cancer and to give smoking the okay, were financed by cigarette companies. The analogy goes beyond this “unholy alliance” because both lobbies (animal experimentation and tobacco manufacturers) put the interest in their own self-preservation above public health.

The strange case of smoking animals, tobacco companies and research - Part II

2006-05-24T13:57:00.000-07:00

Why animal experiments are unreliable

At this point people might say that yes, this was a case in which animal research retarded science and misled medicine, but it is an isolated case, the odd exception. But it is not an exception: it is indeed the rule, for obvious and necessary reasons, which will become apparent.

Animal experimentation is by its own very nature unreliable for application to humans. One of the reasons is that minuscule differences in biochemistry and miscroscopic composition of organisms produce enormous effects, hence the huge differences existing between not only species, but also individuals.

It’s easy to see that it is so. Think of how an incredibly tiny alteration at the microscopic level in the DNA can give rise to so many dramatic changes between individuals. In fact, it can give rise to a new species if the DNA change is a mutation.

Moreover, the differences between species will be greater and more difficult to compensate for exactly in those areas which interest animal researchers. This is the case, for example, of metabolic differences between species, which are centrally important in toxicological (effects of drugs and chemicals) and teratological (effect on the fetus) investigations.

Researchers refer to animals as models. But models which are useful to inspire hypotheses are not necessarily good to test them, in fact they often are terribly and disastrously bad at that.

For instance, to see what this means in practice, think of the planetary model of the atom in physics, according to which in atoms the electrons orbit the nucleus the way planets orbit the sun. In the early stages of the atomic theory, when knowledge was limited, the solar system has indeed served as a useful tool, something known to help understand the unknown.

But no one would dream of testing on the solar system a hypothesis about electrons’ behaviour, for example, even if it were physically possible.

If you are inclined towards logic and formal arguments, read Two Models of Models in Biomedical Research. Otherwise, what was just said would suffice.

The fundamental mistake of animal research is to transfer an experimental technique (replication of phenomena) from physics to biology. The problem is that biological entities like animals, including humans, are extremely more complex than physical objects. This technique which is valid in physics is not valid in biology, where such regularities as “effect B always follows cause A” do not apply.

Biological beings behave in a probabilistic way, not in a deterministic one. This is a major factor of great uncertainty in predictions. Even when animal research results were later confirmed, we only know that they were valid because they were confirmed by their application to humans. So, the latter was, in the end, the final test of the former, not the other way around.

It’s a classical case of post hoc propter hoc fallacy (mistaking time sequence with causation), as Prof. Pietro Croce, MD, an eminent pathologist, puts it in his brilliant book Vivisection or Science - A Choice to Make, which anyone who would like to develop a serious position on the subject, fruit of thought rather than pre-conception, should read. You can also find a short version of it published online.

Here’s an analogy that helps picture the problem of unreliability. Suppose I like mushrooms but I cannot recognize the good ones from the poisonous ones. I go and pick them in the wild. Then I call a mushroom expert, and he says they’re okay. It does not mean that I did the right thing by choosing them myself, I could just as easily have picked up the poisonous mushrooms. And it was only after, not before, the mycologist gave his opinion that I knew if the mushrooms were edible or not.

So it is with animal research: it’s only after, not before, its results are applied to humans that we know whether they are valid (for us humans) or not. And believe you me, when they are not, some of us are going to pay for it with our health. That’s why so many drugs are quietly and surreptitiously withdrawn from the market after they have caused some disaster. Remember that a new drug being introduced will make headlines, but a drug being withdrawn will likely be ignored by the media.

The strange case of smoking animals, tobacco companies and research - Part III

2006-05-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

Alternatives to animal experiments

There are many methods and techniques which could replace animal experimentation, and are more precise, cost-effective, and humane.
The main ones are:

the epidemiological method, the study of human populations, which was used to discover the smoking-lung cancer link discussed above;
in vitro techniques, ie cultures of cells and tissues on which to conduct tests - penicillin and streptomycin are historical examples of in vitro discoveries;
clinical research, ie careful observations and analyses of patients;
computer and mathematical modelling, a relatively new branch of medical research using complex software to simulate biochemical reactions by recreating our body components structurally and in terms of healthy and diseased chemical reactions, then submitting them to chemical and curative substances;
genetic research, often used alongside epidemiological evidence;
autopsies - practically every disease has either been discovered or clarified as a result of autopsy, which also indicates aspects of illness missed in diagnoses;
post-marketing drug surveillance (PMDS), the reporting of effects and side effects of a medication after its release, which unfortunately is not required at present and only relies on voluntary and infrequent reporting. The current situation therefore makes it impossible to maintain comprehensive data on any drug’s potential for negative reactions.
technology, for example ultrasound, blood-gas analysis machines, monitoring devices, DNA sequencing, gene chips, combinatorial and solid phase syntheses, bio-compatible materials, polymerase chain reaction, separation and purification methods, the Fast Fourier transforms used in spectroscopy and CAT scans, fast sequence alignment and database methods used in genomics, conformational search and optimization methods used in protein folding.

These methods would represent an improvement if they replaced animal research now, even considering the little money and time that have been spent on them in comparison to the gigantic resources invested in animal experiments. The main problem is not that there are no alternatives, but that there is no or little political will to make that choice. If funds and energy were devoted to these other methods, great progress could be made.

And, to go back to the fungal analogy above, in case you were thinking that I could have fed the mushrooms to some animal to test them, don’t. It is well known that a mushroom can be eaten by squirrels, rabbits, or other animals and still be dangerous for humans.

The Illinois Mycological Association, for example, says: “According to Dr. John Rippon, an IMA member and world expert on fungal diseases, squirrels have an interesting adaptation that allows them to eat mushrooms containing deadly amanita toxins without being affected.”

I have no more doubts about vivisection

2006-05-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

I must confess.

I have always been opposed to animal experimentation on ethical grounds. For this reason, the anti-vivisection medical arguments of great authors like Hans Ruesch and Prof Pietro Croce have always made me feel that, in true reality, they were just like me: people who abhorred vivisection morally, and tried to use scientific reasons simply to reach and stir an indifferent public opinion.

Deep down, I thought, they know that some benefit must have derived from animal research, if for nothing else because of statistical reasons: the sheer, huge amount of animal experimentation performed must have produced some benefit, sometimes.

I don’t think that any more.

Now I am sure that their medical arguments are entirely correct, and that animal research is indeed dangerous to humans as well.

What’s the reason of this change?

I have done more research myself into the issue, recently, and also I entered a debate with some defenders of vivisection who work in the biomedical field, and I’m telling you: go ahead, anti-vivisectionists, our adversaries have no arguments able to stand a modicum of scrutiny.

In fact, I find it extremely interesting what Dr Vernon Coleman says in his website:

“Many supporters of the anti-vivisection movement are concerned that they do not know what to say when vivisectors make specific medical or scientific claims about the value of the work they do. Vernon Coleman debated many times with vivisectors (including several television debates). He never lost a debate when the audience was asked to vote. Today vivisectors refuse to debate with him [my emphasis] and so you won't see or hear Vernon Coleman allowed to discuss vivisection on television or radio. Producers of programmes who invite Vernon Coleman to debate are quickly told (by the vivisectors) that they must find someone else if the debate is to go ahead. (When Vernon Coleman was invited to debate vivisection at the Oxford Union in the UK not one vivisector or vivisection supporter in Britain would debate against him. Oxford Union subsequently withdrew their invitation to Vernon Coleman and found someone else to oppose vivisection.)”

I have no problems in believing it.

I shall post here my original article to Blogcritics in 3 parts, with the subsequent debate.

The origin of moral judgements

2006-05-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

A user of this blog posted a comment saying:

"Psychologist Jonathan Haidt (at the University of Virginia) argues that people make moral judgements not through rational thinking but through the same sort of intuitive process by which they make aesthetic judgments. Rational reasons are generated after-the-fact as a plausible 'cover'."

I'm not convinced that the hypothesis of psychologist Jonathan Haidt, although it has some merits, can serve as a total explanation. It seems to me that such a complex question as the origin of moral judgements is unlikely to be resolved by means of a single, simple cause (eg intuition).

