Day: March 5, 2002

Protectionism v. Terrorism: Which Side is George W. Bush On?

The New Republic‘s Franklin Foer wrote an article on a downright bizarre sidebar in the war on terrorism. In return for its support of the United States, Pakistan asked George W. Bush to lower textile tariffs and raise quotas that have long been directed at Pakistani exports. The White House has refused, allowing itself to be held hostage by the textile lobby in the United States.

As Foer recounts, House Republicans wanted to renew the Trade Promotion Authority without any help from Democrats. To achieve that, given its slim majority in the House, it had to offer the moon to Republican holdouts who are unfriendly to free trade.

One of those holdouts was North Carolina’s Robin Hayes whose district depends heavily on textiles for jobs. To obtain Hayes’ vote, the administration agreed to toe the line on Pakistani textile imports. Combined with other problems related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Foer reports that total textile imports from Pakistan have fallen by 40 percent costing as many as 48,000 jobs in Pakistan. And, as Foer puts it, “That’s 48,000 more Pakistanis with nothing to do but take to the streets, cheer on Osama bin Laden, and burn down the American flag.”

The final outrage? Almost all textile quotas will be phased out in 2005. Foer writes,

In other words, the textile lobby has spent millions of dollars and interfered with wartime foreign policy to prolong a protectionist regime that’s already slated for imminent extinction. Who are the grave robbers here?

Beyond the political machinations that led to this odd outcome, it is obscene that an administration which so publicly calls for free trade works behind the scenes to block free trade with one of the poorest countries of the world. Like previous Republican administrations, Bush is willing to talk the talk but not walk the walk on free trade, condemning many Pakistanis to poverty for no other reason that they are too competitive for the American textile industry.

Like the Democrats, Bush trusts the government, not the people.

Source:

Fabric Softener: The textile lobby v. the war on terrorism. Franklin Foer, The New Republic, March 4, 2002.

What If It’s A Boy?

My five-year-old daughter, Emma, is positive that my wife is going to give birth to a girl. If she overhears us talking about the baby being a girl or a boy, she will correct us that in her expert opinion, the baby must logically be a girl.

This weekend the cuteness of all that finally wore off and I asked her what she was going to do if the baby turned out to be a boy. To which she responded that, in that case, we would just have to change the baby from a boy to a girl.

And, of course, with five year-olds you can no longer just insist that this is impossible without being subjected to the one-word interrogative, “Why?” which eventually backs Mommy and Daddy up to a wall as surely as any firing squad.

Bono and Bill Gates Offer a Proposal to Deal with Africa’s Problems

When the World Economic Forum was held in the United States in early February, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and rock star Bono announced their “DATA Agenda” for resolving debt problems of the developing world. Unlike a lot of proposals floated by celebrities, the DATA Agenda actually had some decent ideas.

At a press conference, Bono said DATA stands for “Debt, AIDS and trade for Africa, in return for democracy, accountability and transparency in Africa.”

If it could be pulled off, that would indeed be a pretty good bargain. As Bono noted, Western countries have soured on aid and debt relief due to long-running mismanagement problems in Africa.

[There’s] a certain distrust of aid and the way it’s been spent in the past . . . We have to do a lot to change the public’s mind. I know Americans are very generous in spirit and I know that if they can help and if they think the money can be used well, they will put their hands in their pockets.

The missing piece of the puzzle, however, is how Bono intends to secure the agreement of African nations for the democracy, accountability and transparency side of the equation. There are a handful of countries where the promise of debt relief and aid might offer an incentive to further democratize, but those nations are already on their way and don’t represent the extremes that concern Bono.

Kenya might be pushed further toward democracy, but Somalia doesn’t even have a functioning government to approach with such an agreement. Other countries that are largely undemocratic, such as Zimbabwe or the Congo, seem unlikely to surrender any of their power prerogatives for debt relief.

If these countries ever democratize and liberalize, Bono’s and Gates’ proposal might make a lot of sense, but its use as a carrot to entice countries to move in that direction is seriously limited.

Source:

Bono: ‘Preventing the fires rather than putting them out’. CNN, February 3, 2002.

Karen Davis — Ducks in AFLAC Ads Are Exploited and Degraded

United Poultry Concerns president Karen Davis has written a letter to the CEO of AFLAC Incorporated complaining about those ads featuring a duck touting AFLAC insurance.

In a press release containing a copy of the letter, UPC asked animal rights activists to, “Please Contact AFLAC Incorporated (a supplemental medical insurance company) and urge them to stop running TV commercials that represent ducks in dangerous, unnatural, and degrading situations.”

