On June 22, Mary Tyler Moore appeared with about 100 young people on Capitol
Hill to lobby for increased funding for juvenile diabetes. Moore, chairwoman
of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, told the Senate Appropriations Committee,
What gives us all hope at JDF is the promise of research and the commitment
of this Committee and you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Harkin, to make doubling
the NIH budget over the next five years a top national priority … Look
around this room once more, listen to the voices of the children who will
tell you their stories today, and when you retire to your deliberations, promise
to remember them—promise to remember the more than 16 million people
who, like me, have diabetes.
Is this the same Mary Tyler Moore who is a People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals favorite for her many pro-animal rights stances? Along with some
anti-fur activism, PETA has championed Moore for endorsing its anti-Premarin
campaign. PETA and Moore object to Premarin, a hormone replacement therapy for
post-menopausal women, because it is derived from the urine of horses that PETA
claims are mistreated.
The money she is asking to go to studying juvenile diabetes would, of course,
include extensive funds channeled to animal research. The Juvenile Diabetes
Foundation is solidly behind a recent report made by the Congressionally mandated
Diabetes Working Group. That report offers numerous recommendations on how to
proceed with research on diabetes, a significant portion of which will involve
extensive use of animals. For example, the DWG notes that there are still enormous
unknowns about diabetes’ effects on cardiovascular disease:
Little is known, for example, about how diabetes causes arteriosclerosis
and cardiovascular disease. However, advances in the exciting area of genetic
research may soon make it possible to develop animal models with both diabetes
and arteriolosclerosis, or other cardiovascular abnormalities. Such animal
models, which closely mimic human diabetes, could help answer many questions
about the disease.
In fact just about every recommendation the DWG makes, from increased research
on obesity to more funding for basic research on cell signaling would rely heavily
(as does most such research) on experiments with animals. The Juvenile Diabetes
Foundation itself recognized the importance of this when it recently collaborated
with the Harvard Medical School to launch the JDF Center for Islet Cell Transplantation
at Harvard Medical School. Islet transplantation involves replacing the body’s
insulin-producing cells that are destroyed in Type I diabetes when the body
express an immune reaction to the cells. Such research, which so far has produced
some tantalizing insights but no medically viable treatment in humans, has involved
extensive tests on animals.
All of which makes Moore the typical animal rights Hollywood hypocrite who
latches on to the movement as a nice, safe, and oh-so politically correct cause
and never even bothers to think about the contradictions of being in league
with PETA which actively opposes everything she’s trying to accomplish
with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.
Prior to giving her testimony, Moore told CNN, “I think it’s going
to be very difficult for the people in Congress to listen to these children
tell them what it’s like to live with a chronic disease like diabetes
and not remember it.” Maybe people in Congress might find it difficult,
but Moore’s friends at PETA won’t. They list the Juvenile Diabetes
Foundation as one of several dozen health-oriented charities that “starve,
cripple, burn, poison, and slice open animals to study human diseases and disabilities.
Such experiments have no practical benefit to anyone.”