I am more inclined to believe that there are several factors at work.
Reason and emotion often work together, subjectively, as mental faculties, and ethics is an area where this happens more frequently than in other areas.

I think that it is only our idea that reason and emotion should be in opposition.

In fact, I would say that it is a measure, if not of mental health, at least of mental well functionality how much reason and emotion can influence and complement each other.

The more dysfunctional a mind is, the more conflict there is in that mind between reason and emotion.

It seems to me that Haidt has chosen for his experiments particular cases of ‘scenarios’ which are bound to provoke disgust, and consequently ‘moral’ rejection with or without a reason.

(Actually, I’m not even sure whether we could call a condemnation of ‘wiping your toilet with a national flag’ a ‘moral judgement’ at all. It’s more akin to an aesthetical appraisal.)

But it’s doubtful that all moral judgement adhere to that pattern of following from disgust or similar feelings.

So, it’s impossible to generalize from his experiments, because they portray only a sub-class of moral judgement, a special sub-class to which his theory may find suitable application.

His examples of moral judgement are not the ones that you would find philosophers debate about in ethics books.

That he is blurring the line between moral and aesthetic judgements he is aware himself, as one can see from the following quote from his interview:

“Now, by moral judgment I mean any time you have a sense that someone has done something good or bad. Think of how often you have that sense. If you live in a city and you drive, you probably have that sense many times a day. When I read the newspaper, I think unprintable thoughts, thoughts of anger. So I think moral judgment is ubiquitous. Not as ubiquitous as aesthetic judgments. As we walk around the world we see many beautiful and ugly things. But we don’t deliberate about them. We just see things as beautiful or ugly. My claim is that moral judgment is very much like aesthetic judgment. In fact, whenever I’m talking with philosophers who are trying to get me to clarify what I’m saying, if I ever feel confused, I just return to aesthetic judgment, and that saves me.“

He seems to define ‘moral judgement’ in emotional terms (‘you have a sense’, ‘I think thoughts of anger’ and so on), so it’s not surprising that he finds that moral judgements, as he defined them, have a non-rational source.
QED. It is rather circular.

Green Party and ritual slaughter

2006-05-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

Abattage rituel halal sans étourdissement
Uploaded by GAIA-TV. - News videos hot off the press.

If you'd like to have an idea of what ritual slaughter of animals without pre-stunning is, watch the above video.

The first animal in the video is slaughtered according to the EU law, i.e. with a captive bolt which is shot into the brain. Brain death is virtually instantaneous. The animals are then hung by the hind legs, the throat is slit and the blood is allowed to drain out.

The other animals on the video are killed in the ritual halal and kosher way, still permitted as exemptions to humane slaughter laws in most western countries, with their throat cut without prior stunning. The time they take to die while still fully conscious and in excruciating agony can be up to 2 minutes. If an occlusion occurs, preventing the blood draining from the brain, the animal remains conscious for a considerable time.

One user of this website has sent this e-mail to the Policy Development Coordinator of the Green Party:

“I'm interested to know what is the Green Party's policy regarding ritual slaughter, ie halal and kosher.”

The following correspondence has ensued.

Green Party

“At the moment the Green Party has no official policy on ritual slaughter, although I am aware that our animal rights groups has been discussing the issue in order to take a policy to our conference for agreement.

“However I think it is fair to say that most of us feel that it is incumbent on those who want to eat meat to be responsible for causing the animal as little suffering as possible and are aware that halal and kosher slaughtering methods are attacked for being particularly cruel. But equally, some argue that the techniques used mean the animals die more quickly than with conventional slaughter.
“Rules state that the knife must be sharpened between each killing and the animal must be cut with one stroke from ear to ear and never within sight of another animal.

“Care must be taken not to pick on one method and criticise it when there are faults in all methods and perhaps the focus should be on improving conditions in slaughterhouses.

Brian Heatley
Policy Development Coordinator
The Green Party”

Correspondent

“I find the position of the Green Party on this matter less than satisfactory.

“I resent the implication contained in ’Care must be taken not to pick on one method and criticise it’.

“I don't wish to ’pick on’ any one method.

“I am a long-standing vegetarian (almost vegan) and animal rights activist, and have been throughout all my life.

“Of course there are faults in all methods of slaughter, as you euphemistically put it. Slaughtering animals for food is murder, nothing less.

“Which is why your party's policy on this is hypocritical.

“The Green Party website says:

’Real Progress towards a better society means respecting the right of animals not to suffer. We believe that Real Progress is not farm animals growing faster than their hearts can stand or cows producing drugs instead of milk. That's not progress.

’Greens oppose factory farming and advocate banning cruel live exports.’

“This creates an ambiguity, by giving people the impression that you support animal rights (that ‘the right of animals not to suffer’ phrase), whereas in fact you don't do that at all.

“There is a right which is just as basic as freedom from suffering, and that is the right to life.

“And even the right of animals not to suffer, which you theoretically accept, cannot be respected by simply opposing factory facrming and cruel live exports.

“A lot of animal suffering is a necessary part of any form of rearing animals for the slaughterhouse.

“If you really respected the right of animals not to suffer, you would oppose it in all its forms.

“Its abolition is a long-term goal, and perhaps not realistic in the near future.

“But banning ritual slaughter is achievable (Sweden has done it), that is why your policy (or lack of) on this is particularly unexcusable.

“The reasons you give for justifying it sound more like excuses than real reasons.

“’Some argue’ that it's better, you say. But who?

“Exactly the people who have a vested interest in maintaining it.

“Would you prefer to have surgery performed on you while conscious and ‘more quickly’, as you put it, or would you rather be made unconscious first?

“Here is a description of ritual slaughter (from Vegan Outreach website):

“‘Ritual slaughter – Animals are fully conscious when their carotid arteries are cut. This is supposed to cause unconsciousness within seconds, but because of blood flow through the vertebral arteries in the back of the neck, some animals can remain conscious as they bleed for up to a minute. Additionally, Temple Grandin, PhD notes “Unfortunately, there are some plants which use cruel methods of restraint such as hanging live animals upside down.” This can cause broken bones as the heavy animal hangs by a chain attached to one leg.’

“And this (from Animal Aid website):

‘Nor can I stomach hearing protagonists of religious slaughter claiming their method is swift and painless - when the evidence shows that animals can take minutes to die, are often cut about the neck numerous times rather than the prescribed one clean cut; and young calves can actually choke to death on their own blood.’

“If, in confronting this issue, you were here dealing with, say, a corporation, a multi-national for example, rather than religious lobbies, would you blindly believe what the corporation says, or wouldn't you be suspicious of its vested interest in the matter?

“Ritual slaughter is actually a remnant of ancient animal sacrifices performed in the past and, in the case of Islam at least, still in the present:

“’When in Mecca kissing the Ka‘aba, it is also incumbent upon pilgrims to kill an animal in the Mina valley on the tenth day of the month of pilgrimage, since Allah, like the Yahweh of the Jews, is believed to enjoy having animals killed for his viewing pleasure. (It is amusing to imagine what will happen if P.E.T.A. and the Animal Liberation Front ever get wind of this. How Muslims would deal with the threat of animal-rights terrorism would be something worth watching closely.) After killing a goat or other suitable sacrificial species (for some reason, dogs and pigs are deemed unsuitable), most pilgrims then betake themselves to Medina (Yathrib), a city located 210 miles north of Mecca, in order to pray at what is claimed to be Mohammed's tomb.’ (from An Atheist's Guide to Mohammedanism webpage, http://www.atheists.org/Islam/mohammedanism.html).

“It is highly hypocritical of these religious groups to pretend that their method has anything to do with considerations of animal welfare.

“The reason why humane slaughter laws have been introduced throughout Western countries is because they are aimed at preventing suffering.

“Exceptions (or rather loopholes) in those laws, permitting ritual slaughter (including EU directives and national laws in Europe, the USA, Australia), have been introduced only to make happy some ethnic minorities, and certainly NOT for the animals' sake.

