Re: [Pen-l] Help Baby Seals Who Are Killed in Canada

[ravi <ravi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 24, 2009, at 2:19 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
> My problem with PETA is that they tend to value animals over people.
> Or maybe their PR is so bad that they only _look_ like they value
> animals over people. (They may be closet humanists.) For example,
> they're not just against testing on animals to develop make-up (which
> seems reasonable tom me). They're also against testing
> human-life-saving drugs on animals.
>
>  But PETA and Bridget Bardot (if
> she's still around) are pretty overt with their thinking and seem more
> concerned with cuteness than they should be.

I don't know... I don't find hen (referred to as "chicken" in American  
English?) particularly cute. A lot of PETA actions protest their  
torture. Now they may use chicks to symbolise the hens, because indeed  
chicken are cute, but again that's tactical.


> The use of cuteness in a tactic prevents a lot of communication with
> the non-PETA folks. Is there some effort to present the PETA world
> view to everyday people?


PETA believes that their efforts are indeed a presentation to everyday  
people. And judging from the response from my niece and her friends,  
it seems to work quite well. For the cerebral stuff, there is Peter  
Singer.


> _why_ should we give up on testing pro-human
> drugs on animals?


Here's PETA's take on it: http://www.peta.org/about/faq-viv.asp
(they are spot on, IMHO, in the first paragraph, w.r.t the gains in  
general health)

Here's Singer's take on it:

"Whether or not the occasional experiment on animals is defensible, I  
remain opposed to the institutional practice of using animals in  
research, because, despite some improvements over the past thirty  
years, that practice still fails to give equal consideration to the  
interests of animals.  For that reason I oppose putting more resources  
into building new facilities for animal experimentation.  Instead,  
these funds should go into clinical research involving consenting  
patients, and into developing other methods of research that do not  
involve the harmful use of animals."

	--ravi

--
Support something better than yourself ;-)
PeTA       => http://peta.org/
Greenpeace => http://greenpeace.org/
If you have nothing better to read: http://platosbeard.org/

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