Amnesty International Report on Worldwide Abuse and Torture of Women

Amnesty International recently released a report on the extent of torture and abuse directed against women worldwide.

The report, Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds, notes that “under international law, the state has clear responsibility for human rights abuses committed by non-state actors — people and organizations acting outside the state and its organs,” but that many nation states turn their backs on such abuses for cultural reasons.

Amnesty International also documents the torture and abuse that many women suffer within prison systems around the world, including the United States. Ironically one of Amnesty International’s complaints about abuse of women in U.S. prisons is a direct result of feminist achievements,

Allegations of sexual abuse of women prisoners in the USA nearly always involve male staff who, contrary to international standards, are allowed unsupervised access to female jail and prison inmates in many jurisdictions.

The report makes for fascinating, if depressing reading, and can be downloaded in PDF format from the Amnesty International web site at the link below.

Source:

Broken bodies, shattered minds: Torture and ill-treatment of women. Amnesty International, Press Release, April 1, 2001.

Afghanistan and World Food Program At Odds

Until recently the World Food Program was feeding 300,000 people in Afghanistan with subsidized bread. Then the Taliban stepped in and demanded that the WFP stop using women to collect information about the needs of other women in Kabul. The WFP refused, and had to stop selling the cheap bread after it was unable to purchase any more flour.

The WFP and the Taliban have been negotiating to try to find some way around the impasse, but neither side seems willing to budget. In a statement released by the Taliban, the ruling party said, “The dignity of Afghan women is more precious than anything else.”

Apparently that includes the more than five million Afghans who have almost no access to food at the moment and are likely to face starvation without a heightened aid effort; an aid effort which the Taliban is so far doing its best to sabotage.

Source:

Kabul facing bread shortages. The BBC, June 16, 2001.

Story Correction: How I Let A Neal Barnard Lie Slip Through

Chalk this one up to writing for the web. Last week I wrote a story about the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s outrage over the death of laboratory animals in flood-ravaged Texas. Neal Barnard complained that research facilities should spend more of their money on flood evacuation plans, and I retorted that maybe if they didn’t have to spend so much on security keeping animal rights activists from getting into the laboratories, that they would have more money to spend getting lab animals out after floods.

Of course, Barnard’s claims turned out to be just the latest piece in a long line of misinformation from PCRM. In fact researchers at The University of Texas Medical School did have an evacuation plan for the animals, and were devastated when flood waters came on so rapidly that despite repeated efforts they were unable to evacuate the animals.

The Houston Chronicle interviewed the Texas Medical Center’s directory of veterinary medicine Chris Smith who noted that as soon as the rain began pouring down, attempts were made to reach the animals. Unfortunately tropical storm Allison just brought to much rain down too quickly for such a rescue to succeed.

How bad was the flooding. Americans for Medical Progress noted in its e-mail newsletter that people on the scene said it was a true flash flood, with one facility accumulating 9 feet of water in only half an hour.

Contrary to Barnard the center, like other research facilities in the flood prone area, had a flood evacuation program and had successfully evacuated animals on previous occasions when the area was threatened by hurricanes.

In this case researchers (and many others) were caught off guard when Allison temporarily lost strength and its severity downgraded, only to reform very quickly and begin drenching the area with torrential rains.

Although People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and PCRM both tried to use the lab animal deaths as part of their anti-research campaigns, it was left to animal rights activist Rick Bogle to elevate the deaths into absurdity as only he can. Posting on the Primfocus e-mail list, Bogle mocked statements by Smith that scientists working with monkeys who had died (the animals were primarily used for behavioral research) had developed close relationships with the animals and would grieve for the lost primates. Bogle wrote,

It is a hideous notion that those who infect, experiment on, and otherwise torment animals will attempt to sell the public on the absurdity that they have “close relationships” with the animals under their control. And indeed, if such is the case it can be seen as the close relationship the Nazi doctors had with the Jewish subjects of their own experiments. Mengele had little pet Jewish children who he treated quite differently from the rest.

Sources:

Drownings of 78 monkeys, 35 dogs lamented by UT veterinary official. Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle, June 15, 2001.

PETA, PCRM use tragic lab animal deaths in Houston flood as media opportunity to advance anti-research agenda. Americans for Medical Progress, Newsletter, June 15, 2001.

Re: primfocus: Drownings of 78 monkeys, 35 dogs lamented by UT. Rick Bogle, e-mail to Primfocus list, June 15, 2001.