“The issue is now particularly important, not in order to ‘pick on’ anything but because the number of halal shops, restaurants, outlets and similar has grown enormously, particularly in the UK, and is bound to grow even further, due to the high number of Muslims in this country, their rate of reproduction (the highest among all groups) and their increasing intransigence in the application of their own laws and prescriptions.

“Even many non-Muslim and non-Jewish Britons who eat meat are more and more unhappy with this situation, because it's a well-known fact that much of halal and kosher meat ends up being bought or served without their knowledge to people who abhor these methods.

“So, there is a growing public opposition to halal and kosher methods of slaughter being allowed in the UK under British law.

“I think that the Green Party should do better than putting its fear of offending minorities (in particular, paranoid and vociferous minorities who are extremely easily offended and see enemies everywhere) above even extremely basic animal welfare.

Signature”

Green Party

“Thank you for your reply.

“As I said, this is something we are currently considering, and the fact that we are doing so is because many in the party are not happy with the present position. However, we are a democratic party, and our policy can only be changed by our party's conference when a proposal is put before it.

“So I tried to answer your query with our present position, and I can understand why you did not find that satisfactory.

Brian”

Correspondent

“Thank you.

“I do sincerely hope that the Green Party will change its policy.

“The reason of my e-mail (and perhaps others) is to offer points for reflection and information that can be used by the Green Party in deciding its policy and hopefully change it in the right direction.

Signature”

Green Party and animal issues

2006-05-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

Local election time in England.

It’s a good time to look at the Green Party and its hypocritical stances about animal rights issues.

From the UK Green Party’s website:

“Real Progress towards a better society means respecting the right of animals not to suffer. We believe that Real Progress is not farm animals growing faster than their hearts can stand or cows producing drugs instead of milk. That's not progress.
Greens oppose factory farming and advocate banning cruel live exports.”

So, the GP thinks that ‘respecting the right of animals not to suffer’ implies only opposition to factory farming and cruel live exports.

There is no mention in the GP’s documentation of any opposition to rearing animals for the slaughterhouse.

And, even more seriously since this could be more easily preventable by eliminating the loophole in the humane slaughter law, there is no mention of ritual slaughter.

Sweden has, after all, banned ritual methods of slaughter, so it is obviously a realistic short-term goal. But not for the Green Party.

The Green Party is not opposed to halal (Muslim) and kosher (Jewish) ritual sacrifices and has no policy aimed at banning them.

When appeal to authority is misleading

2006-05-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

Here is a very interesting argument for not presuming that an appeal to authority is always appropriate.

The argument is part of a website entirely devoted to the analysis of logical fallacies of all types. “Appeal to Misleading Authority”, the title of the above-linked web document, is one such kind of fallacy.

Of particular interest to us when opposing animal experimentation on medical grounds is the point n. 3: ”The authority is an expert, but is not disinterested. That is, the expert is biased towards one side of the issue, and his opinion is thereby untrustworthy.”

How many times animal research has been defended on the basis of its common acceptance among ‘experts’ in the bio-medical fields?

These ‘experts’ are exactly the kind of authority to which this fallacy relates, ie ‘not disinterested’ and ‘biased towards one side of the issue’.

It is not anything new, but it is useful and interesting to have a formal argument to which to resort.

Obsession with avoiding health risks is unhealthy

2006-05-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

One fifth of all Americans has asthma or other allergies. More Americans than ever before say they are suffering from allergies. Allergy is among the country's most common, yet often overlooked, diseases.

And the picture is similar in other developed countries. Allergies are increasing among the populations of the affluent Western world, but they are relatively rare in poor countries. Children, in particular, seem to be more and more prone to allergies in rich nations.

Allergies are often considered a minor ailment, but the truth is that they can be very serious, and sometimes fatal.

Although allergies have a genetic component, a shift in the human gene pool is an unlikely explanation for the increased prevalence of allergies, because it would require several generations and a much longer time.

A plausible hypothesis to explain this increase is that our immune system has weakened, because of excessive hygiene and sterilization.

Basically, allergies are an overreaction of the immune system to practically harmless substances (the ‘allergens’) that should not cause a reaction. They are a disease of the immune system.

The immune system's role is getting rid of any organism that should not be in our body, from microscopic parasites to viruses, from cancer cells to bacteria to fungal spores. Aids occurs when the immune system is not capable of carrying out its function. Allergy is the contrary: it develops when the immune system is too sensitive and performs too much.

Why should allergies be increasing? A theory proposed, the Hygiene Hypothesis, says that inadequate exposure to genuinely harmful agents leads to immune dysfunction. Under normal circumstances, the immune system is exposed to various viral, bacterial and other challenges, getting strengthened after successful defenses. Today's over-cleanliness and phobias of germs have minimized these opportunities.

Supporting evidence is ample. Children who have had early infections manifest less tendency to allergies. Populations in which parasitic infestation is common show lower levels of hay fever and asthma. People who have had measles have fewer allergies, as do children who have multiple siblings and therefore more infections in childhood.

New Scientist magazine reported a discovery that microorganisms found in dirt influence maturation of the immune system. The lack of connection with these organisms through soil may be the reason why allergies, bowel diseases, chronic fatigue and other immune disorders are now reaching epidemic proportions.

This is to me one of the classical cases of defeating the object.

Parents are particularly prone to this kind of obsession with protecting their children from any possible risk, as the furore in the UK about MMR vaccine's alleged link with autism has shown, leading to decrease in vaccination and increase in diseases.

But it is a common trend.

The problem is that we obviously cannot live in a risk-free environment, and we should instead learn to accept and live with the risks, and perhaps develop a more intelligent understanding of risk assessment, based on reason rather than emotion.

How does all this relate to the issue of animal experimentation?

I think there's a lesson to be learned from the allergies case.

There was a time when people sacrificed animals to the gods (tragically, they still do in some religions and in certain parts of the world), in the hope that the sacrifices would deliver them from evils.

The times have changed, but the hope that sacrificing somebody else, someone who cannot defend himself, will save us is still present.

Animal experimentation is the heir to the ritual sacrifice. And similarly it is founded on an attitude which, rather than accepting risks and developing a rational method to control them, relies on an emotionally charged hope of protection and salvation by risk-displacement, by transferring the risks on someone else.

The problem with animal models

2006-04-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

Here is what I find one of the most powerful, effective arguments for replacing animal experiments with other methods of investigation.

It is an essay in logic of science and is written in a formal way, so for those who are not inclined to read it all I’ll try to summarize it in non-formal style here.

The authors of the essay, entitled Two Models of Models in Biomedical Research, Hugh LaFollette and Niall Shanks, make the crucial distinction between two uses of animals as models. These two models are normally confused in the general discourse, leading to the current difficulties in clarifying the question of usefulness of animal experiments (we are here letting aside the ethical question).

The two models are:

1) animals as models that are similar to the objects to be modelled, ie humans, functionally (HAMs). To understand what it means, think of the planetary model of the atom in physics. In the early stages of the atomic theory, when knowledge was limited, the solar system has indeed served as a useful tool, something known to help understand the unknown.
Or think of a spiral staircase as a model of DNA molecules.

In this way, though, the only use of a model is to inspire hypotheses, but, crucially, not to test them.

There are indeed demonstrable functional similarities between humans and our close biological relatives.

But there is a big difference between an animal model's being a good source of hypotheses and its being a good means to test hypotheses.

2) animals as models that are similar to humans causally (CAMs). Here is where the problem lies, because most biological phenomena do not follow a simple linear cause-effect pattern (deterministic), but are probabilistic: only in a certain percentage of cases the same effect will follow the same cause.

In fact, biomedical experiments on animals are doubly probabilistic: they involve not only the probabilistic causality within the (non-human) laboratory population, but also the probabilistic causality within the human population outside the laboratory.

In addition, there is an uncertainty about whether the results observed in the non-human animal population will be (statistically) relevant to the human biomedical phenomena of interest.
For this uncertainty to be small, there must be no causally relevant disanalogies between the test subjects and humans (the model and the thing modelled)..

The fact is: these important causal disanalogies exist.

Researchers who think non-human animals are good causal models (CAMs) of human biomedical phenomena believe human and non-human animal systems are causally similar because they are functionally similar.

But this is not so.

