Court Upholds Right-to-Work Laws on Reservations

This month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled 9-1 that Native American reservations can pass right-to-work laws.

Several years ago the Western Council of Industrial Workers Local 1385 filed unfair labor practices against the Pueblo of San Juan after it passed a right-to-work law. The National Labor Relations Board sued the Native American reservation but lost in trial court, in its first appeal, and now on its second appeal.

Right-to-work laws make it illegal to compel people to join a union in order to gain employment. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in this case ruled that, “The legislative enactment of the Pueblo’s right-to-work ordinance was also clearly an exercise of sovereign authority over economic transactions on the reservation.”

Source:

U.S. appellate court upholds right of Indian reservations to ban forced unionism. National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Press Release, January 15, 2002.

The Real Misinformation Campaign is PCRM's

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has been waging an all out attack on the dairy industry which PCRM claims is “conducting a massive misinformation campaign.” But Harvard professor Daniel Cramer complains that PCRM has been misusing his research studies into dairy products.

Over the past three years, PCRM has repeatedly cited Cramer’s research as evidence that consumption o dairy products contributes to cancer. Cramer, however, told CNSNews.Com that this is a misrepresentation of his research. According to Cramer,

We don’t have the scientific proof to say that it [milk] has definitely been linked to cancer. I think that particular group has their own sort of agenda, of not wanting milk production around, and cows to be utilized. Their agenda is that [they] don’t want . . . cows exploited or they want everybody to be vegetarians.

CNSNews reports that Cramer did concede there are some links connecting lactose consumption with cancer in mice, but that that does not prove the sort of definite link between milk and cancer that PCRM claims. Besides which, of course, PCRM’s position is that research with animals is inherently invalid, so they would certainly dismiss even this thread of evidence.

When CNSNews tried to get PCRM’s reaction to Cramer’s comments, it reports they were told by PCRM communications director Simon Chaitowitz that, “We have nothing to say about this.” (PCRM with nothing to say? Who would have thought that day would ever arrive?)

CNSNews also notes that a researcher that PCRM cited back in October as providing evidence against milk also disputes PCRM’s use of her research.

In that case, Dr. June Chan published a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that hypothesized a causal connection between milk and prostate cancer. PCRM issued a press release with Neal Barnard chiming in that “there is every reason for men to avoid cow’s milk altogether.”

But when contacted by CNSNews, Chan had a different take on her research. “We do not recommend that people change their diets or stop drinking milk,” Chan told te news organization.

Kudos to CNSNews.Com for pursuing this story and getting the real story rather than just the smoke and mirrors that PCRM would like people to see.

Source:

Harvard Prof Claims Misuse of Data To Push Anti-Milk Agenda. John Rossomando, CNSNews.Com, January 23, 2002.

USA Today Runs Bizarre Column in Support of Animal Rights Terrorism

I was a bit surprised today to open up my copy of USA Today to see a guest column defending the Earth Liberation and Animal Libertation Front. Steven Zak’s “Conservative rhetoric makes mockery of U.S. ‘solidarity'” attacks conservatives for implying that progressives who do not agree with them are unpatriotic. But on his way to that argument, Zak slips in these paragraphs,

In particular, I’ve long been a staunch environmentalist. I believe in humility toward nature and other forms of life. If you want to call that a sort of religious view, so be it; but it’s one conservatives seem to have about as much tolerance for as the Taliban does for Christianity.

The Earth Liberation Front, along with the Animal Liberation Front, about which I once wrote for The Atlantic Monthly, have been frequently described as terrorists posing as activists and similar to al-Qaeda — including on this page, where a column by Richard Berman railed against “these homegrown terrorists.” An editorial in The Washington Times also called these groups “terrorists . . . enjoying the freedoms of the United States,” and it wanred of their “online training camps.

Whew! Below is the text of a letter I sent to USA Today,

Editor, USA Today,

I was reading along and agreeing with much of Steven Zak’s op-ed about conservatives attacking progressives as unpatriotic until I read Zak complain that commentators are calling the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front “homegrown terrorists.”

When extremist pro-life individuals and groups burn down abortion clinics, is that not an act of terrorism? When extremist racists burn down black churches, is that not an act of terrorism? Why, then, are animal rights terrorists who burn down research laboratories not terrorists?

Presumably if George W. Bush or The Weekly Standard argued that all research into finding a cure for AIDS and other diseases should be stopped immediately, progressives would be outraged. I was not aware that support for violent destruction of laboratories researching AIDS and other diseases was a progressive position.