In her letter to AFLAC CEO Daniel Amos, Davis cites an ad featuring a duck apparently falling into the Grand Canyon. Davis writes,

We ask that you stop putting animal abuse images in people’s minds. As a former juvenile probation officer in Baltimore who is now the head of an animal protection agency, I know that many children and teenagers are influenced by programming that treats animals derisively and/or places them in unnatural, potentially harmful situations. We ask you not to cater any further to this mentality.

Yeah, ever since my daughter saw that ad all she can talk about is visiting the Grand Canyon to toss a duck overboard.

Actually, I’m certain that children and teenagers have a lot more common sense than Davis does. Now I would be concerned about teenagers or children who rationalized the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — as Karen Davis did — by claiming they likely reduced the total suffering in the world by eliminating so many meat eaters. Now that is truly the sign of someone excessively influenced by a sick mentality.

Source:

UPC Action Alert: AFLAC TV Commercial Degrades Ducks. United Poultry Concerns, Press Release, March 4, 2002.

In Vitro Is Not Necessarily Non-Animal

The Boston Globe’s Naomi Aoki wrote an article that is being widely circulated by animal rights and anti-animal rights advocates on the Internet. The article profiled Charles River Laboratories and gave the impression that the company is increasing its efforts at developing and marketing nonanimal tests. The only problem is that one of the most innovative “nonanimal” tests mentioned in the article, is in fact an animal test.

In January 2002, Charles River Laboratories bought a firm called DakDak which performs in vitro testing of sunscreen products. Using an innovative approach, the lab can perform testing of sunscreen products in a day or two that would take up to a year in in vivo models. But in vitro testing is not the same as nonanimal testing, although you would not know that from Aoki’s characterization of DakDak,

In the past five years, the lab animal portion of Charles River’s business has gone from 80 percent to 40 percent. Earlier this month, the firm bought a lab test, called DakDak, that allows researchers to measure how effectively sunscreens prevent skin damage. The test does in days what would take months in animal studies.

. . .

Studying them all [potential compouds] in animals is simply an economic impossibility. Animal tests can take months, even years, and quickly run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Charles River estimates that DakDak can test five or six products for less than half what it would cost to study one product in animals.

But DakDak’s technology is not nonanimal — and, at least in its press releases announcing the acquisition of DakDak, Charles River never claims that it is.

The in vitro test is based on research by skin cancer researchers Eric Bernstein and Jouni Uitto who filed a patent in 1997 for a line of transgenic mice that form the core of the DakDak technology.

Bernstein and Uitto gentically modified the mice so that they carry a promoter found in human beings that produces elastin when people are exposed to sunlight. In the transgenic mice, however, this promoter has been modified to produce an enzyme called CAT (chloramphenicol acetyltransferase).

When the transgenic mice are exposed to sunlight, the promoter kicks into gear and produces CAT. The amount of CAT produced can then be measured as a gauge of how effective a sunscreen product is in preventing exposures to UVB and UVA.

The in vitro model which Charles River Laboratories touts involves taking skin explants from the transgenic mice and exposing the explants to UVB/UVA.

Yes, this is an animal alternative to the extent that skin explants from animals are used rather than whole animals, but the entire process from start to finish is entirely dependent on transgenic mice. Whatever else it is, DakDak’s test is animal testing.

And yet the Boston Globe erroneously bills this sort of test as an example of companies “Evolving away from animal tests.” In case that was not clear enough, the editors added a subhead proclaiming that “Charles River Laboratories shifts to new technologies.”

It is these sort of articles which fuel the nonsensical claims by animal rights activists that animal testing is yesterday’s technology. Hey, Charles River Laboratories is using a sunscreen test that doesn’t use any animals, so why can’t we get rid of all animal testing?

Yes, Aoki includes comments from researchers to the effect that animal alternatives cannot replace animal studies completely, but the reality is that many “animal alternatives” are like this sunscreen test. They might reduce the number of animals killed and return results far faster using in vitro technologies, but they still rely heavily on animals.

Source:

Evolving away from animal tests: Charles River Laboratories shifts to new technologies. Naomi Aoki, Boston Globe, February 27, 2002.

In vivo and in vitro model of cutaneous photoaging (U.S. Patent 6,018,098). PharmCast.Com.

Charles River Acquires ‘In Vitro’ Technology Platform. Charles River Laboratories, Press Release, January 14, 2002.

Cat And Mouse Model Human Skin Aging. The Scientist, 12[9]:31, April 27, 1998.