The same function in biological systems can be caused by entirely different mechanisms. Both birds’ and mammals’ lungs oxygenate blood (same function); but peribronchial lungs of birds, ventilated in a unidirectional fashion using a series of air sacs, and the alveolar lungs of mammals, ventilated in a tidal fashion using a diaphragm, differ considerably in structure and mechanism.

Functional similarity does not guarantee underlying causal similarity, nor does it make such similarity "probable".

This is predictable from Darwin’s evolution theory. Different organisms have evolved similar functions due to their phylogenetic proximity, but "descent with modification" means, in part, "modification of anatomical and physiological sub-systems, and the relations between them."

Resultant species differences are biologically significant. "The species is one of the basic foundations of almost all biological disciplines. Each species has different biological characteristics" (Mayr p. 331). Species differences, even when small, often result in radically divergent responses to qualitatively identical stimuli.

This is why, for example, even when species are phylogenetically close, as are the rat and the mouse, we cannot assume that the two species will react similarly to similar stimuli. Tests for chemically induced cancers in rats and mice yield the same results for only 70% of the substances tested. The figure drops to 51% for site-specific cancers.

Human mechanisms for metabolizing phenol are closer to the mechanisms in rats than to the mechanisms in pigs, despite the fact that humans are phylogenetically closer to pigs than to rats. And the carcinogenic effect of aflatoxin B is more similar in rats and monkeys than in rats and mice.

So, to reason that phylogenetic continuity implies underlying causal similarity is a fallacy.

As if all this were not enough, an additional complication is given by the fact that the various sub-systems of a biological organism interact with each other, thus multiplicating the number of variations of possible effects.

Biological objects are complex in the extreme: this is why the simple modelling method to test hypotheses that animal experimenters have imported from physics does not work in biomedical research.

Moreover, the differences between species will be greater and more difficult to compensate for exactly in those areas which interest animal researchers: this is the case, for example, of metabolic differences between species, which are centrally important in toxicological and teratological (effect on the fetus) investigations.

As one widely-used pharmacology text sums it up: "The lack of correlation between toxicity data in animals and adverse effects in humans is well known".

In short: different animal species are similar functionally but not causally, and that includes the human species. We tend to think they are similar because we only consider what is visible, ie the functions, not the underlying causal mechanisms.

Finally, the argument often used by animal experiments’ advocates, “It just works”, is subjected to such a potent critical analysis that it leaves it almost as naked as a tree in winter.

Partly, the authors here use an argument which is similar to the one explaining the post hoc, propter hoc fallacy used by Pietro Croce in his classical book Vivisection Or Science: A Choice To Make.

In a nutshell, simplified, it goes like this: how do we know that animal experimentation works?

Because, wait for this, after experimenting on animals, we then test the results of those animal experiments on humans!

Strategy

2006-04-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Strategy posts

Anti-vivisection strategy: a suggestion

Victory over vivisection on medical grounds will advance the ethical case

UK McDonald’s in crisis

Animal equality may be a better name

Animal-movement political parties

Animals Count party for animals

Green Party and animal issues

Green Party and ritual slaughter

UK McDonald’s in crisis

2006-04-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

The Sunday Times of 23th April 2006 reports about McDonald’s being in crisis in Britain.
“McDonald’s faces a tough battle in the UK, having to fight declining sales, an increasingly vociferous anti-obesity lobby and intense competition” writes the London newspaper.

From our viewpoint as animal activists campaigning to spread vegetarianism, it teaches us 2 lessons in strategy:

1) Publicity campaigns carried out in major media do produce massive results. McDonald’s in the UK has been hit by all the furore surrounding the ‘health fad’, as The Sunday Times puts it, promoted in recent months by various high-profile forms of advertising. Examples of these are celebrity chefs criticizing current school meals and launching healthier alternatives to them, and the bombardment to which British TV viewers have been submitted over the Christmas holiday period with program after program highlighting the health risks of fat-rich diets, condemning a long list of foods and drinks for contributing to diseases, showing shocking or disgusting pictures of abnormally obese people (and of their body products too), and so on.
In fact, McDonald’s has not been the only commercial victim of this: fizzy, sugary drinks’ sales have been affected too.
True, McDonald’s has seen its popularity decline over a period of time for other adverse publicity reasons, but nothing has hit them as much as the recent ‘health fad’.

2) There is probably a market for a vegetarian fast food restaurants chain, a vegetarian McDonald’s. If somebody invested money, time and effort in it, it would likely be a succes. I think of it as a number of diners, American-style, sort of 50s, with juke-boxes. They should also have internet points, magazines, videos; they should become a place in which young people meet, not just to have a meal but also for social purposes, to find old friends and to make new ones. They should be aimed at youngsters, perhaps teenagers, and be perceived by them as cool and hip places.

Why? Because this is the group we want to target. Young people are already more vegetarian, on average, than the rest of the population. We want to encourage that, because they are obviously the future. Youngsters like fast food joints: there’s nothing wrong with that, per se. Our aim is to create an association in their minds between vegetarianism and places which are fun and cool, places where their friends choose to hang around, places which have nothing to do with the past but are evocative of the future, new and fresh.

This is the sort of ‘campaigning’ on which I believe we should focus more: not just on the negative, but on the positive too, and not just using reason and logic or even appeals to compassion, but also taking into consideration and acting on people’s needs, desires and psychological make-up.

Heuristic value of animal intelligence

2006-04-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

The common idea that non-human animals are guided mostly or exclusively by ‘instinct’ or conditioned reflexes has never convinced me.

Granted, when we say ‘animals’ we use an extremely broad concept, that obviously comprises species hugely different from each other.

So, we must make distinctions here.

One of the reasons most usually given to deny that animal intelligence can be comparable to ours is to point to the animals’ not having created a visible, tangible form of it, some products.

They have not constructed buildings or written poems.

But think of dolphins, for example.

We know that dolphins are highly intelligent. Yet, how could they possibly have produced things like buildings or works of art?

The medium in which they live, primarily, and their lack of suitable limbs, a consequence of it, would have made it impossible.

Dolphins make me think of the situation in which a very intelligent human with physical disabilities might have been, possibly, in the past, when technology was not there to help. Such a person’s high intellect may have never been discovered.

I think that the best position to take on the question of the intelligence of other species is that we still do not know enough about it, in a general sense, to make a judgement. The jury is still out.

However, given this uncertainty, it is better to believe that, generally speaking, non-human animals are much more intelligent and self-aware than is commonly thought.

Why?

Because this work hypothesis has a higher heuristic value, that is it is more fertile in terms of the scientific theories and discoveries that it may lead to, than its alternative, the belief that there is nothing there to discover.

In science, when two hypotheses compete, then, coeteris paribus, ie if there is no clear reason to prefer one over the other, we should choose the hypothesis with greater heuristic potential.

Is absence of emotions always rational?

2006-04-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

We tend to define ‘emotive’ or ‘emotional’, especially as opposed to ‘rational’, as a state, or reason (in the sense of motive) characterized by the presence of emotions.

But a reason for doing something can be ‘emotional’ if it is characterized by the absence of emotions as well.

Suppose that some-one fully understands the rational ethical arguments for vegetarianism and knows that they are valid because s/he cannot find any fault with them, rationally.

But suppose that this person, nevertheless, continues eating meat because s/he emotionally does not care about the issue and likes the taste of meat.

Then, this behaviour is not dictated by reason (reason commands the opposite), but rather by emotion (lack of it).

In this case, it’s the lack of emotion that leads to a behaviour that goes against reason.

Casino, poker, gambling

2006-04-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

Whether we want to gamble or like to gamble or not, life is a gigantic casino that forces us to constantly play a metaphorical poker.

There lies the appeal of the Deal or No Deal show on British and other TVs.

The game consists of 22 identical, sealed boxes containing varying sums of money, from 1p to £250,000 (we are now talking about British pounds). From these boxes the player, the contestant in the ‘hot seat’, has to choose which ones to open progressively. The sums which are uncovered are lost to the player who, in order to win, should keep the largest sums of money undisclosed for as long as possible.

The reason for this is that the so-called banker, a mysterious figure behind the scenes playing a sort of poker game complete with bluff and high stakes with the player, will make the player offers of money that reflect the situation of the game at different, pre-determined moments of the game.

