Animal Rights: Victory for CointelPro; Loss for Civil Liberties

I can sympathize with anyone who doesn't want to receive harassment. But, I have to wonder, why do people who torture animals get special protections? If threats of violence and harassment are not protected by the first amendment, then everyone should be protected by these kinds of laws, not just people who torture animals.

Elaine wrote;

"...why do people who torture animals get special protections?"

Maybe i could offer some ideas on why the current crackdown on animal rights activists is happening. Once again, the capitalist "free" market seems to have something to do with this fanatical protection by FBI/Homeland Security agents of animal research "scientists". It isn't entirely malicious from the government's end, though the long term effects of continued animal testing and suppression of animal rights activism are very harmful to the animals being tortured and also to consumers who beleive the animal tested products are safe. This is the two-pronged approach that recognizes both threats to the animals themselves from being tested and also to consumers who are told by the corporations who contract out to animal testing corporations that their recently animal tested and released to market products are "safe" for human use simply because some tests on animals have been performed. Nothing could be further from the truth, as witnessed by numerous recalls, wrongful death lawsuits following a released product previously tested on animals and therefore deemed "safe" for human use..

Most of the corporate culprits that rely heavily on animal research contracters (like HLS) are either in the pharmaceutical industry or some branch of petrochemically derived products used for cleaning, cooking, auto or other household uses. After the products are tested on animals in some manner by the research "scientists", they are then given a green light of "safety" and then release the tested product to the market. Anything that happens to the first human consumers (unknowing test subjects) following release of the animal tested product is then monitored by the corporations for possible "accidents" or "unforeseen events" as occured with Thalidomide pharma product when human babies were born with serious physical defects, flippers instead of hands and feet. NONE of the animals tested with Thalidomide, from rats to chimps, experienced any of these defects. That is the classic example of animal testing being misleading and dangerous when applied to human consumers..

There are plenty of recent examples of products released to market following animal testing that have proven deadly and dangerous to human consumers. Usually the corporations responsible seek out of court settlements to avoid negative publicity, and then continue with the same cruel and dangerous methods of animal testing in seeking release of new products, they eat the losses of the settlements for damages and continue with their deadly practices, all for short term profits..

Some background on animal testing inaccuracy;

"Animal Testing: Science or Fiction?"

MPs, medical professionals and scientists unite in demanding a thorough evaluation of the utility of vivisection

By Kathy Archibald

The Ecologist Online



"The pharmaceutical establishment constantly reassures us that all drugs are tested for safety and efficacy on animals before they can be administered to humans. When challenged about the ethics of vivisection, their defence typically goes like this: ‘Which do you think is more important: your child’s life or a rat’s?’ Given this choice most people would thankfully sacrifice the rat.

But what if you were told that the current animal testing procedures
are seriously flawed? Consider the following evidence:

Arthritis drug Vioxx, withdrawn from the global market in September 2004, appeared to be safe and even beneficial to the heart in animals, but caused as many as 140,000 heart attacks and strokes in the US alone. The associate safety director of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) described it as the ‘single greatest drug-safety catastrophe in the history of the world’.

Many studies published in the scientific literature comparing drug side effects in humans and animals have found animal tests to be less predictive than tossing a coin. One review of human-animal correlation in drugs that had been withdrawn because of adverse reactions found that animal tests predicted the human side effects only six out of 114 times.

Hundreds of drugs to treat strokes (eg, Cerestat, MaxiPost, Zendra, Lotrafiban, gavestinel, nimodipine, clomethiazole) have been found
safe and effective in animal studies and then injured or
killed patients in clinical trials.

Hormone-replacement therapy (HRT), prescribed to many millions of women because it lowered monkeys’ risk of heart disease and stroke, increases women’s risks of these conditions significantly. The chairman of the German Commission on the Safety of Medicines described HRT as ‘the new thalidomide’. In August 2003 The Lancet estimated that HRT had caused 20,000 cases of breast cancer over the past decade in Britain, in addition to many thousands of heart attacks and strokes.

Dr Richard Klausner, former director of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), lamented: ‘The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn’t work in humans.’ The NCI also believes we have lost cures for cancer because they were ineffective in mice.

Cigarette smoke, asbestos, arsenic, benzene, alcohol and glass fibres are all safe to ingest, according to animal studies.

Of 22 drugs shown to have been therapeutic in spinal cord injury in animals, not one is effective in humans.

Of 20 compounds known not to cause cancer in humans, 19 do cause cancer in rodents.

Dr Albert Sabin, the inventor of the polio vaccine, swore under oath that the vaccine ‘was long delayed by the erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of [it] in monkeys’.

Penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic, was delayed for more than 10 years by misleading results from experiments in rabbits, and would have been shelved forever had it been tested on guinea pigs, which it kills. Sir Alexander Fleming himself said: ‘How fortunate we didn’t have these animal tests in the 1940s, for penicillin would probably never have been granted a licence, and possibly the whole field of antibiotics might never have been realised.’

Thalidomide, the infamous cause of birth defects in more than 10,000 children in the early 1960s, induces birth defects in very few species. Dr James Schardein, the doyen of birth defect studies, says: ‘In approximately 10 strains of rats, 15 strains of mice, 11 breeds of rabbits, two breeds of dogs, three strains of hamsters, eight species of primates, and in other such varied species as cats, armadillos, guinea pigs, swine and ferrets in which thalidomide has been tested, teratogenic effects have been induced only occasionally.’ Ironically, if thalidomide, the drug whose side effects made animal testing obligatory, were assessed exclusively on its results in such tests it would still be passed today.

Even the Handbook of Laboratory Animal Science admits that ‘uncritical reliance on the results of animal tests can be dangerously misleading and has cost the health and lives of tens of thousands of humans’."

entire article found @;
http://www.gan.ca/lifestyle/animal+testing/articles+on+animal+research/index.en.html

other info @;

http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Animal%20Testing/Vivisection/animaltests.htm

Hope that helps answering some questions!!