On Mar 24, 2009, at 2:19 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
My problem with PETA is that they tend to value animals over people.
Or maybe their PR is so bad that they only _look_ like they value
animals over people. (They may be closet humanists.) For example,
they're not just against testing on animals to develop make-up (which
seems reasonable tom me). They're also against testing
human-life-saving drugs on animals.
But PETA and Bridget Bardot (if
she's still around) are pretty overt with their thinking and seem more
concerned with cuteness than they should be.
I don't know... I don't find hen (referred to as "chicken" in American
English?) particularly cute. A lot of PETA actions protest their
torture. Now they may use chicks to symbolise the hens, because indeed
chicken are cute, but again that's tactical.
The use of cuteness in a tactic prevents a lot of communication with
the non-PETA folks. Is there some effort to present the PETA world
view to everyday people?
PETA believes that their efforts are indeed a presentation to everyday
people. And judging from the response from my niece and her friends,
it seems to work quite well. For the cerebral stuff, there is Peter
Singer.
_why_ should we give up on testing pro-human
drugs on animals?
Here's PETA's take on it: http://www.peta.org/about/faq-viv.asp
(they are spot on, IMHO, in the first paragraph, w.r.t the gains in
general health)
Here's Singer's take on it:
"Whether or not the occasional experiment on animals is defensible, I
remain opposed to the institutional practice of using animals in
research, because, despite some improvements over the past thirty
years, that practice still fails to give equal consideration to the
interests of animals. For that reason I oppose putting more resources
into building new facilities for animal experimentation. Instead,
these funds should go into clinical research involving consenting
patients, and into developing other methods of research that do not
involve the harmful use of animals."
--ravi
--
Support something better than yourself ;-)
PeTA => http://peta.org/
Greenpeace => http://greenpeace.org/
If you have nothing better to read: http://platosbeard.org/
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