So, for instance, if the big sums of £250,000, £100,000, £75,000 and £50,000 are still to be disclosed, the banker will make a higher offer than if these sums are revealed.

Why? Because if they are unrevealed, one of the large sums might be contained in the sealed box that the player has in front of him or her, picked up at random at the beginning of the game. Whatever sum of money is in that box the player will have won at the end of the game, unless s/he deals with the banker by accepting his offer before.

It is in the banker’s interest to make a high offer of cash if the development of the game allows the possibility of a great sum of money to be won by the player.

Remember that in the box there could be 1 penny, or there could be a quarter of a million. Real wealth, lots of cash, what they call life-changing money can be easily won and just as easily lost. There is so much at stake.

What is fascinating about this gambling TV show is exactly that: it is an entire gamble. The player has no idea how much money each of the boxes contains.

And this is the situation we are in many times in real life.

Like the players, we don’t know what’s in the boxes that we encounter in our lives, yet we must make decisions about them, about things that we have not enough knowledge about. Informed decisions are a luxury in the big casino of life; more often than not, we have to play poker, we have to download an existential game and gamble.

Vegetarianism

2006-04-25T07:43:00.000-07:00

Vegetarianism and animal farming posts

The Immorality of Eating Meat: Reflections on Engel's essay

Health benefits of vegetarian diet

Vegetarian dogs

Vegetarian cats

UK McDonald’s in crisis

Green Party and animal issues

Green Party and ritual slaughter

The half vegan monks who are the world's healthiest people

Carcinogens, food poisoning and meat

Eating bacon and sausages every day increases cancer risk by 20%, new authoritative report says

Growth in animal farming increases disease risks for humans, says FAO

Big changes for free-range hens & chickens in EU law & UK consumers demand

This week's Observer article on broiler chickens

RSPCA Freedom Food under scrutiny

Junk food diet is killing UK's pets, say vets of leading charity

Meat workers health problems

The Immorality of Eating Meat: Reflections on Engel's essay

2006-04-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

I have read, as suggested by Animal Ethics, Mylan Engel's essay "The Immorality of Eating Meat".

This is what it made me think.

Often, when one argues for vegetarianism, one hears a reply by somebody who claims s/he has no duty to be vegetarian because ‘plants feel pain too’. Therefore, so the claim goes, since we must eat something and anything we may eat was alive and sentient, we may as well eat whatever we like.

When we demonstrate to the person who made that claim that s/he is actually causing the death of, on average, 10 times as many plants by eating meat as s/he would if vegetarian, due to the waste of nutrients along the food chain, what happens? Does that person realize that, in virtue of the claim that himself/herself has made, s/he should, if consistent, become vegetarian?
Never.

What does all this tell you?

It tells you that the alleged reason for continuing meat-eating (in this case sentience of plants) was not a reason at all, but rather an excuse that that person, albeit misguidedly and naively, found convenient for the purpose.

When I read Mylan Engel's essay "The Immorality of Eating Meat", I was reminded of that type of occurrence.

As Engels himself at one point admits, philosophers who reject the ethical argument for vegetarianism are relying on excuses, not reasons.

All of which begs the question: what is the point of trying to convince them by re-formulating the argument in a different way?
His argument, with his stress on avoiding unnecessary suffering, on performing calculations balancing pleasure and pain of all involved, and on animals' sentient nature, seems to me a re-formulation of the utilitarian argument.

His quotation from the philosopher Bonnie Steinbock in her Speciesism And The Idea Of Equality is particularly interesting. In that paper she writes:
‘I doubt that anyone will be able to come up with a concrete and morally relevant difference that would justify, say, using a chimpanzee in an experiment rather than a human being with less capacity for reasoning, moral responsibility, etc. Should we then experiment on the severely retarded? Utilitarian considerations aside (the difficulty of comparing intelligence between species, for example), we feel a special obligation to care for the handicapped members of our own species, who cannot survive in this world without such care. Nonhuman animals manage very well, despite their "lower intelligence" and lesser capacities; most of them do not require special care from us. This does not, of course, justify experimenting on them. However, to subject to experimentation those people who depend on us seems even worse than subjecting members of other species to it. In addition, when we consider the severely retarded, we think, "That could be me." It makes sense to think that one might have been born retarded, but not to think that one might have been born a monkey. And so, although one can imagine oneself in the monkey's place, one feels a closer identification with the severely retarded human being. Here we are getting away from such things as "morally relevant differences" and are talking about something much more difficult to articulate, namely, the role of feelings and sentiment in moral thinking.’

Funny. I thought that the role of philosophy, since the time of Socratic dialogue, was to challenge what we feel to be true and analyze if it stands up to the scrutiny of reason and logic, and not to use our feelings as the basis of our theories.

A point of view is inevitable. And desirable too

2006-04-11T13:06:00.000-07:00

The idea that one should not have a point of view when writing is fallacious.

This is an idea frequently encountered in the old and new media alike.
For example, Wikipedia, an online community site which, nonetheless, carries many interesting and useful articles, says:

‘Our Wikipedia community has by experience developed an informal hierarchy of core principles — the most important being that articles be written with a neutral point of view.’

A neutral point of view for a writer is just as possible as a neutral point of view for a camera. That is: totally impossible.

Imagine a photograph taken by a camera.
The camera has to be placed somewhere. The picture taken will be different from the picture of the same subject taken from a different spot. The angle will be different, and will give a dissimilar view of this particular piece of reality.

But it is simply inevitable.

The camera needs a place to stand. It would be impossible to shoot a photo from a place which covers all space, or that, even better, does not exist in space, although either could certainly be called neutral.

Exactly the same thing happens when someone writes.
Even if the writer did not have a point of view on a subject prior to writing on it, s/he must have a point of view once s/he has started writing, which is to say has started thinking about it (unless of course someone copies or otherwise writes unthinkingly, which would be worthless).

If you think about it carefully, neutral point of view is a contradiction in terms and, since language corresponds to thought, this shows that a neutral point of view is an absurd concept.

So, the best practice in writing is not to strive for a neutrality or independence which are not only impossible but perhaps not even desirable, because a thought (a point of view) is what gives spice and interest to a piece of writing.
The best practice, I think, is not to hide one’s opinions under a screen, to declare them and to make them explicit.
This, I believe, is less deceitful than to fake impartiality.

And, following the example of science and philosophy, by confronting many subjective points of view we are more likely to arrive, if not at objectivity, at least at an inter-subjective result.

Let’s take pictures of the same thing from different angles.

Science and philosophy, the most rational human activities, encourage debate and controversy by asking the participants to give reasons (arguments, logic, empirical evidence, satistics) that support their point of view, and not to deny it.

Contractarianism

2006-04-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

Contractarianism is a moral theory saying that moral rules are a sort of a contract, and therefore only beings who can understand the terms of the contract are bound by it.

So, strictly speaking, moral rules should apply only to behaviour among normal adult human beings, but they could be extended to also cover beings that the people who entered the ‘contract’ care about, like their children for example, for reasons of indirect duty.

Other groups who could be protected by the moral rules of the contract in this indirect way are, shall we say, the groups protected by ‘political correctness’, that is whoever the majority of the human population cares enough about or anyway whoever it is considered a duty to care about by what happens to be the current ideological orthodoxy.

One problem with contractarianism is that it betrays the very purpose of philosophy.

Since its beginning in ancient Greece, philosophy has always had the role of challenging the ideas currently held by the majority.

A moral theory that, in principle, simply justifies and accepts whatever the majority happens to believe is more than a philosophical failure: it is a complete redundancy. People do what they like to do and what they’ve always found it easy to do anyway, there is no need for philosophers to pat them on the back and say: ‘Well done!’.

Resources on contractarianism on Amazon

Resources on contractarianism on Amazon UK

Other

2006-04-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

Other posts

Animal-movement political parties

A point of view is inevitable. And desirable too

Casino, poker, gambling

Theory of cheap ideas

Animals victims of road traffic

Buddhism

Online poll on the circus' treatment of elephants

Are pesticides saving animals' lives?

