Month: December 2001

Makah Might Receive Quota-Free Whaling

Back in July the Makah tribe won an important victory when the National Marine Fisheries Service released the results of a study of the gray whale population — a study which was conducted only because of a successful lawsuit by anti-whaling opponents. While anti-whaling activists hoped the study would find a smaller-than-expected gray whale population, what it found was the species population was larger than it had been since commercial whaling began in the 18th century. Now the Fisheries Service is beginning plans to set a new quota for the Makah for 2003-2007, which might end up being no quota at all.

Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the Fisheries Service’s Northwest regional office, said there were four alternatives that would be assessed. The first three alternatives would give the Makah a quota of five whales per year for five years, with the differences between the three alternatives being what, if any, restrictions there would be on the time and place that the whales could be killed.

The fourth alternative being assessed is simply allowing the Makah to hunt without any quota or restrictions at all (and considering the tribe has managed to kill only one whale since it resumed hunting in 1998, it’s not like the tribe is going to be seriously threatening whale numbers).

Source:

U.S. sets stage for whaling through ’07. Brenda Hanrahan, Peninsula Daily News, November 27, 2001.

Nigeria Sentences Woman to Death for Having Sex

A woman, Safiya Hussaini, was recently sentenced to death in the Nigerian state of Sokoto — which is one of a growing number of Nigerian states to adopt an Islamic law code. Here crime? She had premarital sex. Not surprisingly, Hussaini alleged sexual partner was acquitted by the same court.

Last year, a teenaged girl in Nigeria was sentenced to 180 lashes for having sex. The sentence was later reduced to a “mere” 100 lashes which were administered in January 2001.

Hussaini appealed her conviction, and it has been temporarily stayed. She claims that the man who was acquitted of having sex with her in fact repeatedly. Under the strict Islamic law in place in Sokoto, since Hussaini was the only witness to the alleged crime, her testimony was essentially meaningless.

Sources:

Woman’s stoning delayed by Sharia Court. European Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, December 4, 2001.

Three SHAC Activists Plead Guilty to Harassing HLS Employees

Three British animal rights activists who helped coordinate a campaign of harassment against employees and shareholders of Huntingdon Life Sciences were recently sentenced to 6 months in jail followed by 6 months probation after pleading guilty to charges of conspiring to incite a public nuisance.

Greg Avery, 35, Natasha Taylor, 33, and Heather James, 34, plead guilty just a few days before a trial on the charges was to begin. The three worked on behalf of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty and produced several newsletters that were distributed to 5,000 to 10,000 people.

The newsletters published telephone numbers and addresses of people associated with HLS, and urged people to arrange to order unwanted goods to be delivered to people’s homes in order to harm their credit rating. They also urged phone blockades against banks and a persistent letter campaign directed at employees.

Some targets of the harassment campaign were receiving 10-20 letters a day and spending considerable time returning unwanted packages. As prosecutor John Farmer said, “It is the sheer persistence of it again and again — the deadening effect on their lives of these shoals of letters coming through time and time again so in the end they did not bother to open them.”

During sentencing of the three, Judge Zoe Smith agreed, saying,

Through your newsletter, you advocated and encouraged a campaign of harassments against employees, shareholders and financial backers of Huntingdon Life Sciences.

You orchestrated a campaign against shareholders and workers in their own homes. The language used at times in your newsletter was strong, referring to employees ‘Lets smash them.’

The effect was to cause stress and strain. Witnesses have spoken of feeling violated and frightened and ill and it is clear you were aware of the effect and the stress they suffered.

Meanwhile, SHAC tried to spin the guilty pleas and jail sentences as a victory for anti-HLS activists. According to a SHAC press release,

The trial for 3 the SHAC volunteers ended quietly yesterday leaving HLS completely gutted. HLS had hoped to make a show trial out of the testimonies of its pathetic employees and then claim victory in what was hoped to excessively long sentencing. Much to the lab’s dismay, the three campaigners took a deal — pleading guilty to the charge of Conspiracy to Cause a Public Nuisance, and each received a sentence of 12 months in prison.

This means they only have to serve six months in jail, and taking tagging and the time they spent on remand over a year ago into account, they could all be out in a little over three months time. Not bad, considering the police (who wasted millions of pounds and countless hours of work on this pitiful case) and HLS had been pushing for, and banking on, custodial sentences of not less than 5 years.

