Author: Brian Carnell

PETA demands withdrawal Nike commercial

Coming on the heels of its complaints
about commercials featuring National Football League defenseman John Randle
chasing a chicken dressed as Brett Favre, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is demanding Nike withdraw a commercial featuring the NFL’s
Denver Broncos.

The commercial parodies the running
of the bulls in Spain. The viewer sees the bulls stampeding down a street
and a matador waiting for them in a large stadium. Before the bulls can
get to the stadium, though, the Denver Broncos defense lines up in formation
on the street. The commercial cuts back to the stadium where the matador
is perplexed by a loud crash and then wailing of bulls in the distance.

According to a PETA press release,
the commercial “promotes animal torment and cruelty.” Personally,
I thought the commercial was hilarious.

Source:

PETA sees red over Broncos Nike Ad. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Press Release, October 12, 1998.

Will transplant recipients be less than human?

Animal rights activists seem to
be increasingly desperate in their fight against Xenotransplantation –
the transplanting of organs and tissues from animals into human beings.
First, they argued such transplantation simply wouldn’t work. After
that argument failed, they argued there were enormous dangers of passing
diseases between animals and humans. Now that the evidence indicates this
risk is minimal, the activists are pulling out the big guns in their rhetorical
grab bag – people who receive animal organs aren’t really human.

According to Gill Langley, who
co-wrote a recent report on xenotransplantation for the
British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and Compassion in World Farming, “The
human xenotransplantation patient will become a literal chimera. It sounds
like scare-mongering, but let me assure you that the word chimera is being
used by xenotransplant scientists.”

Scare-mongering? From an animal rights
activist?

If the thought of being less than
human isn’t enough, Langley’s report warns that patients whose
lives are saved by these new technologies (which he still claims won’t
work) could face unknown psychological consequences.

So this is the justification
that animal rights activists are going to present to the 50,000 people
in Europe alone who are waiting to receive organs? Xenotransplantation
must be stopped to prevent those dying individuals from becoming less
than human and suffering the attendant psychological side effects. Better
dead than depressed?

Source:

Activists say animal transplants make us less human. Reuters, October 13, 1998.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Following the passage of Arizona’s
ban on cockfighting, an unidentified group is circulating a press release
claiming that those in favor of cockfighting are using the Internet to
harass and target animal rights activists who supported the measure.

“Taking a page from the anti-abortion
movement’s book on terrorism, Arizona cockfighters have posted a
list of animal activists’ names at a website on the Internet,”
the press release claims.

Antiabortion terrorism? Try animal
rights terrorism. Assuming the press release is accurate, these people
are doing to animal rights activists exactly what the activists have been
doing to medical researchers, fur farmers and others for years. Animal
rights activists regularly post to the Internet the names and phone numbers
of medical researchers, journalists who write disapproving articles, fur
farmers and others.

This is what happens when social
movements self-righteously believe they are so obviously correct that
they may break the law with impunity and attack indiscriminately both
persons and property who get in their way. Officials with animal rights
organizations such People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals issue fawning
press releases and articles defending the activities of groups such as
the Animal Liberation Front, but animal rights activists are the first
ones to cry foul when their tactics are turned back on them.

Not that I support taking direct
action against animal rights activists. As I have said before, the main
thing that such direct action does is discredit animal rights activists
in the eyes of most Americans. The reaction to the recent destruction
of more than $12 million in property at Vail proved that point. Even those
local environmentalist and activists who opposed the new Vail development
condemned the action and the attack did more than anything to unite that
community behind the ski resort. Engaging in direct action against animal
rights activists only risks giving them sympathy on a potentially national
stage that they simply don’t deserve.

Source:

Cockfighters use Internet to target animal activists. Citizens Again Cockfighting, Press Release, November 6, 1998.

Animal rights terrorist demands his insulin

Recently, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals‘ Bruce Friedrich posted a bizarre appeal on behalf
of convicted arsonist and animal rights activist Frank Allen. It seems
Allen and his family are unhappy with the way prison official are treating
him.