Christmas Anti-Fur Week at Harrods

Ethical wool

New Global Network Against the Fur Industry

Links

Animal awareness

2006-04-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

Animal awareness posts

Heuristic value of animal intelligence

How much can instinct explain? An anecdote

Ethics

2006-04-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

Ethics posts

Basic ethics

Animal equality may be a better name

Animal equality

What is speciesism?

Contractarianism

Empathy

Is absence of emotions always rational?

The Immorality of Eating Meat: Reflections on Engel's essay

The origin of moral judgements

Hunting

2006-04-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

Hunting posts

UK hunting ban revisited 1 year after

Cruelty-free

2006-04-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

Cruelty-free posts

Are cosmetics, toiletries and other household products tested on animals?

Buy only cruelty-free products

Cruelty free products

Vivisection

2006-04-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

Vivisection posts

Cancer

Mesothelioma and asbestos

Cancer research

A letter to Cancer Research UK

Carcinogenicity studies on animals

Cancer and animals

Drugs

Thalidomide tragedy, side effects, history

How the myth of vivisection is perpetuated: asymmetry between new drugs and withdrawn drugs

Fen-Phen drug combination: another case where animal studies misled research

Animal tests responsible for Elephant men drug disaster, UK official body says

Miscellany

End to animal testing historic agreement

The greatest scientific event of the millennium

I have no more doubts about vivisection

The strange case of smoking animals, tobacco companies and research - Part I

The strange case of smoking animals, tobacco companies and research - Part II

The strange case of smoking animals, tobacco companies and research - Part III

Victory over vivisection on medical grounds will advance the ethical case

Animal experiments: ethical vs medical arguments

Pro Animal Experimentation new lobbyists

Animal experiments may be less useful than alternative methods

Anti-vivisection strategy: a suggestion

The problem with animal models

Obsession with avoiding health risks is unhealthy

When appeal to authority is misleading

Vivisection opinion polls

Animal experimentation public opinion. An Update

UK government’s animal experimentation cover-up is unlawful, court rules

Post hoc, propter hoc - a common fallacy of vivisection apologists

Singer's ambiguity on vivisection is damaging to animals

San Marino bans vivisection

Links

2006-04-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

Other animal sites

An Animal-Friendly Life

The Veg Blog

Animal Ethics

Brute Ethics

Animal Writings

Good Humans

VeganVanguard

Animal Rights Information and News Resource Blog

Blog directories

BlogRankings.com

Blog Universe Blog

Blog Sweet

SynBlog

BritBlog

World Blog Directory

Weblog Directory

Blog Excerpts

Anti-vivisection strategy: a suggestion

2006-04-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

A strategy to obtain results in the area of animal experiments must have realistic goals.

If people continue to require billions of animals to be slaughtered at the end of lives spent in the concentration-camps-like conditions of intensive farming only to satisfy humans’ taste for these animals’ flesh, which is a very trivial purpose, people are much less likely to want a ban on animal experiments which, whether successful or not, have at least in theory a more important purpose.

I suggest a 2-stages approach, which will also reconcile the endless dispute/conflict between the anti-vivisection medical versus ethical arguments.

The ethical argument requires nothing less than a total abolition of all animal experimentation, unless we are prepared to accept experimenting on humans at the same level of capacities: if we are not, then justice demands the same about non-human animals. Continuing in this double standard is pure speciesism.

Total abolition, therefore, is our final goal, long term.

But we know that it will not be realized soon.

What we can do is to set a short and medium term goal of reducing the number of animals used in research, by gradually replacing them with different methods.

This will have two benefits: saving animals and getting us nearer the final objective, because the people we want to convince here are not so much the general public and consumers (who are crucial in other campaigns such as cruelty-free products and fur coats) or the politicians, but indeed the researchers themselves. They are the ones who decide what methods to use.

If we can demonstrate to the satisfaction of researchers that the number of animals used in experiments can indeed be greatly and progressively reduced by the deploy of other techniques, we will make moves towards abolition.

In fact, we do not even need the law to be changed, in practice.
All we need is for more and more research workers to shift from an animal-centred experimental approach to an alternative-methods-centred one.

What we should be careful about doing, therefore, is about making statements that are likely to make us lose credibility.

Statements which have been made in his books by Hans Ruesch, still in many respects a great anti-vivisection author, and which one can often hear echoed by animal organizations.
In a nutshell, Ruesch says that animal experimentation has led to many medical and pharmacological disasters, has given false results and has distracted from the right path of clinical observation, the only one on which a medical science can be based.
Ergo, animal experimentation as a method is a total failure and must be abandoned.

There is a prima facie logical fallacy in this argument.

The conclusion does not follow from the premise.

The premise is not strong enough to sustain such a far-reaching conclusion.

The premise can only support the conclusion that animal experimentation is not perfect and cannot be relied on as an absolute guide.

But this premise is still compatible with a statement saying that animal experiments have a relative, limited use that can be complemented by the use of other methods at the same time.

If we take Ruesch’s own examples, even the major ones, like penicillin being fatal to guinea pigs, it’s easy to see that, after all, despite animal experimentation being the fundamental method of medical research, penicillin has been introduced, so the continued use of animal experimentation is compatible with its results being mitigated and revised in the light of other methods’ results as well.

Are cosmetics, toiletries and other household products tested on animals?

2006-04-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

The UK stopped licensing cosmetic tests on animals in 1998, but there's no worldwide ban, and therefore the vast majority of cosmetics products sold in the UK will almost certainly have been tested on animals, even though the test will have taken place in another country.

In the United States, where many well-known cosmetics manufacturers are based, there is not even legislation in place to ensure that laboratories collate accurate statistics on the number of animals they use in cosmetics research.

Anyway, the law and animal testing bans alone are not enough to stop cosmetics companies testing on animals because they can simply shift their animal testing to a country without a ban.

This is why the most effective method of stopping this type of unnecessary cruelty is consumers pressure.
This is an area where people can make a difference. Choosing products made by companies that DO NOT test on animals and rejecting those that do test on animals is a powerful way to make your views count and produce a result.
By their buying habits, people can make companies change their policies and bring about a real end to cosmetic testing on animals.

Buy only cruelty-free products

2006-04-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

By purchasing only cruelty-free products, you can help save rabbits, mice, guinea pigs, rats, and other animals.

Hundreds of thousands of these animals are poisoned, blinded, and killed every year in outdated product tests for shampoos, household cleaners, cosmetics, hairspray, and other personal care and household items.
Over 500 companies have banned all animal tests forever, including some major ones.
But some corporations, including Procter & Gamble, Clorox, S.C. Johnson, and others, still test on animals, by pouring toxins onto animals' shaved, abraded skin, or squirting chemicals into animals' eyes, or forcing substances into their lungs, or pumping them into their stomachs.
These archaic tests are usually not required by law, and they often produce inaccurate or misleading results. And they don't protect consumers: even if a product has blinded an animal, it can still be sold to you.

Fortunately, scientists have developed many sophisticated non-animal product tests now in use today that are faster, cheaper, and far more accurate at predicting human reactions to a product than old blinding and poisoning animal tests, which were developed in the 1920s, ever were.
Human cell cultures and tissue studies (in vitro tests) and artificial human “skin” and “eyes” mimic the body’s natural properties, and a number of computer virtual organs serve as accurate models of human body parts.
Instead of measuring how long it took a chemical to burn away the cornea of a rabbit’s eye, manufacturers could now drop that chemical onto donated human corneas. Human skin cultures could be grown and ordered for irritancy testing.
Please vow never to buy products from companies that use animals.

Draize Eye Test - eye irritancy test on rabbits for cosmetic productsThere are a broad range of animal experiments used to test cosmetics and toiletries. These are some of the most commonly used tests.

Eye irritancy

Also known as the Draize Eye Test, this is used to assess the acute irritancy of a substance when applied directly to the eye. It usually uses at least three adult albino rabbits per substance. The substance is dripped into one eye of each conscious rabbit, often immobilised in stocks for dosing, whilst the other non-tested eye serves as a control. Rabbits have far less tear flow than humans and are therefore less able to 'cry away' painful substances, which is one of the reasons why scientists use this species. Rabbits also have no blink reflex, which makes applying the chemicals easier. During the tests, damage to the eyes such as cloudiness, reddening, lid swelling, ulceration or weeping eyes is recorded over a 21 day period for a single dose. No pain relief is normally given.

