Least surprising 'revelation' of 2006!

 

At Last - Peter Singer declares which side of the fence he is sitting. Below is the full article from the Observer.

 

 

Animal guru gives tests his blessing. Monkey research has benefits,

equal rights philosopher admits.

 

Robin McKie, science editor, The Observer. Sunday November 26, 2006

 

 

One of the most important figures in the animal rights movement has publicly backed the use of living creatures in medical experiments. The endorsement - by the philosopher Peter Singer, who coined the phrase Animal Liberation and whose Seventies book on the subject led to the creation of the animal rights  movement - has surprised observers.

 

Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton, is renowned for insisting animals should have equal rights with humans but is quoted, on camera, backing research in which experiments on monkeys are carried out to develop surgery for Parkinson's and other patients.

 

'It is clear at least some animal research does have benefits,' Singer admits on Monkeys, Rats and Me: Animal Testing, which will be screened on BBC2 tomorrow. 'I would certainly not say that no animal research could be justified and the case you have given sounds like one that is justified.'

 

The admission has delighted scientists, including the Oxford surgeon Tipu Aziz, the doctor involved in this work. 'It is a very encouraging sign,' he said.

 

The BBC2 documentary focuses on animal rights activists' battle to block the building of the £20m Oxford University animal laboratory. Construction was abandoned in 2004 after a campaign of intimidation led builders to pull out of the project. Work resumed this year.

 

The programme, the most thorough TV examination of this vexed subject, includes graphic footage of electrodes being drilled into the skull of a rat which is later put down, on camera, by lethal injection. There is also footage of a monkey being prepared for a similar experiment. But viewers will also see a young Scottish boy, Sean Gardner, crippled by the movement disease dystonia, taking his first, tentative steps from his wheelchair, after similar surgery involving electrodes being drilled into his skull.

 

The documentary is being screened as the battle over the Oxford laboratory reaches fresh intensity, with a new group of opponents announcing it will hold its first public meeting in Oxford on Tuesday. The Voice for Ethical Research at Oxford (Vero) has been set up by university staff and students opposed to animal experiments and is backed by senior politicians, including Tony Benn and Ann Widdecombe.

 

Vero has been launched to counter the highly successful pro-laboratory group Pro-Test, created by 17-year-old student Laurie Pycroft last February. Pro-Test capitalised on local people's weariness of the laboratory's hard-line opponents, led by the animal liberation group Speak, whose members gather near the site to scream abuse at workers.

 

Last week Sharon Howe, Vero's founder, admitted many local people had become alienated by hardline anti-vivisectionists. 'The debate is so polarised, it is impossible to have a sensible discussion. We want greater efforts to be made in developing alternatives to animal experiment.'

 

In addition, the Weatherall committee - set up by scientific organisations that include the Royal Society and Wellcome Trust - will publish the results of its investigation into the use of primates in university and other academic labs. Several thousand primates - mostly macaques and marmosets - are experimented on every year to discover how neurons connect with the eye, to find out how images form in the brain, and to make other basic scientific

discoveries.

 

The committee, chaired by the Oxford geneticist Sir David Weatherall, was asked to investigate this highly contentious subject and decide whether this science is sound and relevant to humans. According to sources close to the committee, the report, which will be published on 13 December, will back the continued use of primates for this sort of research. 'Weatherall has concluded it is good science and that it is relevant,' said a source.

 

 

Comment: Understandably this has more than upset a few within the animal rights movement, but we ask: what the hell does anyone expect? Singer was exposed years ago by Hans Ruesch, not least of all that his lecture tours were sponsored by the Rockefeller (drug trust) Foundation. (It is a shame that not one, to our knowledge, animal rights group has had the decency to acknowledge this; an email to the Arkangel website suggesting that they might like to give Ruesch a little credit didn't even bring a response.)

 

And neither is it the first time that Singer has advocated vivisection as a method of research:

 

"Let me explain that I am not saying that no animal should ever be used in any experiment." BBC Horizon programme, 1983 (note here not only Singer's pro-vivisection stance, but also that the same biased BBC reporting was being churned out over 20 years ago!)

 

And: "Of this vast number of (animals) experiments, only a few contribute to important medical research." From 'Animal Liberation.

 

Isn't it obvious what is going on? The day following this Observer article the BBC - again! - once more gave over an hour of free promotional air time for the advocates of vivisection to push the non-existent benefits of vivisection with a totally one-sided programme; always the same, as it has been for decades, simply because they have been allowed to get away with it.

 

On the Tuesday after there was a public meeting in Oxford, organised by the new Vero group. The subject is 'Humane alternatives to animal research'. As informed anti-vivisectionists are well aware, the whole idea of alternatives is a con designed to make people think vivisection is useful whilst ensuring the waste of huge amounts of anti-vivisectionists' money that should be used to fund genuine and hard-hitting campaigns, exposing the quackery of the most of today's 'medical research' and the resulting harm to medicine and consequently ourselves.

 

And this meeting was actively promoted by animal rights people who should know better.

 

Who was at the meeting?

 

The BUAV. Enough said, except for one example of anti-vivisectionism BUAV style: "We have softened our line over the past few years. We now accept that animal research may have done some good . . . The organisation remains implacably opposed to any experiments even if they were the only way to find a cure for cancer." - Steve McIvor, BUAV, Independent, 12 June 1990.

 

Gill Langley of the Dr Hadwen Trust(exposed so successfully by Ruesch): "Many medical breakthroughs have involved animal experiments . . ." Gill Langley - Hastings Observer, 16 July 1983.

 

(But how long must we wait before enlightenment comes regarding these and similar groups, as has now apparently happened to some degree in regards to Singer?)

 

And the new kid on the block, Vero, set up to stop the Oxford lab on ethical grounds (thus ensuring its failure from the start).

 

Can it be that so much can happen and yet the penny still won't drop for most people? The BUAV, Langley and her alternatives begging trust, Singer, BBC, Vero (and this list is far from exhaustive): all birds of a feather; all guaranteeing that vivisection will continue until the end of time.

 

The real tragedy, however, is that despite all this the situation will carry on as if nothing has happened. Situation normal. Animal rights people who are - sad as it is to say - often the biggest hurdle in the fight to end vivisection, will continue to promote 'ethics' alone as the only way to end animal experimentation, despite its proven uselessness, just as they will continue to allow the BBC to get away with being the official mouthpiece for the vivisection industry, and will even worse continue to support the likes of the BUAV and Langley and her 'alternatives' trust.