demonstrative

This is a pet hate of mine. Propoganda against the groups of people who are actually trying to do something for this world. Maybe extreme animal rights activists are causing a little bit of harm... SO WHAT? They sometimes do bad things for a good cause, do people not see the blatant attempts to side the rest of the world against the good guys? 'Yes we test on animals because it improves our profit margins, but sometimes people trying to save the animals from unnecesary torture hurt us, so they are like 10 times as bad." Who follows that logic? It looks like a lot of people do. I just have to list my rebuttals to these comments, because reading an article that was pure fear mongering about animal rights activists without providing any solid, substantial facts about animal testing really bothers me. And it bothers me far more when people who, as a result of the science communities cencorship of animal testing information, voice their uneducated opinion in SUPPORT OF THE BAD GUYS.

1. I think animal testing of cosmetics is a red herring, nobody promotes it, and cosmetics companies know their brand is in trouble if they're caught doing it.

Ummm helloooo! Virtually every cosmetics company tests on animals. Procter and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, you knowm, the poeple who make Colgate toothpaste, V05 shampoo, and virtually every household product people buy at the supermarkets during their weekly shop. The reason they APPEAR to be animal friendly is because they refuse to label their products, which means consumers have to spend hours researching what they buy in order to make an ethical choice. THAT IS NOT WHAT GOOD CORPORATIONS DO.

2. No, we use them for experiments because most of us value human life more than animal life, and experiments on them may increase the quality of human life. I'm not advocating torturing fuzzy bunnies, I'm advocating responsible experimentation, as I stated originally.

Actually we don't value life at all. Or responsibility. Otherwise we would be looking at the causes of increased cancer rates and linking them back to our use of chemicals in all aspects of life. Don't expect to remain healthy for ever when everything you touch has been liberally dosed with harmful chemicals, and the food you eat has been pumped with hormones and forced to live in unsanitory conditions and the pollutants we emit are causing the ozone to break down.

3. Q. If testing on people is not acceptable, why should animal testing?

A. because we are speciesist. we are speciesist because we cannot otherwise survive.

Acutually, we do test on humans. We most like to test on Jews and did a lot on that in the 1940's, we also killed a lot of native americans and experimented steralisation on them, mentatl institutions also have a history of practises that turn humans into vegetables - is that any better? We claim we don't endorse it but go right ahead and validate those despicable tests by using the results in generally accepted science. Basically we are racist is anything. We really only like white people. We're not too concerned with killing each other, hesne we happily trot off to kill Iraquis in order to secure more oil, thn make and play video games that depict the american army and media trampling through Iraqui dwellings with voice overs that cry 'Kill the Serbs!'

4. PETA does give money to cover the court costs of ALF members. The two organizations aren't as distict as you claim. Also PETA's official policy is to be "pro-choice" when it comes to violence.

I hope this critical post did not come from a country that endorses the death penalty, or oil wars, owning guns or even the Bush administration, war games, the torture of prisoners of war... the list of violence goes on. I thought we all agreed violence is great!

5. There's a story that circulates around in academia, not sure if it's true, but basically some animal rights people went and released hundreds of animals from a research facility (rabbits I believe).The next day, the vast majority of the animals were found dead within 100 yds of the facility because they were domesticated animals, etc.

I cannot think of a better way to discredit the work of activists than calling them animal killers. I have no doubt this circulates acadameia, but does it represent the full picture of animal liberation or just some more propoganda?

I don't release animals from trials, I don't break in, but I can't stand it when people make judgements on those who do without thinking about the complete picture, I will reiterate my comment on this forum: I hope everyone who made a comment seriously checks every bottle of shampoo, moisturiser, lipstick, hairspray, sunscreen, foundation, toothpaste etc etc for the explicit 'NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS' statement. Otherwise, what right do you have?