Skin irritancy

Used to assess the toxicity of a substance applied to the skin. It uses at least three adult abino rabbits or guinea pigs per substance and involves applying the test substance to their shaved and abraded (scratched) back. Over hours, day or weeks, any signs of redness, swelling, inflammation, skin cracking and ulceration are recorded. No pain relief is normally given.

Acute toxicity

There are many different types of toxicity (poisoning) experiments. This one is to assess the toxic effects on the whole body of a single dose of a substance. It usually uses 15-30 rats per substance and is administered either by force-feeding (oral), injection or inhalation, usually without any pain relief. The animals are housed for a minimum of five days to 'acclimatise' before being dosed with the substance and observed for 14 days. Animals being dosed orally will be starved before testing. Symptoms include blood pressure changes, weight loss, excessive salivation, internal organ damage, breathing disturbances, convulsions, bleeding from eyes, nose or anus, pilo-erection (hair standing on end), tremors, diarrhoea, coma and even death. All the animals are killed at the end of the test for autopsy.

Cruelty free products

2006-04-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), which, with more than 800,000 members, is the largest animal rights organization in the world and was founded in 1980, produces a "Don't Test" list of cruelty-free companies, that do not test their products on animals.

The list includes cosmetics, personal care, and household cleaning product companies only. PETA's Caring Consumer Project was founded on the fact that no law requires animal testing of these types of products, so manufacturers of these products have no excuse for animal testing and should be boycotted until they change to a non-animal-testing policy.

In order to be listed, each company has stated that it does not conduct any animal tests that are not required by law.

Companies listed either have signed PETA's statement of assurance or provided a statement verifying that they do not conduct or commission any nonrequired animal tests on ingredients, formulations, or finished products and that they pledge not to do so in the future.

Cancer research

2006-04-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

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Cancer Research

How much can instinct explain? An anecdote

2006-04-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

There are so many animal behaviours that cannot be explained by the simplistic view of animals acting merely by instinct.

This episode is one of them.

A cat saved a lamb from drowning in a swimming pool.
Puss Puss, a black and white female cat in Cheltenham, England, discovered that a lamb had fallen into a pool and frantically meowed, running back and forth between the pool and the garden where her human companions, gardeners Adrian Bunton and Karen Lewis, were working, to alert them to his plight.
Jill Royle, the owner of the garden, said: "She was in a very, very agitated state, meowing and calling and crying and being an utter pest and dashing back and forward between them [the gardeners] and the pool."
"They found the lamb in the swimming pool" Royle said. "They got it out and it was OK."

This was reported in the Gloucestershire Echo newspaper on 6 October 2003.

What is speciesism?

2006-04-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

Speciesism is species-selfishness.

It is arbitrarily to give priority to the interests of our species simply because it is OUR species, in a similar way as we could give more importance to the interests of our ethnic group, social group, continent, nation, tribe, clan, family and, ultimately, ourselves.

All these are examples of selfishness which start from its simplest form, selfishness relating to the individual, and extend to groups for no other reason than because the individual is part of them.

The 19th–century historian William Edward Hartpole Lecky wrote in his History of European Morals:

“At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a colation of nations, then all humanity, and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world.”

Basic ethics

2006-04-04T06:19:00.000-07:00

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Ethics

Animal-movement political parties

2006-04-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

We should create a political party in all Western countries, that could be elected, having a manifesto that puts at its centre the animal agenda of issues, but also has policies on all other issues which are of concern to the electorate and which are tackled and addressed by the other parties with policies in their own manifestos.

There are 2 reasons for such creation:

1) We can rely on other parties to enact policies to protect animal rights only in a limited way.

2) On the other hand, we cannot have an animal rights party which does not address all the other issues, because it would be a fringe party, one which the majority of the electorate would not find interesting.

Animal experiments may be less useful than alternative methods

2006-04-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

The way the argument about usefulness of animal experimentation for medical purposes is put by its defenders is often fallacious for a very simple reason: it is on qualitative, and not quantitative, grounds.
(In addition, it goes against the nature of advanced science, historically, to reason in qualitative and not quantitative terms. The most developed sciences, like physics, and fields of science reach their maturity by going from being qualitative to being quantitative, especially in recent times.)

When people say ‘drug x was developed through animal experiments’ or ‘treatment y was found researching on animal models’, the point is not even whether what they say is true or not.

The relevant question is: how many (how many millions, more likely) animals were used, how many experiments that had no useful result were necessary before arriving at that particular single result?

It is a statistical problem that we should address.

Because, had we used a different method of research, the statistical utility (I mean, for example, the percentage of successes) could have been higher.
We must always use this yardstick, this criterion for comparison.
(This is the way that control groups are used in tests: I’m here transferring a scientific technique to a meta-scientific context.)

It may very well turn out that, when compared with other methods already in existence or that we know could be developed, the percentage of successes in medical animal experimentation, among the number of all experiments performed, is extremely low.
It could also turn out that the corresponding percentage of misleading results (eg penicillin, or the role of smoking in lung cancer) or downright deleterious effects is higher than it needs to be.

It’s certainly well worth investigating along these lines, from now on.

Empathy

2006-03-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Whether people feel that a certain being (or group of beings) belong to the moral sphere, or even, at the simplest level, whether they feel concern for the welfare and interests of that creature, depends on one simple thing: that is, whether they identify with that being or not.

The beings we feel concern for (and subsequently we let them enter into our moral sphere) are the ones whose suffering we feel as our own, for some or other mechanism of identification.

The other beings, the ones left out, are those who we can’t identify with and therefore, for biological reasons, we perceive them as antagonistic to us, competing for the same resources (it’s a law of nature, a rule of life), rivals, opponents, enemies.

I think that we cannot escape from this scenario.

What happens is that, when people don’t care about some-one or some group (and therefore the latter fall into the second category described above), but they know that they should care, in the sense that it’s socially expected from them (for reasons of political correctness, for example, or, put in another way, current political orthodoxy, fashionable ideology, or anyway because it’s the accepted social norm geographically and historically), what happens then is that people fake concern, or at least some respect for the social norm: it’s very easy to do.

Interestingly, there’s a connection with psycho-therapy, here.

Something similar happens in psychotherapy.

Whether a psychotherapy treatment succeds or not depends (almost entirely, with perhaps a few exceptions due to exceptionally good techniques) on whether the psychotherapist feels empathy for the client or not, ie whether the therapist can identify with the client and, so to speak, feel his/her pain. If the therapist doesn’t, s/he doesn’t really care about helping that person and most likely s/he won’t, for the reasons I’ve given above: ie it’s a law of nature that mors tua vita mea, the therapist may even feel rather good that somebody else and not him/herself is suffering (especially if the therapist has a lot of problems of his/her own, which I think is an extremely common case).

Animal experiments: ethical vs medical arguments

2006-03-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

We often read, in forum discussions (eg the Oxford Gossip), that some-one without medical expertise cannot make statements on animal experimentation.

So, by the same token, we cannot condemn experiments on humans performed in Nazi camps, or any other tests carried out on humans, for that matter. I remember Paola Cavalieri once saying to me: “Do we need medical knowledge to say that we are not allowed to experiment, say, on the Chinese?” or something to that effect.

The obvious problem here is that the two questions, the ethical and the medical, have been confused.

The effect of stressing the medical/scientfic aspect of animal research (its lack of reliability, being bad science etc) created by Hans Ruesch, a great anti-vivisection writer but albeit one who only covered one aspect of the issue, is that now there is an assumption that who opposes animal experiments takes an epistemological stance on its own or in addition to a moral one.

Pro Animal Experimentation new lobbyists

2006-03-24T10:59:00.000-08:00

“For years, protests by animal rights extremists have closed laboratories and intimidated scientists. Now, for the first time, a student campaign in favour of animal testing is gaining momentum. Laurie Pycroft, a 16-year-old student has launched a protest group, Pro-Test, in support of animal testing for medical research. He joins Richard & Judy, along with one of his fellow supporters Iain Simpson, to talk about the creation of their controversial protest group and living under constant fear of death threats.”

