Author: Brian Carnell

Milk Consumption Prevents Breast Cancer!

Okay, the headline was a bit deceptive since milk consumption probably won’t reduce your risk of breast cancer, but that’s exactly the sort of conclusion I’d draw from a new study if I were as careless about treating dietary studies as many animal rights activists are.

Researchers in Norway studied 48,844 women in an attempt to measure the relationship between childhood and adult milk consumption and breast cancer incidence. Researchers obtained information about the women’s milk consumption in 1991-92, and then followed up 6 years later by obtaining information about breast cancer incidence among the study group.

Childhood milk consumption was slightly negatively associated with breast cancer among women 34-39 but not for women 40-49. Adult milk consumption had a large negative relationship, with women who drank 3 glasses of milk per day have a roughly 40 percent lower risk of breast cancer than women who did not drink milk (this result persisted even after controlling for age, reproductive and hormonal factors, body mass index, education, physical activity and alcohol consumption).

Should young adult women start consuming milk to prevent breast cancer? Probably not, for much the same reason that women shouldn’t abandon drinking milk if the study had found a 40 percent increased risk. These are interesting findings, but even with such a large study, this is still an awfully small association to warrant altering one’s lifestyle over.

Not to mention that, like most dietary studies, the Norway researchers relied completely on self-reporting of milk. Its questionable whether or not people can accurately report how much milk they consumed (in fact, studies of self-reporting find people often make gross errors in reporting contemporary behavior, much less behavior that occurred years and decades ago).

But there is still one conclusion that is probably warranted from the various studies of milk consumption and cancer. None of these studies shows the sort of increased risk of cancer from milk drinking that would be required to establish a causal connection between the two. Whatever else one can say about milk, there seems to be a death of evidence linking milk drinking to cancer, despite what animal rights activists would like you to belive.

Source:

Childhood and adult milk consumption and risk of premenopausal breast cancer in a cohort of 48,844 women – the Norwegian women and cancer study. International Journal of Cancer, Volume 93, Issue 6, 2001.

Courts Rule Against Anti-Abortion Protesters in Cases that Could Profoundly Impact the Animal Rights Movement

In the last few years there have been a couple of lawsuits filed under the |Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization| statutes against animal rights activists and groups. Long before these lawsuits, however, abortion rights groups were testing the limits of the RICO statutes by suing anti-abortion protesters charging that even if the protesters didn’t directly engage in violent acts, they were nonetheless part of a criminal conspiracy designed to shut down a legitimate enterprise. In the first week of October, developments in two such cases emerged.

In the first case, NOW v. Scheidler, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected an appeal by anti-abortion activist Joseph Scheidler that a court order against him violated his First Amendment rights.

Scheidler and several other people who were members of an anti-abortion group repeatedly engaged in acts of civil disobedience at abortion clinics (which occurred prior to the passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act). Among other things, Scheidler and others obstructed access to abortion clinics, damaged clinic property, and on occasion threatened people try to enter the clinic. Pretty much the same tactics often used by animal rights activists.

NOW argued in court that the pattern of actions by Scheidler and his associates constituted evidence of a criminal conspiracy designed to illegally interfere with the operation of a legitimate enterprise. Scheidler, for his part, argued that individuals in his organization were acting on their own ethical principles, and that in fact some members had acted in ways that he disapproved of. The Court rejected that argument, essentially arguing that because the defendants were board members of the same group, had written letters in support of illegal acts, and participated in the planning of illegal acts, that the organization itself had a criminal purpose.

The second case, Planned Parenthood of Columbia/Williamette, et al. v. American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA), et al. revolves around a web site known as the “Nuremberg Files.” The Nuremberg Files site posted pictures and personal information of abortion providers in the form of Wanted Posters.

The anti-abortion activists argued that the web site content was a legitimate form of free speech, but a jury ruled against the activists in a RICO lawsuit and awarded abortion providers a $107.5 million judgment. The Ninth Circuit Court had originally ruled in 1999 that at the Wanted Posters constituted “true threats,” allowing the lawsuit to proceed. But after the jury’s verdict, a three-judge panel reversed the judgment saying that the Wanted Posters were protected by the First Amendment.

Now, the Ninth Circuit Court has agreed to review that decision, and is very likely to restate its original thinking about the wanted posters and reinstate the jury’s verdict. Either way, this lawsuit is definitely headed to the Supreme Court.

If these lawsuits ultimately are successful, they will provide ample tools that will inevitably be used to pursue legal action against animal rights activists. For example, under most circumstances it would be difficult to pursue legal action against an organization such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but under RICO a lawsuit arguing that PETA’s pattern of actions constitute a criminal conspiracy might be successful. And PETA’s pretty careful about putting some distance between itself and those who commit acts of violence — many other groups would be sitting ducks for such lawsuits.

At the very least, as they did with the anti-abortion movement, such lawsuits would cripple many of the more extremist parts of the animal rights movement by tying them up in court for years and forcing them to try to keep up with very expensive legal bills.

