Month: February 2005

In Case You Can’t Attend the Grassroots Animal Rights Conference

Recently the Grassroots Animal Rights Conference, originally scheduled to take place in February at New York University, had to be pushed back to May and organizers are still looking for an alternative site.

In case you can’t make the May 2005 festivities, here are some of the sessions you’re going to miss out on,

Zines, Shows, Liner Notes: Communicating Animal Liberation Through Youth Culture and Music

Andy Stepanian, Long Island Animal Defense League

In the mid-late 1990s an entire new generation of activists joined the movement and created a massive groundswell of grassroots action. These young people were recruited not by an advertising campaign or outreach program of a national group, but through powerful pro-animal influences with the hardcore music subculture. Hardcore bands filled their albums, concerts, and liner notes with forceful cries for animal liberation. At the same time youth-based grassroots groups like the various Animal Defense League chapters became regular fixtures through their information tables at hardcore shows. While this particular trend has faded a bit, many new opportunities now exist to harness music and youth culture for animal liberation. Learn how your group can tap into this youthful energy from an activist who has had great success in keeping animal issues alive in the youth culture of Long Island, NY.

Coming Out Vegetarian/Coming Out Gay: Making Alliances

Marti Kheel, Feminists for Animal Rights
Pattrice Jones, Global Hunger Alliance

The lesbian and gay movements are logical allies of the animal rights movement. In this workshop, I underline their similarities and the potential for building alliances. Using an episode from the Simpson cartoon series I show how meat dominance and male dominance are intimately intertwined. This will be a participatory workshop and people will be encouraged to share personal stories and offer strategies for making links between the two movements. Since the animal advocacy movement is often viewed as lacking in humor, one of the intentions of this workshop is to show how humor and popular culture can be used to make serious points.

Commonality of Human and Non-Human Animal Oppression

Marjorie Spiegel, author, The Dreaded Comparison
Pattrice Jones, Eastern Shore Chicken Sanctuary
Merritt Clifton, Animal People
Adam Weissman, Activism Center at Wetlands Preserve
Charles Patterson, author, Eternal Treblinka

Explore the intersections between human and nonhuman exploitation. Marjorie Spiegel will address the disturbing similarities between human and animal slavery. Pattrice Jones will explore patriarchy and its link to animal abuse and all forms of exploitation. Pattrice will also frame the discussion, making the case for why looking at intersections of exploitation matters. Citing statistical data, Merritt Clifton will demonstrate a link between animal exploitation and domestic violence. Taking this one step further, Adam Weissman will explore the similarities between the property status of children and animals, exploring John Holt’s insight that our society frames children as “love slaves” and “super pets.” Charles Patterson will draw on years of experience as a Holocaust educator to draw the link between Nazi genocide and the institutional exploitation of nonhuman animals.

Ecofeminism and Animal Liberation

Marti Kheel, Feminists for Animal Rights
Helen Matthews, Boston Ecofeminist Action
Pattrice Jones, Global Hunger Alliance

Ecofeminists believe that speciesism and sexism are so closely linked that many theorists and activists believe them to be simply two aspects of the same underlying problem. Women and animals, along with land and children, have historically been seen as the property of male heads of households. Patriarchy and pastoralism cannot be separated, because they are justified and perpetuated by the same ideologies and practices. Learn about the ideas and action strategies of action strategies of ecofeminist activists.

Sounds like fun.

Source:

Grassroots Animal Rights Conference Agenda. Accessed: 02/02/2005.

Uncooperative Weather Keeps Wolves Killed in Alaska to 51

A combination of weather factors limited the number of wolves killed as part of Alaska’s aerial control program this winter. As of January 9, only 51 wolves had been killing according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

During last year’s aerial wolf hunt, hunters in Alaska killed 144 wolves.

Bruce Bartely, information officer for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game told the Fairbanks Daily News Miner,

It’s probably down from what we’d like to see but given the circumstances it’s probably the best we could hope for.

The state plans to mail out additional permits at the end of January for pilots and hunters in an effort to reduce by about 500 the number of wolves in five regions.

Source:

Aerial hunters foiled in pursuit of wolves. Tim Mowry, Fairbanks Daily Miner, January 8, 2005.

