GUEST COLUMN
PRINCIPLE MUST COME FIRST
By Patrice Greanville
ANIMAL PEOPLE Board of Directors
"Downplaying the 'animal rights angle' will be counterproductive," ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett advised animal advocates who were preparing their lobbying strategy for the spring 2002 legislative sessions.
"If the legislators believe the charade," Kim continued, and reiterated in the March 2002 ANIMAL PEOPLE editorial, "it perpetuates the notion that nobody cares much about animals. If they don't buy it, it confirms the view that animal suffering is so inconsequential a concern that even animal advocates are afraid to acknow-ledge their true interests."
The results of the spring 2002 legislative sessions are now nearly complete. The so-called "pragmatic" emphasis of animal protection lobbyists on bills linking human and animal concerns brought some stronger prohibitions of abuses which were already illegal, but no landmark gains. De-emphasizing concern for the basic right of animals to enjoy at least a decent state of well-being meanwhile brought the catastrophic loss of status of rats, mice, and birds under the Animal Welfare Act, and the veto by Connecticut governor John Rowland of what would have been the first state law in the U.S. to establish that dogs should not spend their entire lives on chains, outdoors, aloneafter the bill had already won overwhelming legislative support.
I agree unreservedly with Kim's position of putting principle first in seeking to advance animal protection, and believe her views deserve wider attention.
For decades I have maintained that the effort of many animal defenders to obscure their concern for animal suffering is phony, cowardly, and finally self-defeating. It is the track most often taken by those who feel there is always a way to have their cake and eat it too. Perhaps the issue where this tendency has manifested itself most prominently is biomedical research (and of late, food & health issues). Here, even supposedly "fire-eating radicals" have leaned toward a position of "pragmatism," preaching the shopworn factoid that animal-based biomedical research has occasionally led to great human tragedies.
Marching under the banner of human self-interest, these cunning defenders tirelessly trot out the 40-year-old Thalidomide affair and a slew of similar research catastrophes. But the fact is, whether we like it or not, biomedical research has yielded both good and bad outcomes from a human perspective.
Barring nefarious events caused by corruption or negligence, all types of basic research are likely to show an uneven pattern of yield, because in these areas knowledge is by definition inconclusive and imperfect. Accidents, therefore, are almost inevitable. But do a few accidents warrant termination of a promising field of research? Hardly. Aviation science, for example, suffered many disasters before reliable aircraft were developed.
Even more uncomfortable to accept, in the real world, and taking a strictly pragmatic viewpoint, tainted origins do not necessarily doom the offspring. Nazi research on prisoners to learn more about human tolerance to cold ended up, decades later, being used by cardiologists in open-heart surgery breakthroughs.
In sum, in our case, putting the focus exclusively on human welfare (which we obviously care about, but which is hardly an orphan issue) only leads to eventual disaster and distrust of our efforts. What would these "pragmatists" do if tomorrow it was announced that a cure for cancer or similar scourge had been demonstrably advanced as a result of animal-based research? Their single argument would be immediately wiped out, perhaps for generations if not forever.
Arguing principle is not only honest but far sturdier, for it stands squarely on pure moral grounds. We oppose biomedical research on animals because it is a form of human fascism, perpetrated on weaker, defenseless creatures by superior force, and justified by a unilaterally proclaimed, self-serving ideology. Period.
If there is a situation where the ends do not justify the means, it is this one. Dated as it may sound in a civilization that breeds opportunists and compromisers by the millions, principle must come first.