Sources:

“Nuremberg Files” Case Will Be Reconsidered. Feminist Daily News Wire, October 4, 2001.

Anti-abortion extremists suffer major court defeat. Feminist Daily News Wire, October 2, 2001.

Man Arrested for Violating a Restraining Order At His Own Wedding

In another example of the bizarrely inflexible nature of restraining orders, John Yount was recently arrested for violating a restraining order that Kim Schreckengost had obtained against Yount on January 18, 2001. Yount was arrested at the Meadville district court where he and Schreckengost had gone to get married.

Rather than getting married, Yount was instead arrested, charged with violating the restraining order by being in Schreckengost’s presence, and shipped off to a county jail to await prosecution.

Appearing before District Justice William Chisolm, Yount said that both he and his fiancee were under the impression that once she chose to spoke to Yount again, that the protection order was null and void. In fact, of course, not only is that not true, but in many jurisdictions such protection orders are enforced even when the person who applied for the order takes active measures to establish contact with the person the order is taken out against.

Or, as Judge Chisolm summarized the current state of the law, “I don’t think you understand, the fact is, it doesn’t matter what she does, you already violated the order.”

In this case, Yount served 11 days in a county jail for a previous violation of the restraining order, and at that time the order had been extended an additional six months. At his arraignment following the botched marriage attempt, Yount was warned that any attempts to contact his fiancee by phone from jail would result in additional charges for violating the restraining order.

In many jurisdictions, the application of restraining orders was long ago pushed passed any and all reasonable bounds, and it is an area of law that is in need of serious re-examination and reform.

Source:

Man arrested at his wedding for violating PFA order filed by bride. Marianne Oberley-Orris, Meadville Tribune, September 27, 2001.

Egosurfing First Names

I was visiting Duncan Smeed’s web site, and he did something I hadn’t thought of before — ego surfing his first name. He notes that his site shows up as the #8 listing in a Google search on “Duncan.”

So, of course, I had to plug in “Brian” and see where I landed. Lucky number 7. I was pleased to see that the Number 1 position was held by another of my favorite Brian’s, author Brian Jacques. Jacques is the author of the fantasy “Redwall” series which is usually mischategorized as children’s literature. Yes, these are books that would be great for children, but they are also just plain all-around excellent fantasy novels (everyone I know is waiting for the “Lord of the Rings” films, but I’d much prefer a “Redwall” movie).

Unbelievable 9/11 Comments

Okay, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen is 73 and maybe he’s got Alzheimer’s or some other problem, but it is hard to fathom what would motivate anyone to say anything like this about the terrorist attacks on the United States,

What has happened is — now you all have to turn your brains around — the greatest work of art there has ever been. That minds could achieve something in one act, which we in music cannot even dream of, that people rehearse like crazy for ten years, totally fanatically for one concert, and then die. This is the greatest possible work of art in the entire cosmos. Imagine what happened there. There are people who are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5000 people are chased into the Afterlife, in one moment. This I could not do. Compared to this, we are nothing as composers… Imagine this, that I could create a work of art now and you all were not only surprised, but you would fall down immediately, you would be dead and you would be reborn, because it is simply too insane. Some artists also try to cross the boundaries of what could ever be possible or imagined, to wake us up, to open another world for us.

Great Britain Considers Allowing Company Directors to Withhold Their Home Addresses

In the wake of the often violent campaign by animal rights activists against Huntingdon Life Sciences, Great Britain is considering changing laws which place the home addresses of company directors in the public domain. But even if the change is made, it is unlikely to prevent activists from targeting the homes of people involved in animal enterprises.

Great Britain requires company directors to supply their home addresses to the Department of Trade and Industry. The addresses are made publicly available in a special Companies House list. According to a Department of Trade and Industry spokesperson, “Having a home address available publicly is an important part of transparency for directors.”

The proposed change would all directors to provide an address where they can receive mail but which is not necessarily a home address.

But first directors would have to jump through a series of hoops to prove that they are at risk of violence and intimidation if their home addresses are published. The proposed law also provides criminal penalties for directors who falsely claim to be at risk of violence (I’m not sure how British prosecutors intend to prove that someone was lying abut a perceived risk of violence).

Regardless, this proposed change smacks of a pointless feel good measure that will allow Parliament to tell constituents it is doing something about animal rights extremists, while barely altering the status quo. It is extremely unlikely, given the sophistication in gathering supposedly private information that the animal rights movement in Great Britain has shown, that omitting the home address of a company director is going to slow down activists for more than a very short period of time.

Sources:

Directors ‘at risk’ may keep addresses secret. James Mackintosh, Financial Times (London), October 4, 2001.

Biotech directors shielded. Terry Macalister, The Guardian (London), October 4, 2001.

Anonymity for at-risk company directors. Mark Williamson, The Herald (Glasgow), October 4, 2001.