Misleading the Public about the Value of Animal Research in the Case of Deramaxx

Are human beings and dogs too different for medical research on dogs to help understand human disease? A number of animal rights activists were practically gloating when a Novartis spokesman appeared to say so in January.

Novartis had its hands slapped by the Food and Drug Administration over its failure to timely report about the death of dogs taking Deramaxx. Deramaxx is a COX-2 inhibitor that is used as a painkiller in dogs after surgery. COX-2 inhibitors have come under a lot of scrutiny recently due to studies suggesting they may elevate the risk of heart attacks.

The FDA complained that Novartis had not timely reported deaths of dogs who were given Deramaxx. Reuters quoted a spokesman for Novartis, however, as downplaying any link between the dog deaths and the problems reported in human beings with COX-2 inhibitors,

Joseph Burkett, a spokesman for Novartis Animal Health Services, said the cardiovascular problems linked to such drugs for people were “not an issue” for dogs, because canine hearts are different from those of humans.

Obviously, a pharma official seeming to say that dog and human hearts are too different for research on one to be relevant to the other was a nice gift to the animal rights activists, but it was also inaccurate and deceptive. Either the spokesman or the journalist simply screwed up and oversimplified why the deaths in dogs are probably irrelevant to human beings in this case.

The reality is this: COX-2 inhibitors appear to elevate the risk of heart attacks in human beings who already suffer from hypertension. Hypertension is simply not a prevalent problem in healthy dogs. As Novartis noted on its web site,

The cardiovascular risks suspected to be related to coxib-class NSAIDs in people is extremely unlikely to be an issue in dogs. The risks associated with these drugs in humans involve an increased risk of heart attacks, especially in patients with hypertension (high blood pressure). Heart attacks and hypertension are rarely an issue in healthy dogs. A heart attack occurs when one or more vessels that supply the heart muscle itself with blood become blocked. The blockage is usually caused by cholesterol accumulation along the walls of the blood vessels. This condition is called atherosclerosis, or “hardening of the arteries.” Heart attacks in dogs are rare because dogs are extremely unlikely to get atherosclerosis and dogs have a higher number of vessels which supply blood to the heart. Thus, if one vessel becomes clogged there are additional vessels that supply blood to the heart. High blood pressure is also not a problem in healthy dogs since hypertension in humans is heavily influenced by lifestyle (stress, diet, exercise and smoking).

So if you wanted to study the effects of a hypertension drug in an animal model, healthy dogs would not be your first choice. Typically in studying hypertension with dogs, hypertension would be induced surgically.

Source:

FDA links dog deaths to drug. Reuters, December 29, 2004.

Oh That Sinister Huntingdon Life Sciences and Its Super-Secret Front Groups

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty circulated an amusing release in early January supposedly exposing a secret effort by Huntingdon Life Sciences to hide a clinical research division.

The SHAC press release said, in part (emphasis added),

Now present before our eyes is what can only be seen as Huntingdon’s most desperate last bid for corporate survival. Hidden behind another name is the emerging clinical division to the lab. Life Sciences Research In, the name Huntingdon took when it was forced to relocated [sic] and re-incorporate in the US consists of TWO divisions, the infamous animal testing services we all sadly know too much about, and the newer and very quiet non-animal clinical testing services.

As the clinical laboratory arm to Huntingdon Life Sciences, Centralabs actively recruits much needed business to the lab in areas it could not previously compete for. With Centralabs HLS can now offer simple analytical work, specisimen management, investigator support services, and demographic clean-up. Huntingdon is banking on these abilities to corner the market on Phase I – IV research, consolidate pharmaceutical support, and essentially secure its uncertain future.

Centralabs is one and the same with Huntingdon. They share the same facilities, employees, phone lines, and payroll. They share the same vulnerabilities and ultimately the same destiny. Huntingdon’s survival largely depends on the success of the sales of their new clinical division.

This week we track down the secret asset to HLS’s survival and give them a proper SHAC-style welcome to the campaign. Trying to sell the dark services of HLS we must compassionately root out their marketing ploy.

