Re: A Star Is Torn: Animal Rights and Medical Research

["Juan R. Fajardo" <fajardos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie wrote

> The
> root cause of unnecessary cruelty is a neoclassical economy of
> "scarcity and unlimited wants."  "Animal rights" activists, as
> well as most Greens, are, however, not aware of the need to
> abolish the mode of production that gives rise to unnecessary
> experiments [on animals] because there is no such thing as
> "enough" shampoos and food colorings under capitalism.

On top of that, under capitalism information is a commodity and thus
data is proprietary to the companies.  Thus the specific results of
testing are secret so each manufacturer or research institution must
reproduce tests and experiments that have been done by others elsewhere
in order to gain basic information that has already been produced but to
which they have no access.   Moreover, in the US in any case, companies
are protected from competition by laws and regulations which require
that each chemical, cosmetic, or drug manufacturer prove that *its*
products are safe and that again requires them to reproduce tests that
have already been done by others.  So that if Acme sells Mixture A and I
want to sell Mixture A manufactured not by Acme but by me, I must take
rabbits and rub things into their eyes, take macaques and force feed
them mixture A, even if I and everyone else knows what the results would
be because Acme already did that.  How many millions of animals would be
spared if we could eliminate corporate secrets?

- Juan