Animal Rights Success Story
by Michael
The UK newspapers tend to brand people who do not like animal testing as animal rights extremists who attack people in the animal testing business. This is wrong and shows an arrogance that is distasteful.
You can be both you know – a person who hates the idea of animal testing and who at the same time does not subscribe to acts of violence against the people who do the testing (although I very nearly do). In fact I don’t believe that all animal rights extremists perpetrate acts of violence against people in the animal testing business. I don’t even think that they are animal rights “extremists”. They are just people who fervently believe that if humans want to test medical products for the benefit of their health, they should do the testing on other humans.
You might do better calling these people, “animal rights supporters” (ARS) or something like that. I am an ARS and proud of it. In a derogatory way, the Times also refers to them as animal rights activists. I think that you have to be active if you are to support animal rights. And animal rights obviously need supporting, as do human rights.
The Times’s editor makes an inaccurate comment on page 2 of the March 14th 2012 edition. He says that animal rights extremists are “in reality hostile to the cause is animal welfare”. What?! And he says that they are uninterested in the reasons for animal experiments. That must wrong. We are interested and the reasons for animal experimentation cannot be supported even though they assist in furthering people’s health. This is because we have no moral right to put an animal through pain, suffering and death for our benefit.
To say that the existing law protects animals in laboratories is also wrong. The experiments are inherently harmful and, no manner what the legislation, it cannot protect animals from discomfort, fear and pain under that premise.
I am pleased to report that ARS have recently enjoyed a major success. In using Facebook (an instance when Facebook can be useful) and letters, ARS have managed to convince Britain’s ferry operators, operating between the continent and England, to cease the importation of genetically modified mice and other animals including cats and dogs into England. In addition airlines have stopped importing animals for testing too. Apparently, only foreign airlines now do the importing.
This is having an effect on the research into certain diseases. I support these people and am pleased with their success. However, the impact on testing is not major as over 3.7 million animals are bred and tested upon in the UK – astonishing numbers, I think.
Many people will disagree with my argument. To those people I would suggest that the best middle ground is neither to test on animals nor to cease testing altogether but to test on the human animal as it is for his and her benefit. Unfortunately that is far too extreme a suggestion because humankind is far too arrogant.
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