Paul McCartney Gets 99.44% Pure on Tour

TheSmokingGun.Com, a web site that specializes in posting scans of legal and other documents, recently discovered an oddity in the standard rider that Paul McCartney used during his 2002 tour. Specifically, the rider calls for venues to provide the singer and his entourage with “24 Large Bars of Ivory Soap.”

Ivory Soap is not only a Procter and Gamble product, but the major ingredient in the soap is animal fat mixed with vegetable oils. As The Smoking Gun puts it,

So, while Paul won’t sit on a leather couch, the Liverpudlian is apparently lathering with beef tallow.

Source:

Paul McCartney Tour Rider – 2002. The Smoking Gun, Accessed: December 15, 2002.

What were Linda and Paul McCartney thinking?

Paul McCartney recently gave a BBC
radio interview in which he seemed to step back from his, and his deceased
wife Linda’s, hard core animal rights position on animal experimentation.

“I’m finding out now,”
McCartney told the BBC, “that there is quite a lot of animal experimentation
— some of it I suppose absolutely necessary when you come down to the
final tests before people.”

McCartney made comments about his
wife’s treatment for breast Cancer that indicate Linda never knew the
drugs she was taking had been tested on animals. He said that doctors
treating Linda gave the impression that the drugs they prescribed had
not been tested in animals.

“If they tell you ‘It’s ok
to have this because we didn’t test it on animals’ then you are going
to believe them,” McCartney said.

In other words, all this time Paul
and Linda McCartney went around advocating for animal rights and against
animal experimentation, they were so ignorant of the topic that they didn’t
even know the fundamental basics about the use of animals in drug development
and testing.

This is the state of the
animal rights movement’s knowledge of the use of animals by medical researchers.

Paul McCartney makes a fool of himself in Parade magazine

Parade magazine recently
ran a short piece on Paul McCartney in which the former Beatle said people
wanting to remember his wife Linda McCartney should send contributions
to Memorial Sloan-Kettering where she was treated for breast cancer before
her death. As an astute reader pointed out in the October 4 issue of Parade,
however, that McCartney said he was opposed to the use of animals but breast
cancer research relies on animal studies.

How does Paul reconcile this ethical
dilemma? He told Parade that he is still “totally against
experiments on animals,” so contributions in Linda’s name would only
go for spending on human trials.

Earth to Paul: the only way a breast
cancer drug gets to the human trial stage is after it has gone
through extensive animal testing. McCartney’s position seems to be that
it is okay to do human trials of breast cancer drugs, but the animal tests
that make the human trials possible should be banned.

“Live and Let Die” indeed!

Linda McCartney, animal rights activist, dies of breast cancer

Linda McCartney, animal rights activist
and wife of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, died in April from complications related to
breast cancer. She was 56, and one of an estimated 43,500 American women
who will die from breast cancer in 1998.

McCartney campaigned against animal
experimentation, including research sponsored by the March of Dimes to
find the causes and possible cures for birth defects. Her opposition to
animal experiments did not stop McCartney from using the results of such
experiments to extend her own life. Like many women stricken with breast
cancer, McCartney elected to undergo chemotherapy treatments for her cancer
– a technology developed with extensive testing on rodents and other animals.

Contrary to claims made by animal
rights groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, McCartney’s own life is proof that animal
experimentation has led to important medical advances in fighting life-threatening diseases such as breast cancer (it is instructive to note
that in an online tribute to McCartney by PETA, the animal rights organization
conveniently left out that McCartney had died from breast cancer, much
less that she received medical treatments developed through animal experimentation).

With continued support for animal
research, medical science may someday be able to dramatically improve
the survival rates of women with breast cancer and prevent the tragic
deaths of thousands of women.

Sources:

Cal Thomas. “Radical animal rights groups descend on Washington” Los Angeles
Times Syndicate 1997

Florence Shinkle, “Breast cancer’s random approach” St. Louis
Post-Dispatch/Scripps Howard News Service 1998;

PETA web page (http://www.petaonline.com/)
Linda McCartney Tribute April 28, 1998.