Month: October 2004

Letters [Oct 2004]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Fallen stag

The impending merger of the Fund for Animals into the Humane
Society of the United States, unanimously approved by the Fund board
on October 6, 2004, may seem attractive in promising to create a
large, more powerful political voice for animals, but HSUS views on
hunting are in opposition to those of the Fund.
Some activists may remember when an HSUS director actually
supported and voted for a deer hunt in New Jersey, but there is a
more recent example of similar conduct.
Former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey defended his
decision to hold a black bear hunt in 2003 by saying that he was
working with HSUS on a birth control plan. Obviously he was using
HSUS for political cover. I asked Wayne Pacelle, then the HSUS vice
president for government affairs, now the HSUS president, to state
that if the Governor held the hunt, HSUS would not work with him on
reproductive control.
The response I got back was, “We do not want to burn any
bridges.” HSUS did not change their position, and neither did
McGreevey. Carnage followed. I do not know that if HSUS had done
what we asked, it would have changed anything, but to not risk
offending is to capitulate before the battle has begun.

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While monkey use booms, laboratories are retiring great apes

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

In contrast to the expanding laboratory demand for monkeys,
use of great apes in biomedical research has fallen for about 15
years, partly because they are harder to house and handle, partly
because of the success of the Great Ape Project, the lectures of
wild chimp ethologist Jane Goodall, and others who have gradually
persuaded much of the public that great apes are human-like enough to
have moral standing.
The hottest issue in great ape research in recent years has
been how to retire them from lab use.
First, in 1996, the former LEMSIP chimp colony at New York
University was retired to the Wildlife Waystation sanctuary in
southern California. Then many of the former Buckshire Corporation
and NASA chimps went to Primarily Primates in Texas. Wild Animal
Orphanage, nearby, built a “level 2 biosecurity” facility to
accommodate ex-research chimps who couldn’t be kept at other
sanctuaries because of the diseases they had been exposed to during
their lab years.
As existing sanctuaries reached capacity, primatologist
Carol Noon formed the Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care and in 2002
bought out the Coulston Foundation, formerly the largest chimp
research facility in the world.

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New Indian lab animal use regs proposed

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

NEW DELHI–The Indian federal Ministry of Environment &
Forests on September 24, 2004 recommended new guidelines on animal
use in laboratories, three years after they were reportedly being
prepared. The proposed guidelines are to be offered as amendments to
the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty of Animals Act.
“All experiments on animals,” reported The Hindu, “will be
carried out for the advancement of knowledge that is expected to be
useful for saving or prolonging human life, alleviating suffering,
and combatting disease, whether of human beings, animals, or
plants.”
“The animals lowest on the phylogenetic scale (i.e. with
least degree of awareness) among those whose use may give
scientifically valid results are to be preferred for experiments,”
The Hindu summary added.
“Experiments will be designed to use the minimum number of
animals needed to give statistically valid results. Alternatives to
animal testing are to be given due consideration, and sound
justification must be provided if alternatives, when available, are
not used…Unless the contrary is scientifically established,
investigators should proceed on the basis that procedures causing
pain or suffering in humans will cause similar pain in animals,” The
Hindu summary continued.
A separate summary published by the Deccan Herald confirmed
details and quoted researchers who favor the proposals.

BOOKS: Animal Rights

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Animal Rights:
A very short introduction
by David DeGrazia
Oxford University Press
(198 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016), 2002. 131 pp., paperback. $9.95.

In just 116 pages George Washington University professor
David DeGrazia reviews the different schools of thought within the
animal rights movement, and then examines three of the more
contentious issues: meat eating, zoos, and biomedical research.
De Grazia presents the concepts, arguments and counter
arguments as well as possible within the constraints of brevity.
morality of animal rights.
–Chris Mercer & Bev Pervan

BOOKS: Animal Rights: Current Debates & New Directions

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Animal Rights: Current Debates & New Directions
edited by Cass R. Sunstein & Martha C. Nussbaum
Oxford University Press, Inc.
(198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016), 2004.
Hard cover, 338 pages, $29.95.