Correction: It is the policy of this web site to correct all errors of fact. When this story was first published, it inaccurately characterized the nature of the research projects for which the primates killed by the flooding were being used. According to the Houston Chronicle, “The monkeys . . . were used largely to study behavioral sciences.” AnimalRights.Net regrets the error.

Cancer Drugs and Animal Testing Alternatives

The British National Institute for Clinical Excellence recently issued guidelines for a combination chemotherapy regimen to treat lung Cancer, and also recommend that patients who don’t respond well to other forms of chemotherapy be administered docetaxel, which is marketed under the brand name Taxotere. Taxotere is interesting because some animal rights groups hold it up as a model of what can be accomplished with human cell cultures rather than animal models, but such claims tend to omit some important facts.

Take a look at the Australian web site, AnimalLiberation.Org.Au. Like most animal rights sites, it maintains that testing drugs with animal models is cruel and ineffective: “Apart from being cruel to animals, this approach is also not effective. Different species respond in different ways to drugs.”

It gives several examples of how cell cultures have led to breakthroughs in cancer research, including Taxotere: “…breast cancers removed during operations were tested with 4 different drugs to find the most effective. The drug Taxotere most effectively killed cancer cells.”

Ironically, however, research on Taxotere demonstrates the problem with claims that animals and humans are too different. After Taxotere was shown to kill breast cancer cells in vitro, numerous follow-up studies were conducted to see if the drug could destroy a breast cancer tumor in a whole organism — specifically in Mice. Sure enough, the drug performed very well in such models, and numerous animal testing has been done with combining Taxotere and other drugs to try to find a cure for breast cancer (some with very promising results).

Source:

Lung cancer drugs approved. The BBC, June 12, 2001.

Josh Harper and Tim McVeigh

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently profiled animal rights activists Josh Harper. Harper told a Post-Intelligencer reporter that among other things he sees “a spark of hope in every broken window, every torched police car and every mink running free as their hearts desire.” Harper added that his ultimate goal is nothing less than “the complete collapse of industrial civilization.”

The most interesting part of the profile, however, is Harper’s apparent resort to the sort of reasoning used by Timothy McVeigh to justify his criminal acts,

Harper denies any involvement with the Animal Liberation Front or the Earth Liberation Front — dubbed terrorist groups by the U.S. government. Yet he applauds ELF’s recent arson attack on the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture.

In war, Harper reasoned, there is collateral damage.

This isn’t empty rhetoric either, considering Harper once threw a lit flare and smoke canister at Native American whalers.

Source:

His goal: the end of civilization. Paul Shukovsky, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 18, 2001.

Web Sites Route Around FDA to Sell Morning-After Pill

As mentioned before on this site, there is a growing movement urging the U.S. Food and Drug administration to make so-called morning-after contraception available over-the-counter. A couple of states have already passed laws allowing pharmacists to prescribe the pill directly without requiring that a woman see a doctor first, but the drug still requires seeing a doctor and obtaining a prescription all within a 72 hour timeframe.

Some web sites, however, are taking matters into their own hands and selling the drugs online in a move that is certain to spark controversy and intense scrutiny.

Forty-seven Planned Parenthood offices already prescribe morning-after birth control over the phone, and Planned Parenthood of Chicago moved into online prescriptions in January. So far it has issued more than 500 prescriptions. Women visit a web site, enter medical information, which a nurse practitioner then reviews. If the nurse signs off, the prescription is sent off to whatever pharmacy the woman requesting the prescription selected. Planned Parenthood of Georgia has apparently been using such an online system since last summer.

According to an Associated Press story, the Illinois Department of Professional Regulations is currently conducting an investigation into whether or not the Planned Parenthood of Chicago’s web site violates a state medical practices law since drugs are prescribed without the consultation of a physician. “Our position is it doesn’t matter what the drug is,” said Professional Regulations agency spokesman Tony Sanders, “If it’s a prescription drug, you can’t prescribe it to somebody unless you have a relationship with them.”

Federal and state governments led a much publicized crackdown on Internet sites selling Viagra through a similar web-based diagnosis, and efforts to sell morning-after pills are likely to begin receiving the same sort of scrutiny. All the more reason for the FDA to approve these drugs for over-the-counter sale as soon as possible.

Sources:

Condom broke? Head for the web. Julia Scheeres, Wired News, June 19, 2001.

‘Morning-after’ pills offered online. Bennie M. Currie, The Associated Press, June 18, 2001.

Doc urges ‘morning-after’ pill. Lindsey Tanner, The Associated Press, April 30, 2001.