Author: Brian Carnell

Chimpanzee Collaboratory Wants Chimpanzees to Have Standing in U.S. Courts

Steven Wise garnered a fair bit of attention in April when his new group,
The Chimpanzee Collaboratory, launched its campaign to grant chimpanzees
standing in U.S. courts. If successful, this would allow animal rights
activists to sue medical researchers, animal entertainers, zoos and other
entities for violating the rights of chimpanzees in their care.

Wise summed up his view in Nature writing,

I say that a minimum level of autonomy — the abilities to desire, to
act intentionally and to have some sense of self, whatever the species —
is sufficient to justify the basic legal right to bodily integrity.

. . .

Such immunity rights as bodily integrity and freedom from slavery can
belong to human children, infants, the very retarded, the profoundly
senile and the insane.

And, of course, if a retarded child has a right not to be
experimented on, why not a chimpanzee?

This is old hat for Wise, but it was odd seeing Harvard Law professor
Laurence Tribe offering his support, however odd, to the Chimpanzee
Collaboratory. Unlike Wise, it wasn’t clear that Tribe had really thought
through his claims.

ABC News, for example, paraphrased Tribe as arguing that if a corporation
— which is certainly not a sentient entity — can have rights, can’t
animals? But this is an entirely specious argument since he only reason
that corporations have rights is that they are the results of the
collective action of rights holders.

The corporation known as The New York Times deserves to be protected by
the First Amendment, for example, because it is composed of individuals
each of whom also possess such rights.

The odd thing is that Tribe seems to have something entirely different in
mind than Wise. Tribe, for example, seems to think that granting legal
standing to chimpanzees would simply be a way to more vigorously enforce
existing animal cruelty laws rather than create legal rights for them.
Tribe claims, for example, chimpanzees that have legal standing could
nonetheless still be used for medical research.

And where is the Chimpanzee Collaboratory getting the money to pursue
this campaign? The Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes that Rob Glaser,
chief executive of RealNetworks Inc., has given $1 million in funding to
the group over the past two years.

Sources:

Should we let chimpanzees sue? ABCNews, May 2002.

U.S. activists demand lawyers for chimps. The BBC, April 26,
2002.

Will chimps make chumps of us in court? The Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
April 30, 2002.

Animal Advocate Was on Van der Graaf's Hit List

Animal rights activist Volkert Van der Graaf is the prime suspect in the assassination of Netherlands politicians Pim Fortuyn last week, but what was Van der Graaf’s motive? Was he angered at Fortuyn’s views of fur farming and the environment? So far Van der Graaf is not talking, but details from the police investigation are coming to light that suggest possible motives.

Netherlands newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported today that the hit list that police recovered from a search of Van der Graaf’s car and home included 19-year-old Joost Eerdmans. Eerdmans was the closest thing that the Fortuyn’s List Party had to a point man on animal protection issues.

Eerdmans is a member of the Dutch Animal Protection Association and e-mails from an environmental/animal rights group called Wakker Dier had been forwarded to Eerdmans. The e-mails inquired about the party’s environmental and animal policies.

Eerdmans replied to the e-mails that since the party had just formed it did not have explicit positions on these issues yet, but as an animal lover Eerdmans promised to fight for animal-friendly positions.

Wakker Dier worked closely with Van der Graaf’s organization, Environment Offensive. Police are investigating whether or not Van der Graaf learned of Eerdmans’ involvement with animal and environmental policy within the Fortuyn List Party from the e-mails exchanged with Wakker Dier.

So far, two of the four people on van der Graaf’s hit list were people within the Fortuyn’s List Party who were likely to have had significant influence over animal and environmental policy in the Netherlands after the May 15 elections and who did not share Van der Graaf’s extreme position on either topic.

Source:

Justitie onderzoekt e-mails van milieuclub. Olof van Joolen, Algemeen Dagblad, May 14, 2002.

Jordanian Woman Granted Divorce

The BBC reports that a Jordanian woman recently became the first to receive a divorce under a new law that allows women as well as men to seek divorce.

Jordan used to allow only men to seek divorces — a fairly common legal restriction in most Muslim countries.

The law was changed earlier this year, however, to allow women to file for divorce provided the women first forfeit any right to any sort of financial compensation (the woman who won her divorce had to forego a dowry she had received from her husband when they were married).

Source:

Jordan woman ‘wins right to divorce’. The BBC, May 13, 2002.

Novartis Puts Its Money Where Its Mouth Is

Just a couple weeks after suggesting that Great Britain’s failure to control animal rights extremism would deter Novartis from investing there, Novartis last week announced it will spend hundreds of million of dollars to build a state-of-the art research facility in Boston, Massachusetts.

Novartis will kick things off with a $250 million, 400 research center in an MIT-owned research park called Kendall Square.

From there Novartis expects to expand quickly. It is already in talks to lease another building in Kendall Square and is also reported to be looking for 2-3 other buildings in the area to lease.

Novartis joins Pfizer, Wyeth and Merck as companies that have chosen to invest significant research dollars in Cambridge, Mass.

