Month: September 1993

Hot water in the North Atlantic

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Canada––Paul
Watson’s homecoming to Atlantic Canada in July and early
August may have been the most bizarre event yet of his long
career in protest. Raised in a New Brunswick fishing vil-
lage, Watson has been reviled throughout the four Maritime
provinces since 1977, when as a Greenpeace representative
he sprayed green paint on baby harp seals to protect them
from hunters. Subsequent anti-sealing expeditions after
Watson founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in
1980 have confirmed his bad reputation among those who
live by what they kill in the sea––but many Atlantic
Canadians are applauding Watson now for his July 28 attack
on a Cuban trawler, the Rio Las Casas.

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Layoffs at NEAVS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

BOSTON, Massachusetts––Financially drained, the New England Anti-
Vivisection Society laid off all but two of its staff August 24 at a reportedly stormy meeting
of the board of directors. According to former executive director Rebecca Taksel, who lost
her job at the meeting apparently because she resisted dismissing senior employees, “There
have been layoffs, and I was one of them. No, I resigned. NEAVS has been running at a
deficit for quite some time, and this was the board’s solution. NEAVS has been cut back to
just two projects, the education office and the legislative office.” Taksel declined to go into
detail.

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BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

Validation of non-animal tests gains momentum
Significant progress in validating non-animal toxicity tests was announced
during the summer by both the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to
Animal Testing and the Scandinavian Society of Cell Toxicology’s four-year-old
Multicenter Evaluation of In Vitro Cytotoxicity Tests program, headquartered in
Sweden. Validation is the process of establishing how test results relate to human health.
The Johns Hopkins team published a “Framework for the Validation and Implementation
of In Vitro Toxicity Tests” simultaneously in four leading scientific journals, hoping to
speed researcher interest, while the Swedish team, somewhat ahead of Johns Hopkins,
now has 90 European in vitro toxicologists working on a variety of tests of their own
design, measuring the toxicity of 50 chemicals with well-known effects on humans.
“Relevance remains the key problem,” John Frazier of the Johns Hopkins team
said. “It was clear from the beginning that the ill-defined nature of the ‘gold standard’ we
are trying to measure with an in vitro test––human toxicity––was going to be difficult.
It’s a moving target. Nobody has come up with a definitive solution.”

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Guest column: Don’t call me a pimp by Margaret Anne Cleek

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

When I lived in Detroit, I had a close friend who
was a state welfare fraud investigator. To hear him tell it,
every welfare mom was living it up on the dole, thought
she had a right to have the government provide for every
child she had, and had a man stashed away who lived off
her check. His solution was to cut off the freeloading and
make these people work for a living. He dehumanized all
people on welfare, calling them the “scum de la scum,”
and always expected the worst of them.
Why did he think all welfare recipients were rip-
ping off the system? The system abusers were the only peo-
ple he ever saw. His perception of the situation was distort-
ed because his sample did not accurately reflect the popula-
tion of welfare recipients. His contempt for the people and
the system left him unable to understand the complexity of
the issues and solutions. But as he saw it, he was in the
front lines and therefore he knew what needed to be done.

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LETTERS [Sep. 1993]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

Controversy
So long as you catch plenty
of hell for printing informative and
factual articles, you will know you are
on the right track. If there is another
side that justifies the light of day, the
bitchers will submit an article that will
further inform your grateful public.
Interested people will read you
because you are the only source that
prints honest articles about the sacred
cows of the humane movement.
Your articles on feral cats
are the most thorough I have found.
Your continuing attention to the rami-
fications of neutering is most informa-
tive. Your January/ February and
March issues are the only things of
their kind in revealing where the
money goes. I have enclosed payment
for a two-year renewal.

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Editorial: Make sure you’re covered

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

On August 18, U.S. president Bill Clinton announced his design for an employer-
financed national health plan, intended to extend coverage to all Americans––not just those
who can afford it. To avoid increasing the cost of hiring so much that struggling firms
might cut jobs rather than pay the mandatory premiums, the Clinton plan would collect pre-
miums on a sliding scale. Small businesses, including charities, might be able to cover
their workers for as little as 3.5% of payroll expenditure.

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Editorial: Find more men to teach love

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

Three Brazilian military policemen shocked the world July 23 when they
machine-gunned 45 homeless children who were sleeping in front of the Candelaris Church
and Museum of Modern Art in the fashionable part of Rio de Janeiro, killing seven. So
great was the outrage that three days later the suspects were arrested. And that was the real
news. In 1992 alone, 424 children were killed in Rio de Janeiro––as many as half of them
by police, many of whom liken the murder of a street orphan to shooting a stray dog. As
the very first issue of ANIMAL PEOPLE reported, the killing has previously been done
with impunity. People trying to help the children and attempting to bring the police to jus-
tice have also been killed. Elsewhere in Brazil, and in other parts of Latin America, the
situation may be worse, but only Brazil keeps good statistics, recording the murders of
more than 1,000 children a year––mostly poor semi-orphans. In all, 700,000 Brazilian
children don’t live with their mothers, and 460,000 of them don’t live with either parent.
More than four million don’t go to school, and more than 10% of adolescents can’t read.

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MIDWEST FLOOD RESCUE EFFORT: Forty days, forty nights, and still the rain kept pouring

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

MISSISSIPPI BASIN––Two
months of record rainfall that brought
record flooding in nine midwestern states
probably displaced more animals than
any high waters in North America since
the glaciers melted. Of the 791 counties
in the nine states, 421 were declared fed-
eral disaster areas. Clean-up and repairs
are expected to cost more than $13 bil-
lion. But animal rescuers didn’t dwell on
the immensity of the big picture. They
just pitched in however they could, wher-
ever they were, with whatever they could
scrounge by way of equipment and sup-
plies.

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