Day: May 5, 2004

Boing! Boing! — Talking to Your Children is McCarthyism!

Almost as amusing is watching the RIAA flailing around trying to find a way to stop file sharing is the ridiculous rhetoric that some web sites use to describe the RIAA’s tactics. For example, here’s Cory Doctorow on an advisory for parents that the RIAA released about file sharing (emphasis added),

The RIAA is sending out advisories to press-contacts at various media outlets about their “Are Your Kids Breaking the Law When They Log On?” campaign, which aims to scare parents into spanking their kids for file-sharing, and comes across as red-scare-era propaganda. It’s funny: Hollywood fought the Red Scare and McCarthyism tooth and nail, but today, they’re more than happy to appropriate its rhetoric and tactics.

Yes, the RIAA advisory notes that 83 percent of teens believe illegally downloading music is morally acceptable and give parents advice like,

SET HOUSE RULES AND SPELL OUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF NON COMPLIANCE. As you consider the potential consequences of illegal file swapping and the danger to your computer you can limit access to illegal sites through parental control software like Cybersitter or NetNanny or through parental controls in AOL or MSN. You can take away Internet privileges for a set amount of time if you feel your child is not obeying the rules.

Oh the horror. How will the Union ever withstand such a shocking outburst of intolerance and McCarthyism?

The only scare tactics here are Cory’s ridiculous overreach in referencing McCarthyism (it’s exactly this sort of thing that helps content companies sell things like the DMCA to Congress and the wider public. It just helps prove the RIAA’s case that those wanting to find a more reasonable solution to the copyright issue are fanatics).

You can read the full text of the RIAA advisory here on Cory’s site.

What Attracts Muslims to Hamtramck, Michigan?

There’s been an ongoing controversy in Hamtramck, Michigan, over the desire by some mosques there to amplify broadcasts of the five-times-a-day call to prayer. The call to prayer apparently lasts about two minutes, and the city seems divided between Muslims who think its no different than Christian churches ringing bells to non-Muslims who say they don’t want to be told — even in Arabic — “that Allah is the true and only God five times a day, 365 days a year” as one resident was quoted today by the New York Times.

In that same New York Times story, the reporter delves into why Hamtramck has become such a haven for Muslim immigrants — according to the paper, 41 percent of the city’s residents in the 2000 census reported they were born outside the United States. The Times quotes one of the Muslims giving this reason why he moved from New York City to Hamtramck in 1999,

What attracted me was seeing school girls with burkhas. It’s more authentic here than in New York, more roots. There’s village life.

Source:

Tension in a Michigan City Over Muslim’s Call to Prayer. John Leland, New York Times, May 5, 2004.

Roberta Wright Should Know Ignorance When She Sees It

KVOA 4 in Tucson ran a report on April 20 about animal rights activists protesting at the University of Arizona College of Medicine as part of World Week for Animals in Laboratories.

The TV station’s web site summary of the story reports this exchange about the role of animals in medical research. Dr. Susan Wilson-Sanders, director of University Animal Care, told KVOA that animal research had made important contributions to treating diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease and that,

Well, in my opinion and the opinions of the vast majority of Americans a human life would be more important.

To which animal rights activist Roberta Wright retorted that,

The only reason somebody could be that ignorant is because they don’t know much about the unique aspects of various animals whether they be birds, mice, rats, monkeys or what have you . . . they . . . none of them belong in laboratories.

Well, Wright should certainly know about ignorance as she’s been peddling this same argument for three decades, and since 1990 with her group Supporting and Promoting Ethics for the Animal Kingdom.

Wright is the author of a short essay, “A Tribute to Lab Animals,” which is written as if Wright were a laboratory animal,

Have you ever been in a laboratory where animals are warehoused before being subjected to experimentation? There’s nothing quite like the sights, smells, and sounds of such an environment. The animals seem to gaze out from behind their metal bars, pleading to be touched, or at least talked to. My emotions have always behaved predictably when I’ve toured a laboratory. Putting myself in the animal’s place, I visualize myself behind those bars, uncomprehending as to why I’m there. I, too, would look expectantly to anyone who came in and looked as though he or she were going to give me some attention. If I got none, I’d wonder why, and my feeling of grateful anticipation would turn to despair when the door once again closed behind the visitor. Until the next time. When I’d go through the same thing all over again. Of course I couldn’t know that there were worse things about to happen to me than merely being ignored.

In fact, that’s the good news. The bad news is the research protocol with my number on it eventually surfaces and I am led away to new sights and new sounds. I’m excited about this walk I’m now taking. After all, I seem to be the center of attention and isn’t that what I’ve been wanting ever since I was uprooted and brought to this cold, sterile place? . . .

