Animal Rights Protestors = Terrorists

[lettie]

That's a frightening story Ceejache. These kinds of groups are extremists and any kind of extremism is scary. The Pro-lifers have been known to target clinics and individual doctors under the misguided belief that it will assist their cause, looks like the ALF are no different. I would not give support to a group who terrorizes anybody no matter which cause they are fighting for. I am an animal lover but would never value an animal's life over that of a human being.

[Tealeaf]

You need to be careful what you're saying lettie......someone could be targeting you right now.......

[pendy]

I think we may be missing the point here.

A great many of the people who subscribe to things like ALF are not that much in love with animals.
What is the point for them is that they are opposing something. What they are opposing is for them a little bit nebulous, but animal rights gives them a focus.

What we have here is disaffected. disassociated, people who cannot form links with their own kind, therefore, they form links with a group which cannot repudiate them.

In short, psychos, who grab onto a group which cannot say "Go away, we do not need you or your kine" because they cannot speak. Animals cannot say :Go away, we do not need you or your sort to speak for us.

Ergo, they feel free to speak for an entire set of species that they know virtually nothing about.

As for the pro-lifers, those who oppose terminations (not abortions, that is the medical/ clinical word for any pregnancy which is terminated naturally or not) they do seem to me to have preponderance of born-again Christian men - not likely to get pregant are they!

I am not pro termination on demand as a form of birth control. Talk to me about it. You have to have been there to know about it.

The entire point, I think, is that you have had to be there - terminal illness, potentially life-saving drug being tested (and believe me, at that stage, you will be the one to test it), or wherever it takes to be on the receiving end.

I am an animal lover. I am also a human person lover. Are the two mutually exclusive?
I don't think so.

[expat]

Most people who oppose vivisection do so on moral grounds because they object to cruelty. But the case against animal experiments is strongly reinforced by scientific arguments. This is because people and animals are different in the way their bodies work and in their response to drugs and disease.
*******If animal experiments were a valid method of research, people would go to a veterinarian rather than a doctor when they felt ill! In fact, vivisection is an unscientific approach to medicine because of the constant risk of misleading results.

cortisone produces birth defects in mice but not people, whilst thalidomide works the other way around;
morphine calms people but excites cats, goats and horses;
penicillin is highly poisonous to guinea pigs and hamsters;
insulin causes birth defects in animals but not in people;
the antibiotic chloramphenicol produces the blood disease aplastic anaemia in some human patients but it saves animals;
in dogs, the muscle-relaxing drug tubocurarine causes a severe fall in blood pressure but is comparatively safe for people
and doses of aspirin used in human therapeutics are poisonous to cats.

I could go on all day about this. but if you want to be more familiar this side of the argument please check out the (Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Resarch )
CAFMR
I would be interested to know if it changes anybodys mind about these animal rights nutters

[Ceejache]

Doesn't change my mind at all. I dont care what reasons lie behind the actions of these morons - there is no excuse for terrorism.

People have different views on the moral and scientific view concerning this subject - its just the way these idiots go about their crusade that is the problem.

[JohnW]

I don't doubt that Expat is correct when he says that not all animal testing brings consistent results when applied to humans. However, sometimes the opposite is true also. I would like to give one example which I only learned last night watching '60 minutes' on television. A Dr. in Canada was very upset watching young babies die because they could not find necessary hearts of the right size and blood type to transplant in order to save their lives. She then remembered that, when testing transplants on VERY YOUNG mice early in her career, that the transplanting of hearts with a different blood type seemed to work because the imune system of the mice was not yet mature and so did not identify the new heart as foreign tissue. She had a patient a few months old who was going to die anyway, so she transplanted a heart of the correct size but a different blood type. The heart was not rejected and that child is now seven years old and doing very well. More babies under one year old are now having heart transplants which do not match as far as blood type is concerned and the surgeries have so far been successful. It has also been discovered since, that these children can now accept blood transfusions of differing types of blood to their own. I too believe that animals should not be made to suffer needlessly but I do think that medical testing on animals can be a good indicator and provide valuable information. They've been doing it for a very long time. I'm sure that if it was valueless they would have given it up by now.

[WillowTheWhisp]

Just because that worked for mice doesn't mean it would automatically work for humans. She was still taking a chance and in that particular case it worked. Looking at what Expat said, and I've argued that point myself many times, a lot of the drugs we use today would never have been permitted if they had been tested on animals first because of the adverse reactions in animals which do not occur in humans. Penicillin is a classic example. If animal testing had been in force when it was discovered it would have been tested on guinea pigs and instantly banned. I'm against animal testing for the simple reason that it doesn't work. There's no point to it. Humans are a different species. Yes, I am all for the need to find drugs etc to cure diseases but just because it works on a mouse/hamster/dog/cat/pig or rhinocerous(only joking) doesn't mean it is going to work for humans and equally just because something kills a rabbit doesn't make it dangerous to humans.

As for the ALF and their terrorist activities. They cause more suffering than they claim they are trying to prevent. There is no excuse for such behaviour and they should be treated in exactly the same way as other terrorists. I don't think they know very much about animals or they would realise that different species of animals kill and eat other species of animals. It's called nature. Owl eats mouse. Are they going to liberate mice etc from owls? Then owls suffer from starvation? It is natural for many animals to be carnivorous. Why is it wrong for humans if it's natural for other creatures?

So basically I'm against animal testing, pro animal eating and anti ALF.

[pendy]

It is a fact that different species react differently to various drugs. However, we have had pig hearts transplanted into humans. They work. Some species are closer than others. No-one does animal testing for fun - if it didn't work it wouldn't be used. Yes, there are bog-ups, but fewer than you might think.

As for the ALF - if it wasn't animals, it would more than likely be something else. There are plenty of psychopaths out there looking for a peg to pin their hatred on.

[JohnW]

I had already conceded Willow, that these things do not always work. The doctor in Canada was not really taking a chance, the baby only had days to live and it was a last ditch effort to save the baby's life. It worked. It has also worked many times since according to the programme. So that was one mark "for" animal testing. I have no doubt, as I said earlier, that there are plenty of "against" marks also.

[Darby]

Originally Posted by Ceejache

Doesn't change my mind at all. I dont care what reasons lie behind the actions of these morons - there is no excuse for terrorism.

People have different views on the moral and scientific view concerning this subject - its just the way these idiots go about their crusade that is the problem.

That is exactly my point of view!! There are no excuses for the terrorism created by these sick people.!