Biomedical Research And The Animal Rights Movement example essay topic

Animal rights groups go too far By Travis Kirin? Animal rights groups, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, claim to be preventing animal abuse, but instead seek to impose their anti human ideology by trying to stop people from using animals to save human lives and helping terrorist organizations firebomb and threaten those who oppose them.? The modern animal rights movement got its start in the 1970's when Tom Regan and Peter Singer both wrote books claiming it was "species-ist' to make moral distinctions between human beings and animals.? What does this mean?

After a speech on animal rights in 1989, an audience member asked Regan, "If you were aboard a lifeboat with a baby and a dog, and the boat capsized, would you rescue the baby or the dog?' ? Regan responded", (If) it were a retarded baby, and a bright dog, I'd save the dog. ' ? Ingrid Newkirk, PETA national director and co-founder, put the matter bluntly by noting "6 million people die in concentration camps, but 6 million broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses. ' That Newkirk is comfortable comparing the raising of chickens for food to the Holocaust illustrates the depravity of the animal rights extremists.? Groups like PETA take this misanthropy and run with it by working to ban all medical research involving animals.?

It is difficult for people today to imagine how devastating diseases such as polio, small pox, rubella and tetanus were before vaccinations were developed. Thanks to vaccines, all of these diseases have been practically eliminated in the United States and are slowly going by the wayside in the rest of the world.? Other human problems have been brought under control thanks to products synthesized with animal products. Insulin, for example, has allowed millions of diabetics to prolong their lives.? Animal experimentation was essential for developing organ transplantation procedures that save thousands of lives annually.?

Yet groups such as PETA want humanity to abandon this progress and stop all further medical research on animals. Placing animals on a higher moral plane than humans, these extremists put more value on the lives of pigs used to produce insulin than the lives of millions of human beings who will die if they don't get insulin.? As Newkirk put it, even if animal experimentation would find a cure for AIDS, "we'd be against it. ' ?

PETA gets a lot of support from people because it successfully hides some of its extremist beliefs. A large number of those who contribute to PETA are pet owners rightfully concerned about animal abuse. Little do they know that PETA advocates eliminating what it calls "companion animals. ' ? According to Newkirk, "pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation. ' PETA and other animal rights groups seek to rectify this "abysmal situation' by ending the breeding of domesticated animals and allowing those species to become extinct.?

Of course this means eliminating the use of guide dogs for the blind and macaques who are trained to care for paraplegics.? PETA spokesperson Kathy Guillermo told a radio audience, "I'm against using guide dogs,' and Newkirk has said", (In) a perfect society, we won't have a need for (guide dogs). ' ? In case you think this sounds a bit unfair, remember a blind person or a paraplegic means no more (if not less) to animal rights activists than a dog or macaque.? Since PETA has been unable to convince many people to adopt its extremist positions, it sponsors terrorist groups who use violence to force change. PETA is closely affiliated with the Animal Liberation Front, a group classified as a terrorist organization by both the FBI and Scotland Yard, which firebombs laboratories and uses threats of violence against people to try to achieve its means.?

ALF has caused millions of dollars in damage to laboratories, which it sets on fire.? Not only does ALF end up destroying valuable research data that could save human lives, but it usually ends up killing many of the laboratory animals it's supposedly acting on behalf of.? PETA knows no bounds to its support for animal rights terrorists. When Fran Stephanie Trust, a member of the extremist Friends of Animals, was convicted of attempting to murder Leon Hirsch, president of the U.S. Surgical Company, PETA paid all her legal expenses.?

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