Hey, we can only hope that more SHAC activists thwart HLS by pleading guilty to charges of criminal conspiracy!

For its part, HLS released a statement saying that the guilty pleas and sentencing was “not only a good day for biomedical research and the public who benefit from this research, but also for law and order in the UK.”

Sources:

Animal Rights Activists Jailed for Nuisance Mail Campaign. Emily Pennink, PA News, November 14, 2001.

Huntingdon animal rights activists jailed. Financial Times, November 15, 2001.

Animal rights trio jailed for attacks on lab workers staff. Jason Bennetto, November 15, 2001.

Animal rights trio jailed for campaign. The Scotsman, November 15, 2001.

Animal rights activist jailed for harassment. Adam Fresco, The Times (London), November 15, 2001.

Huntingdon Life Sciences Media Statement. November 14, 2001

HLS / police fail with their show trial against 3 SHAC volunteers!. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, Press Release, November 15, 2001.

Genetically Enhanced Athletes

The BBC ran a pretty much content free report a few days ago about the dangers of ‘super athletes.’ Apparently some sports scientists (?) at a conference predicted that by 2012, athletes competing in the Olympics could be using genetic engineering to enhance their performance. Of course the sports scientists (oddly enough) advocated for more research to discover these cheaters.

There was a long thread this summer at Seth Dillingham‘s site about the issue of performance enhancing drugs, including the possibility (more likely inevitability) of using genetic engineering to improve sports performance.

For the most part, I don’t see much wrong with performance enhancing drugs and there is no way the Olympics or any other sport is going to be able to keep out genetically engineered athletes for every long. And why should they?

Take a look at the average athlete today in a sport such as football or basketball or cycling, and compare them to the folks who were in those sports as professionals in the 1920s or 1930s. For the most part its no contest — athletes today are far better than they were early in the 20th century due largely to scientific advances.

The next step in improving humanity’s lot is certainly going to involve genetic engineering and will inevitably impact the sports world.

Paying Crack Addicts Not to Have Children

Is it ethical for private citizens to pay drug-addicted men and women not to have children? That’s the issue raised by Barbara Harris, whose group pays women $200 if they agree to either be sterilized or use a form of long-term birth control such as Depo Provera. Since Harris started Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity (CRACK), the organization’s Project Prevention has found 560 addicts willing to accept her deal.

Harris will speak at the 28th annual conference of the Association for Behavior Analysis in Ontario, Toronto, in May 2002, and her scheduled talk isn’t going over well with folks who consider what she does analogous to eugenics efforts (according to The National Post, parts of Canada were covered by a law granting the state the right to sterilize some people until 1972).

Harris defended her tactics to the National Post saying, “There’s really no reason a drug addict or an alcoholic should get pregnant. And if we can prevent that from happening by offering them $200, then it’s the best $200 that could be spent.”

Critics, however, raise two major objections — that the practice is racially biased and that addicts cannot consent to sterilization.

The Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy’s Eugene Oscapella told the Post, “If she’s going after crack addicted babies, then she’s going after minorities, plain and simple.” In fact, though, so far the group has had 267 white clients take the $200 compared to 190 black clients.

The claim that drug addicts can’t consent to this is a bit odd. Dr. Peter SElby tells the Post that, “The real issue for people with a medical disability was whether they could appreciate what they were consenting to. It’s the same here, because the drug addiction entices them [crack addicts] to get it done.”

But if a person is so addicted to drugs that he or she cannot consent to long term birth control or sterilization, how can such a person possibly consent to potentially becoming a parent? The consent issue seems to raise a lot more problems than it solves (if a drug addict cannot consent to Depo Provera for money, could the same addict consent to drug treatment for money?)

Michel Perron adds a note of caution, noting that targeting crack addicts may be necessary since the jury is still out on the effect of crack addiction on fetal development. That is certainly true, but even if crack proves not to be all that harmful to the fetus, a crack addict is unlikely to prove to be an ideal parent. As Professor Arthur Schafer of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba told the Post, “I think it’s legitimate to say to drug addicts, if you have babies they are going to pay a terrible price when they’re born and when they grow up and have you as a parent.”

Source:

Advocate of sterilizing addicts coming to Toronto. Odile Nelson, National Post, November 15, 2001.