Among the laundry list of complaints
presented in Friedrich’s email is that Allen is “receiving an incorrect
dosage of insulin” to treat his Diabetes.

Insulin? Insulin treatment for
diabetes was developed through animal experimentation and for decades
diabetics avoided health problems and premature death by using insulin
derived primarily from pigs (insulin derived from humans is now available).

As Michael Bliss, author of The
Discovery of Insulin, sums up the role of animal experiments in diabetes
treatment,

The discovery of insulin in the early 1920s stands as
one of the outstanding examples in medical history of the successful use
of animal experimentation to improve the human condition. Insulin would
not have been isolated, at Toronto or anywhere else, without the sacrifice
of thousands of dogs. These dogs made it possible for millions of humans
to live.

Allen wants and Friederich supports
access to a medical technology developed with techniques that both men
are committed to abolishing.

A Brief Observation About EnviroLink

Ever since the blow out with Lycos,
an annoying pop-up window soliciting funds appears whenever I browse the
Envirolink web site, and supporters keeping sending out a fundraising
e-mail claming EnviroLink is in dire financial straits. The e-mail asks
for donations — the larger the better. EnviroLink chief Josh Knauer says
EnviroLink needs only $5,000 per month to keep going.

Which doesn’t make any sense.

In the fund raising email, Knauer
claims that “over 375,000 people from over 150 countries use EnviroLink’s
services every day.” Either that number is grossly inaccurate or
Knauer has absolutely no idea what he’s doing. If, in fact, EnviroLink
has over 375,000 people visiting its site every day, that would be close
to 12 million people each month who visit the site or subscribe to email
lists it hosts, etc. If Knauer can’t figure out a way to generate a paltry
$60,000 a year from his 144 million users each year, maybe he should consider
hiring somebody who can. That is simply a pathetic performance — I could
generate $60,000 annually with a tenth of EnviroLink’s users.

EnviroLink hosts a Sustainable
Business Network, but apparently EnviroLink’s own business practices are
not sustainable.

Enough with the Halloween mythmaking

With Halloween right around the
corner, the American |Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals|
released a rather sensible guide to keeping pets safe during the holiday,
noting that “there are plenty of stories of vicious pranksters who
have teased, injured, stolen, even killed pets on this night.”

But that sort of restrained warning
doesn’t go nearly far enough for some animal rights activists who insist
on spreading myths about large, well-organized Satanic cults bent on sacrificing
and mutilating black cats on Halloween.

A short release by |Education and Action for Animals| is typical. Without offering any evidence, EAA claimed
“the number of animals abused and sacrificed may increase by TEN
TIMES during the Halloween season.” Like other outlets, EAA warned
that black cats were in special danger because “they are highest
in demand for sacrificial purposes”; again, a claim made with no
evidence to back it up.

But that was nothing compared to
Mesia Quartano, who runs the Mining Company’s Animal Rights page.
To provide her readers with information on the horrors black cats face
from Satanic cults she provided links to ultraconservative Christian fundamentalists
who believe that a super-secret Satanic order called the Brotherhood has
infiltrated key position in government and the corporate world. This sort
of nonsense has been thoroughly debunked (see sociologist Jeffery Victors
excellent book on the topic, Satanic Panic, among others) but is
kept alive by an unlikely convergence of fringe elements in fundamentalist
Christian, radical feminist and animal rights circles.

And just in case further evidence
is needed on the credulity of people when it comes to animal deaths, a
recent news story distributed on animal rights lists provides ample evidence.
A large number of horribly mutilated animals were found in a city dumpster,
obviously put there by some sicko or perhaps a cult. Except, as
it turned out a few days later, the mutilated animals’ presence had a
rather mundane explanation. It seems the animals were, in fact, road kill
placed in the dumpster by a company contracted with by the local authorities
specifically to remove such animals.