The big loser in this, of course, is Europe. Europe used to be the hands-down winner in drug research, but it is quickly becoming an also-ran due to an unfriendly cultural and legal climate.

According to The Financial Times of London, of all research dollars spent in Europe and the United States, only about 41 percent of that money went to the United States. Today the figure is 58 percent. As a whole, European companies currently conduct 34 percent of their research in the United States, compared to only 26 percent in 1990.

Europe is far behind the United States when it comes to biotech, which is one of the reasons that attracted Novartis to the Kendall Square facility.

The upshot, of course, is that as the United States continues to receive the disproportionate amount of pharmaceutical investment, the animal rights movement’s focus could switch to the United States more than it has. On the other hand, the social climate is far more hostile to the animal rights movement in the United States.

After all, Great Britain’s left-liberal candidate used to brag that he would ban the hunting of foxes with dogs, while the U.S. left-liberal candidate in the last election bragged about how he had hunted as a boy in order to shore up his support in rural areas.

The recent defeats the animal rights movement suffered in the 2002 Farm Bill is a good example of just how little influence the animal rights movement has on national politics in the United States (one of the many benefits of not having a proportional representation system).

Source:

Seeking freedom in New England: The decision by Novartis to move research to Boston is the latest step away from Europe by a big pharmaceutical. Daniel Dombey and Victoria Griffith, The Financial Times (London), May 8, 2002.

Novartis coming to Cambridge. Scott van Voorhis, The Boston Herald, May 8, 2002.

The Other World Cup Meat Controversy

The controversy over dog meat in South Korea has garnered a fair bit of attention ahead of the start of the 2002 World Cup, but there is another meat controversy involving the other country that will host the Cup, Japan. In this case, it is animal rights activists trying to pressure British football players into signing a pledge not to eat any whale meat while they are in Japan.

Japan kills more than 600 whales annually for what it claims are research purposes, but most of the whales end up being served in Japanese restaurants (and Japan has made no secret of its desire to outright resume commercial whaling). In fact, although it still lacks the votes on the International WHaling Commission to push through a resumption of commercial whaling, Japan did recently announce that it will start hunting sei whales this year after a 26 year hiatus.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare recently issued a press release calling for British athletes not to eat whale meat while they are in Japan. In the press release, IFAW UK director Phyllis Campbell-McRae said,

We’re asking for their assurance that they won’t eat whale meat during their stay in Japan. Each player is invited to sign and return a form pledging ‘I won’t be eating whale at the World Cup’ in support of IFAW’s campaign against Japan’s killing of hundreds of whales each year.

Sources:

Nations Condemn Japan Whaling Plans. Associated Press, May 7, 2002.

England team urged to ‘stay on side’ for the whales during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. International Fund for Animal Welfare, Press Release, May 7, 2002.

More Details Emerge about Animal Rights Activist Who Allegedly Murdered Pim Fortuyn

Details emerging in the ongoing investigation of the murder of Netherlands politicians Pim Fortuyn are making the extent of his killer’s animal rights fanaticism more clear as well as suggesting possible links to other crimes.

The Sunday Times (London) reports that while in his teens, accused killer Volkert van der Graaf, 32, founded the Zeeland Animal Liberation Front which committed acts of vandalism that primarily targeted restaurants.

Van der Graaf was involved with anti-medical research and environmental groups until 1992 when he founded Environment Offensive which was opposed to all animal agriculture. Van der Graaf and others in Environment Offensive earned the enmity of farmers by relentlessly challenging applications to expand animal farms.

How Environment Offensive was funded is raising a lot of questions. It received 100,000 Pounds from the state lottery, but farmers claim that it also acted as a sort of shakedown scheme whereby farmers willing to pay enough money via a third party broker could buy off the group and avoid the legal hassles.

One such farmer, Pieter Van der Camp, claimed that he paid 20,000 pounds to just such a broker and had no more problems with Environment Offensive. The Sunday Times reported that the environmental group refused to comment on the allegations.

Van der Graaf is now a suspect in an earlier 1996 murder, and there is also evidence linking him to other animal rights-related crimes.

On December 22, 1996, somebody shot environmental officer Chris Van de Werken while he was out for a jog near his home. Van de Werken and van der Graaf had clashed before, with Van der Graaf believing that the environmental officer was far too accommodating to farmers in the area.

Moreover, the killing of Van de Werken closely resembles that of Fortuyn’s. Van de Werken was shot multiple times at very close range. The bullets police recovered from Van de Werken’s body were 9mm silver-tip hollow-point bullets — a type of ammunition that is rare in the Netherlands and just happens to be the same type of ammunition used in the Fortuyn killing.

Van der Graaf was apparently questioned about the murder at the time, but the case was closed as unsolved in 1997. It has now been reopened.

The Sunday Times also reported that documents and computer records seized from van der Graaf’s home also provide a possible link between van der Graaf and a 1999 arson attack on a plant that produced feed for mink and a series of 1995 incidents at a poultry farm.

Source:

Fortuyn killer linked to earlier death. Peter Conradi, Sunday Times (London), May 12, 2002.