First, if HLS has attempted to hide its relationship to Centralabs it has certainly done the worst job ever at secrecy. On Centralabs’ website, the company notes (emphasis added)

Who we are

CentraLabs Clinical Research is an emerging force supporting global drug development in the pharmaceutical industry. Part of the Life Sciences Research group of companies, CentraLabs has evolved from the clinical laboratory services arm of one of the world’s longest established CROs. This has allowed CentraLabs to utilise its extensive analytical experience to provide focused and dedicated support to all stages of clinical drug development.

That’s one secret front group.

Secondly, I laughed out loud at SHAC’s claim that with Centralabs HLS hopes “to corner the market on Phase I – IV research.” Only idiots who know nothing about medical research could make such a bizarre claim. The contract research organization is huge — on the order of as much as $10-$20 billion worldwide depending on whose figures you believe. The idea that a single company could corner the market on such research is ludicrous.

Its even more ludicrous to suggest that HLS could corner the market given that it is a relatively small company (one of the reasons SHAC has focused on it). HLS has a very good quarter when it books $40 million or more in new sales, as it did recently. Compare that to a CRO like Covance which has a good quarter when it books more than $300 million in new sales.

Presumably if SHAC opens up an office in a new state, we should assume that’s an effort to corner the market on animal rights idiocy.

Source:

Urgent Action Alert. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, January 9, 2005.

Bill Moyers, James Watt and the Creation of Media Myths

Given his position as a sometimes-media critic, Bill Moyers recently provided an excellent example of how myths are perpetuated in the media. The short version is that even journalists tend to simply believe what other people tell them without every bothering to do any sort of fact checking. Its an odd problem in an age when so much information is at our fingertips.

In op-ed, Bill Moyers writes (emphasis added),

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, “after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.”

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn’t know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true — one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index.

In fact, there is no evidence at all that James Watt made this rather bizarre statement as part of any testimony to Congress. In fact, there’s scant evidence that Watt said it at all, under any circumstance. The quote doesn’t show up in a Lexis-Nexis search, and reporters at the time had a field day reporting Watt’s regular gaffes. If he said it at the time, it is genuinely surprising that no one else reported this statement.

So why does Moyer believe Watt did? Because he’s simply passing it along without checking its veracity. In this case he’s simply repeating what Glenn Scherer of Grist Magazine wrote back in November,

Odds are it was in 1981, when President Reagan’s first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. “God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back,” Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.

This is easily proven false. Watt wasn’t fired until 1983, and he was fired because he told a group of lobbyists that his coal commission’s decisions would be upheld because, “I have a black. I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.” Watt’s many comments about the environment — many nutty, some not so nutty — played no role at all in his firing.

So why does Scherer think they did? Unlike Moyers, who is simply repeating a false claim, Scherer is simply making stuff up here. This is frequently called lying.

Scherer notes that his source for the Watt quote is Austin Miles’ 1990 book, Setting the Captives Free. But the quote in Miles book is a) problematic, and b) doesn’t say what Scherer reports it does.

Here’s what Miles writes,

Our desperate efforts to protect the environment have been met with opposition from the religious right. James Watt, a born-again evangelical who sat on the board of directors of the scandalous PTL Club ministry while serving as our Secretary of Interior, said this about the environment: “God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.”

That’s all Miles has to say about Watt. It is impossible to check the veracity of this statement since Miles doesn’t bother to give any sort of indication where, when or in what forum Watt supposedly said this. Miles’ book seems positively allergic to footnotes. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to repeat second-hand, unsourced quotes.

Even then, Scherer seems to have simply made up most of the details for his column. As I noted above, Miles doesn’t say when, where or in what forum this was made, so how does Scherer conclude that it was made in 1981 at a Congressional hearing and led, in part, to Watt’s firing? He can’t. So either he has another source for this quote, or he simply made those details up.

And then Moyers bought this nonsense, hook line and sinker and even managed to “remember” the reaction of various people to Watt’s testimony.

Nobody, apparently, gives a damn about actually fact checking and striving for accuracy.

Source:

Bill Moyers: There is no tomorrow. Star Tribune, January 31, 2005.

The godly must be crazy. Glenn Scherer, Grist, November 1, 2004.