This is the coverage on Channel4 website of their chat program on these two blokes.

Vivisection now seems to have found a new breed of defenders, grown out of the culture of anti-animal experimentation and sensitivity to animal rights that is presumably widespread, if not prevalent, in university campuses in the West, like Cambridge and Oxford.

The program only interviews people on one side of the debate (so much for media objectivity). Not one single voice for animals is raised during the show, except the indirect, absent voices of death threats allegedly coming from animal rightists.

Peter Singer on the Guardian online, on animal rights’ extremists’ violence:
“Is there a way out of the present deadlock? Some opponents of experiments on animals will be satisfied with nothing less than the immediate and total abolition of all animal research.
“In a society that continues to eat meat, however, that is an unrealistic goal. If people think that their enjoyment of the taste of animal flesh is sufficient reason to confine millions of animals in horrific factory farms, transport them to slaughterhouses and then kill them, why would they reject the use of relatively smaller numbers of animals in experiments designed to find cures for major diseases?”

Theory of cheap ideas

2006-03-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

What are the most popular products, the items that people buy most, the best-sellers, top of the list? The cheapest ones.
Cheap, low-cost flights make people travel more, bargains on designer clothes make people buy more of them, and so on.
Understandably. “Cheap” simply means that it required fewer hours of work and energy to be bought. It’s a biological need, a principle of economy: all things being equal, go for what requires less energy.
It’s only natural, biological (part of our biology and that of other animals) to try to save our energy expenditure. There’s nothing wrong with that per se.

The same happens with ideas. Some ideas require more intellectual effort than others, are more energy-consuming. You’ll find that the least energy-consuming, which are the easiest, the cheapest, will be the ones most widely held.
We tend to believe that, if lots of people think something, believe in some theory, that is more likely to be true.
Not so. If lots of people believe in an idea, it will simply be because that idea is cheaper, regardless of its truth.
Cheap ideas may or may not be true.
Sometimes the simplest thought may be true because it is, so to speak (in a manner of speaking) “closer to reality”, more material, down to earth, attached to the ground, more linked to the faculty of observation and our five senses, less involving the power of imagination and fantasy, less fanciful, less abstract, less flying into higher spheres.
But other times, exactly for the same reason, because lacking fantasy when fantasy is required, the cheapest idea is utterly misleading. Of course it’s intuitive to believe that the earth on which we stand is at the centre of the universe, and everything else, including the sun, and the sun moves around it: we see it with our own eyes going from one point in the sky to another. And yet it is not true. People believed it for centuries because it was intuitive, cheaper than any alternative theory, and they were wrong.
In some ways, the fact that many people hold a certain view may be a sign of its being untrue or, at best, naïve and simplistic.
This is the transfer of a principle of economics (people tend to buy cheaper) into a different realm, that of opinion holding, through their common ground of biology.

The amount of intellectual energy demanded by holding any given idea is, of course, a relative value, not an absolute one. If you’re a millionaire, is cheap for you what is very expensive for average people. Similarly, individuals with less intelligence would find much more expensive, energy-consuming, to hold ideas which for high-IQ persons are relatively easy and cheap, not requiring much effort at all.

A good example of these cheap theories is how much beauty is over-estimated.
Not over-estimated in the sense that it’s considered important and it shouldn’t be, no. Over-estimated in the sense that people say that they consider it important (and they appear to consider it important) but in reality, when you look at what they do rather than what they say, when they speak with their actions rather than their mouths, they do not treat beauty as important at all.
A film, a biopic of Audrey Hepburn, reminds me vividly of this.
Throughout the film, based on her biographies, Audrey Hepburn is described as exceptionally beautiful and the message is that people were fascinated by her stunning looks. Now, Hepburn had a pretty face, yes, but you could hardly describe her as a stunner. She was extremely thin and was not a sex symbol by any stretch of imagination. What clearly emerged from her filmed biography, though, was that she had a very sunny, spontaneous personality, very generous, a bit child-like. Perhaps she liked people. That had the power to fascinate others, very likely, not any imaginary Miss World appearance.
For some reason, it seems easier to believe in the power of beauty than in the power of something much more difficult to define, grasp, understand.

UK hunting ban revisited 1 year after

2006-03-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

I watched this program on BBC ‘The Last Tally Ho?’, a sort of ‘1 year after enforcing the ban’ assessment of the situation.
Even the title says what it is: the question mark is the key, expresses the doubts of the program makers that the ban will indeed be effective.
Interestingly, only hunters and their helpers (hound carers etc) appear in the program and are interviewed. The show actually is all about following them, exploring their reactions to the ban (emotional ones as well, with crying women) from the beginning 1 year ago until now.
The law banning hunting with dogs in England and Wales, which dates 2004, Hunting Act 2004, came into effect in February 2005. (Scotland had already banned it.)
What the program was saying is that, because the law is flawed and more specifically is ambiguous, not well defined, it’s easy for hunters to break it, and sometimes even break it while pretending not to.
For example: the Hunt goes out in the field (complete with red jackets, horses, hounds, terrier men), not actually chasing any fox, sounding horns and such.
In fact, they go out with some dusters (‘it costs us a fortune in dusters’, says one of the hunters), which should apparently replace the fox as the quarry in this ‘trail hunting’ (sometimes they call it ‘drag hunting’). So, on the surface, they try to act ‘within the law’ (which is what they often say, half laughingly).
But then, a fox crosses the field, the hounds start chasing him or her, and here we go again: the finale is the same as before the ban.
The terrier man that I quote below explains that this occurrence (of a fox appearing without actually being looked for) did indeed happen before the ban as well, it’s a sort of normal event in a hunt, albeit not very frequent. He also adds that, if the real hunt had been in progress, horns would have been blown and that particular fox (the one, so to speak, killed by accident and not by intention) would have been alerted and stayed well away from the trails of the hounds.
The fact remains, though, that in this incident shown on the TV program the hunters did not do anything to stop the dogs as they could have: whistling, that sort of thing.
So, the law is not all that ambiguous, after all. These humans did indeed break the law.
In fact, many cases of hunts breaking the law have been reported to the authorities since the ban, without arrests or actions taken by the authorities.
And, just to finalize the confirmation that the law is not so ambiguous as they claim, the particular hunters in this TV show asked the TV crew not to film them at one stage, because, they said, ‘we may appear to break the law even if we don’t, just by accident and not intentionally’, or something to that effect.
Some statistics indicate that there are more people hunting now than before the ban was introduced.

My point is: they may still be hunting, but the practice is now being eroded, and over time there will probably be no-one to replace the current hunters, the tradition and continuity will be lost.
A terrier man said: ‘There is no fun now. We do it because we have to, until things go back to normal’ (he means until the Tories, back in power, revert the ban).

My other point is: you can’t just abolish a law because it’s unenforceable. You can’t say that we should make murder legal because not all murderers are caught, and probably a good deal of murders go unsolved.
The law should uphold a priniciple. It has a moral content. That aspect is also important, and probably just as important as the actual, factual consequences of the existence of a law.
In this particular case, moreover, the question of enforceability has two distinct aspects, which need to be separated because the first may have to do with the law (which could be changed, anyway, let’s not forget it: people keep saying that the law is bad and mus be repelled, whereas in fact the law can simply be improved to be made tougher, more precise, less ambiguous, and harder for the hunters), and the second may simply have to do with the police not willing to use (put in) resources into enforcing it (which problem must, of course, be handled and solved differently, by forcing the police to do their duty): the first aspect is whether the law is written in an ambiguous, imprecise way, the second aspect is whether the police do not act when there is a clear violation of the law.

Buddhism

2005-02-07T09:32:00.000-08:00

There is an element in Buddhism that seems to deprive life of its value.

I can see that control over one's emotions and going beyond the self are good things, but Buddhism goes too far.

Of course you eliminate suffering if you renounce all things which are valuable in life, both material, physical and emotional, affective. The things which are beautiful, that make life worth living. The things which create strong attachemnts, attractions, feelings, connections.