Readers familiar with Charles Dickens’ Hard Times will
recognize in the rhetoric of opposition to animal rights many of the
same arguments used by Victorian capitalists in opposition to public
education, care for the destitute, and female emancipation.
Dickens published Hard Times, his 10th, shortest, and most
prescient novel, in 1854. In it he expressed his disillusionment
that decades of social reforming had chiefly enabled the privileged
classes to co-opt the rhetoric of change.
Charitable institutions created in response to the misery,
poverty, cruelty and ignorance that Dickens spent much of his life
exposing often appeared to be doing more to perpetuate social ills
than to eliminate them.
The attitudes that created bleak and harsh conditions had to
change, Dickens pointed out, before even the best-intentioned
reformers could actually reform anything.

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BOOKS: The Case for Animal Rights

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

The Case for Animal Rights, 2004 edition
by Tom Regan
University of Calif. Press
(2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704), 2004.
425 pages, paperback. $21.95.

Moral philosophy tends to cause the general reader to either
fall asleep or develop a headache.
Knowing this, Tom Regan in 2002 produced a demystified,
simplified version of his 1983 volume The Case for Animal Rights,
entitled Empty Cages. That is the book for the general reader.
The Case for Animal Rights, 2004 edition is primarily a
textbook for moral philosophy students. Regan responds in an updated
preface to some of the criticisms of the first edition.
Most thoughtful people consider how much they should adjust
their lifestyles to avoid causing animal suffering. Typically this
judgement proceeds from personal intuition. But beliefs coming from
such a subjective and emotional origin are not necessarily convincing
to others, and do not provide a consistent approach to resolving
moral conflict when the resolution must be translated into public law
or policy.

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Human obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Christopher Reeve, 52, died on October 10, 2004 in Mt.
Kisco, New York, from a severely infected pressure wound, a
complication of spending prolonged time in a wheelchair. Best
remembered as the star of the 1978 film Superman and three sequels,
Reeve “used his popularity and influence to support human rights,
animal rights, the environment, and other causes,” wrote
biographer Laura Lee Wren in 1999. Reeve was loudly booed, however,
when as a speaker at the June 1990 March for the Animals in
Washington D.C. he told the 24,000 assembled participants that, “If
you want to get things done, the worst thing that can happen to you
is to be identified as the fringe.” Reeve had nothing further to do
with the organized animal rights movement, but had just starred in a
documentary film about grey whales when in May 1995 he entered a
three-day riding competition. His horse, a thoroughbred named
Eastern Express, balked at the third jump. Reeve suffered a
severely broken neck, rendering him a quadruplegic for the rest of
his life, but recovered his ability to act and direct films. He
became a prominent spokesperson for animal use in biomedical
research, in counterpoint to the 1996 March for the Animals, and
merged two older organizations in 1998 to create the Christopher
Reeve Paralysis Foundation, raising more than $46.5 million for
spinal cord research.

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BOOKS: Pep: The Story Of A Brave Dog

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Humane Education Classic

Pep: The Story Of A Brave Dog
by Clarence Hawkes
Illustrated by William Van Dresser
Milton Bradley Co. (Springfield, Mass.), 1922.

“Pep is a purposeful book–the story of a faithful,
intelligent dog, which should help to do for the dog what Anna
Sewell’s Black Beauty did for the horse,” opined William H.
Micheals, superintendent of schools in Media, Pennsylvania, in
prefacing the 1928 edition of a volume which had already become a
classroom hit.
Pep did not achieve the enduring popularity of Black Beauty,
and frankly is not at that level of literary skill. It has not been
reprinted for many decades now, though it was once a staple of
humane education.
It is still a page-turner. Several generations of my family
have enjoyed Pep, and I found on rereading it for the first time in
42 years that it still held my interest, not least because author
Clarence Hawkes is convincing when he narrates from the dog’s point
of view.

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BOOKS: Elephas Maximus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Elephas Maximus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant
by Stephen Alter
Harcourt Inc. (15 E. 26th St., New York, NY 10010), 2004.
320 pages, hardcover. $25.00.

A thorough introduction to the history, mythological roles,
and present status of elephants in India, Elephas Maximus reviews
all the familiar elephant issues pertaining to habitat, poaching,
domestic use, and exhibition, and delves into others that have
received little attention in centuries.
For example, were the military capabilities of elephants
worth the risk and expense of keeping war elephant herds? An
elephant charge could devastate enemy infantry, but apparently war
elephants were almost as likely to wheel and trample the troops
behind them as those in front–as shown in the computer-made scenes
of elephant warfare in the second and third episodes of the Lord of
the Rings film trilogy.
Elephants dragged cannon into firing position as recently as
World War II, but had to be removed from the vicinity before the
cannon could be discharged.

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