. . .

I and many like me are whisked quickly from the room. I recognize cool night air when it hits me. I am going home! I am going to a place of safety! I lie quietly, not wanting to disturb what is happening for fear my rescuers will change their minds and put me back into that awful prison. There’s talk of “being caught.” The people who have liberated me from this agony and gloom are breaking the law! Law? What law? What law condones and protects the people who torture and maim those who can’t object? If human beings could change places with us for only one hour, would they be so ambivalent, so indifferent? Surely if they looked into my pleading eyes, they would be capable of seeing and feeling my pain and suffering. Then they wouldn’t continue to ignore my plight.

Would you?

Deep in the bowels of the institution where you now stand are more than 7,000 animals that the people who work here call “inventory.” We are every imaginable animal, amphibian, and even cattle. They do every imaginable thing to us and call it “science” and “research.” When the researchers leave at night, they hang up their bloody lab coats and brag about their “discoveries” with no thought of our suffering. We are powerless to do anything about our imprisonment. We have only you to speak for us. We beg of you. Please speak loudly, persistently, and GET US OUT OF HERE. All we have to look forward to day after day are cold bars and painful procedures. Liberation is a faint dream that seems will come only with death. Our suffering and confinement are indescribable.

When you leave here tonight, think about us. We will be lying terrified in stainless steel cages, it will be cold, and we will hear only the hum of the refrigeration unit. And tomorrow will bring more anxiety, terror and pain. Think about us. Or at the very least, please do not forget that we are here!

During a protest of a new primate research laboratory at the University of Arizona, Wright claimed that the only reason animal research continues is to allow researchers to earn advanced degrees in the sciences,

This is not about human health or curing diseases, it’s about getting Ph.D.s

And, like many activists, Wright is a supporter of animal rights violence. In April 2001, her group sponsored terrorism advocate Craig Rosebraugh to speak at the University of Arizona during World Week for Animals in Laboratories. In a press release about the event, Wright said,

Both of these men [Rosebraugh and Michael Budkie] are guaranteed to stimulate conversation and thought about why animals are used in vivisection and why they are targets of the ALF. Get used to it. Until the university opens its doors to
scrutiny, there will be an ALF to knock them down and free the animals imprisoned inside.

Sources:

Illegal Break-Ins And Animal
Experiments Focus Of Speakers On U Of A Mall Wednesday. Supporting and Promoting Ethics for the Animal Kingdom, Press Release, April 23, 2001.

A Tribute to Lab Animals. Roberta Wright, Undated, Accessed: May 3, 2004.

Is it all in the name of science or is animal abuse?. KVOA 4, April 20, 2004.

Primate research will continue, officials say. Blake Smith, Arizona Daily Wildcat, May 3, 2000.

Why Create Drugs Like Viagra?

There’s a common argument offered by both animal rights activists and other critics of the pharmaceutical industry which goes something like this: companies spend too much money (and kill too many animals) creating drugs like Viagra. Back in 1999, for example, animal rights activists made a big deal out of the fact that dogs had been used in Viagra research. As the BBC reported,

But the RSPCA said it planned to look into the experiment to determine whether they had inflicted unnecessary pain, while the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection promised to lobby the Home Office to find out why it permitted the tests.

Sarah Kite, of the BUAV, said: “We are appalled that experiments of this nature have been carried out.

“These beagles have been mutilated in grotesque experiments for a drug which has no life-saving use.”

Kite should have known better than to make such a ridiculous claim. Drug compounds developed to treat one disorder routinely turn out, after further research and often through post-approval clinical experience, to have uses well beyond the purpose they were originally marketed for. And that appears to be happening with Viagra as well.

Doctors at the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital are, in fact, using Viagra to save the lives of newborns who suffer from pulmonary hypertension. Pulmonary hypertension can cause heart failure and death. It can be treated with nitric oxide, but as Vanderbilt Dr. Don Moore, MD, notes, only for short periods of time effectively as a stop gap measure. Moreover nitric oxide treatment is expensive.

Viagra is already being tested in adults to see if it can be used as a treatment for pulmonary hypertension, and doctors at Vanderbilt have begun using it in infants who have life threatening hypertension. The number of infants who have been treated at Vanderbilt and elsewhere is still small, and there are risks with using Viagra in infants, but so far it appears that Kite could not have been more wrong in claiming that Viagra has “no life-saving use.” (I.e., business as usual for BUAV).

Sources:

Vanderbilt doctors use Viagra to treat infants with pulmonary hypertension. Press Release, Carole Bartoo, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, April 19, 2004.

Dogs mutilated in Viagra test. BBC, March 12, 1999.