Speaking of Research aims to challenge animal rights dominance of the issue by participating in talks and debates on campuses across the country and by utilizing web-based communications tools to organize a network that can provide encouragement, information and support to all who care about medical progress.”
AMP and Speaking of Research are both well-funded marketing machines that are quite adept at putting lipstick on a pig. And why wouldn’t they be? They represent vivisectors of all stripes, including those who test cosmetics.
Above all, do no harm?
“I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race. The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.”
—Mark Twain
As deeply reviled as the Nazis are by most people, those who master-minded the Holocaust were products of the nonhuman animal exploitation industries, as they derived many of their “extermination” techniques from slaughterhouses and farming.[17] And when the Nazi doctors were tried at Nuremberg for human vivisection, they stated that they learned their techniques on nonhuman animals. Nazism is perhaps the most extreme example, but there is abundant empirical evidence to reasonably conclude that “man’s inhumanity to man,” which has plagued us since the dawn of civilization, is informed and driven by “man’s inhumanity to animal.”
Conceptualizing sentient beings who are subjects of a life as mere objects (cute, cuddly, and furry objects though they may be) reduces them to property status. While they may not admit it, even to themselves, those who support or engage in vivisection view nonhuman animals as mere possessions, resources, and commodities. In the prevailing institutions and paradigm of speciesist capitalism the “owners” of animals have the “right” to oppress and exploit them to the extent that it’s necessary to derive the maximum profit and benefit. In this depraved and insane system, living beings are viewed by society at large and the legal system as possessions to do with as they see fit. And those, like Rod Coronado,[18] who act to alleviate their suffering by freeing them or dealing their tormentors a financial blow are hunted down and imprisoned.
The truth of the matter is that no matter what attitudes, institutions, systems, laws, mandates, or justifications we cultivate or erect, we human beings have no right to intentionally inflict suffering upon other sentient beings, particularly through vivisection, much of which is ostensibly performed to achieve medical advancements. What happened to, “Above all, do no harm”?
Eventually, we must excise the metastasizing cancer of speciesist capitalism before it reduces the Earth to a dismal dystopia, or worse, eradicates most or all sentient life on the planet. And as we proceed toward that goal, we can aggressively treat vivisection, one of our diseased civilization’s worst symptoms.
And as we do so, consider that, “Drs. Ray and Jean Greek, and others, have pointed out that the theory of evolution and molecular biology predict that animal models will be very poor models of human disease. In light of modern scientific thought and the mass of empirical data, the burden of proof lies with those who claim the animal model is productive.”[19]
As we human animals overcome the deeply indoctrinated lies that we are the master species and that the pursuit of money is our raison d’etre, we will realize that we don’t need to enslave nonhuman animals, subject them to horrific suffering, or murder them. We have multiple other means by which we can advance our medical and scientific knowledge, including epidemiology, clinical testing, autopsies, biopsies, genetics, post-marketing drug research, computer modeling, tissue cultures, microdosing on human animals, personalized medicine, and nanotechnology.[20]
Vivisection is primitive, brutal, ineffective, and unconscionable. It puts human animals at risk and inflicts unfathomable degrees of unnecessary suffering on our nonhuman animal brethren. There are many ways to advance our medical and scientific knowledge that don’t involve tormenting or killing other sentient beings. Money is about the only thing vivisection has going for it. Which explains why those of us who oppose it will have to fight so hard to put an end to such an abomination.
Jason Miller is a relentless anti-capitalist, vegan straight edge, animal liberationist, and press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. He is also the senior editor and founder of Thomas Paine’s Corner.
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