Sincerely,

Brian Carnell

Source:

Conservative rhetoric makes mockery of U.S. ‘solidarity.’ Steven Zak, USA Today, January 23, 2002.

Research Defence Society Goes On the Offensive Against Animal Rights Misinformation

Earlier this month Great Britain’s Research Defence Society launch a campaign to publicize the benefits of medical research with animals and dispel some of the misinformation about that research commonly spread by animal rights activists.

The campaign features 16-year-old Laura Cowell. Cowell suffers from Cystic Fibrosis and Diabetes. Like many cystic fibrosis sufferers, she has to take dozens of pills a day simply to stay alive. Even with enormous advancements made in treating her disease over the past couple decades, Cowell will be lucky to live to 50 without further medical advances. Advances, of course, which animal rights activists are doing everything in their power to prevent.

Cowell told The Guardian (London),

All my life I have been aware of how important this research is. Ever since I can remember I have been taking medicine. So far I have managed to live a fairly normal life. My mum says I should fit cystic fibrosis around my life rather than the other way around. I love animals and I have pets of my own but I owe my life to medical research. Without it I would be dead.

|Mark Matfield|, the director of the Research Defence Society, told The Guardian that it was time more people in the research industry spoke out against the animal rights movement. “There is a real fear about being targeted by the animal rights movement,” Matfield told the newspaper. “There may be risk involved in speaking out, but people like myself, with a high profile . . . should lead by example.”

Matfield has received death threat from animal rights activists and had his car vandalized for speaking out in favor of animal research.

Nancy Rothwell, a researcher at Manchester University, echoes this Matfield’s sentiment, telling The Guardian, “It is important that we are challenged about the research we carry out, but unfortunately the minority who take extreme action, like sending death threats, stifle that debate. We have been too apologetic in this country to make the case, but we have also been frightened because of the threat of physical violence.”

The Research Defence Society has produced a slick, thorough pamphlet about the role of animal research, Understanding Animal Research in Medicine which is available for download as a PDF file from its web site.

Source:

Researchers hit back at animal rights activists. Paul Kelso, The Guardian (London), January 16, 2002.

Researchers hit back at animal rights activists. Paul Kelso, The Guardian (London), January 16, 2002. (Note this article is cited twice since The Guardian published two different version of it in two different editions of its paper).

Living proof defends animal research. Mark Henderson, The Times (London), January 16, 2002.

Pentagon Revises Saudi Arabia Dress Code Ahead of Hearing on Lawsuit

Tampa, Florida-based Central Command, which has authority over U.S. military operations in the Middle East, recently ordered local commanders in the region to revise their policies to reflect that “wear[ing] of the abaya in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not mandatory but is strongly encouraged and to remove any requirement to wear civilian clothing to cover the uniform.”

Since the mid-1990s, the military had required women stationed in Saudi Arabia to wear the abaya — a head-to-toe black gown — when off-base in Saudi Arabia. Lt. Col. Martha McSally sued the defense department, claiming the requirement discriminated against women and violated the religious freedoms of women by forcing them to wear clothes associated with a specific religious faith.

In her lawsuit, McSally noted that the State Department does not require women working for it in Saudi Arabia to wear the abaya.

A hearing on McSally’s lawsuit was scheduled for February 4, and will likely proceed. Along with the dress code changes, lawyers for McSally also argue that restrictions that mandate that female soldiers be accompanied by men when off-base, prohibit women from driving, and force them to sit in the back seat of automobiles, also violated the rights of women stationed in Saudi Arabia. Those rules are apparently unaffected by the clothing policy change.

Source:

Saudi dress code for female troops revised. Ann Gerhart, Washington Post, January 23, 2002.

France Overturns Controversial Right Not to Be Born Ruling

Earlier this month I noted that French gynecologists were refusing to do ultrasound scans for new patients after a French judge ruled in favor of a child who sued on the grounds that he never should have been born. An ultrasound scan failed to catch the boy’s birth defect, and he argued successfully in court that since his mother would have aborted him had she known about the birth defect, he was due compensation from the gynecologist who performed the scan.

France’s parliament passed a bill just a few days after the announced strike that affirms that “nobody can claim to have been harmed simply by being born.” The bill will still allow parents to seek damages, but only if they can prove that a doctor made a “blatant error” in interpreting the ultrasound scan.

Source:

France rejects ‘right not to be born.’ The BBC, January 10, 2002.