luchdog,
I did the research, however I did manage to miss the bit about synthetic insulin. However, that doesn't change the fact of Sweetland's hypocrisy. And as you stated, 20% of insuline on the market is still animal-derived; since not everyone can tolerate the synthetic insulin (just like some people can't tolerate bovine or porcine insulin). And the fact remains that even the synthetic insulin involved animal testing in it's production; something PETA is officially and very strongly against.
I'd really appreciate it if you cited a source suggesting that some people can't tolerate synthetic insulin. If I remember correctly, the 20% of animal-derived insulin that continues to be produced exists because there are many insulin providers and not all of them use synthetic insuilin, its not necessarily based on adverse reactions to Humilin (actually the adverse reactions to animal-derived insulin made the development of Humilin a necessity in the first place).
But, in any case, its most likely true that synthetic insulin had to be tested on animals. I think we should use all the available data to preserve our own welfare, even if the data was obtained by unethical means. With synthetic insulin and other drugs, although the data was obtained unethically, the harm has already been done, and theres nothing we can do to take it back; the data exists, and theres no reason not to use it. Benefitting from that data does not imply that one condones the original experimentation or any future experimentation, so I don't think its necessarily hypocritical if a person uses synthetical insulin.
It might help to consider a similar case: Nazi in WWII conducted
1000s of lethal experiments on prisoners at concentration camps, and some of the data contains some fascinating information on how to save human lives. One of the experiments that caught my attention were the freezing experiments:
- Germans kept losing their soldiers to hypothermia, even when they weren't in the water. The soldiers would jump from ships to storm a coastline, then an hour or so after being on land they would drop dead from hypothermia. It was impossible to revive these soldiers in the field without sending them into shock.
- Nazi experimenters conducted freezing experiments, by submerging prisoners in sub-zero water until they collapsed into hypothermia, then trying out different techniques to revive them.
- After developing successful techniques, the data was applied directly toward saving soldier and civilian lives.
- According to the article linked above:
Doctor Robert Pozos is the Director of the Hypothermia Laboratory at the University of Minnesota of Medicine at Duluth. His research is devoted to methods of rewarming frozen victims of cold. Much of what he and other hypothermia specialists know about rescuing frozen victims is the result of trial and error performed in hospital emergency rooms. Pozos believes that many of the existing rewarming techniques that have been used thus far lack a certain amount of critical scientific thinking.
Pozos points out that the major rewarming controversy has been between the use of passive external rewarming (which uses the patient's own body heat) and active external rewarming (which means the direct application of exogenous heat directly to the surface of the body). Hospitals have thus far microwaved frozen people, used warm blankets, induced warm fluids into body cavities (through the pertinium, rectum or urinary bladder), performed coronary bypass surgery, immersed the frozen bodies into hot bath tubs, and used body-to-body rewarming techniques.11 Some victims were saved, some were lost. This might be due to the lack of legitimate information on the effects of cold on humans, since the existing data is limited to the effects of cold on animals. Animals and humans differ widely in their physiological response to cold. Accordingly, hypothermia research is uniquely dependent on human test subjects. Although Pozos has experimented on many volunteers at his hypothermia lab, he refused to allow the subject's temperature to drop more than 36 degrees. Pozos had to speculate what the effects would be on a human being at lower temperatures. The only ones that put humans through extensive hypothermia research (at lower temperatures) were the Nazis at Dachau.
[...]
The Nazis attempted rewarming the frozen victims. Doctor Rascher did, in fact, discover an innovative "Rapid Active Rewarming" technique in resuscitating the frozen victims. This technique completely contradicted the popularly accepted method of slow passive rewarming. Rascher found his active rewarming in hot liquids to be the most efficient means of revival.13
The Nazi data on hypothermia experiments would apparently fill the gap in Pozos' research. Perhaps it contained the information necessary to rewarm effectively frozen victims whose body temperatures were below 36 degrees. Pozos obtained the long suppressed Alexander Report on the hypothermia experiments at Dachau. He planned to analyze for publication the Alexander Report, along with his evaluation, to show the possible applications of the Nazi experiments to modern hypothermia research. Of the Dachau data, Pozos said, "It could advance my work in that it takes human subjects farther than we're willing."14
Pozos' plan to republish the Nazi data in the New England Journal of Medicine was flatly vetoed by the Journal's editor, Doctor Arnold Relman.15 Relman's refusal to publish Nazi data along with Pozos' comments was understandable given the source of the Nazi data and the way it was obtained.
Would it be objectionable to use Nazi data if it would save lives? I think if the data exists, it should be used, but that is not a concession that the original experimentation was justified or that it should be continued.
Your rather abusive reply doesn't address the fact that Sweetland herself has admitted to being a hypocrite, but claimed that the principles she propounds don't apply to her. A direct quote from the article you failed to read:
(quote)
This from a senior vice president of an organization which has also categorically opposed animal testing and animal-derived products of any sort. She clearly considers her life more valuable than the millions of others who are life-dependent on insulin and other substances derived from animal testing.
(quotes)
I really wish there was a way to go back to the original source of those quotes, to check them for context. I'm extremely inclined to think those quotes are out-of-context, because I've seen dozens and dozens of lists of "evil" quotes by AR activists floating around on rightwing websites. One list, in particular contained quotes several books by Peter Singer (including a famous quote stating "its not immoral to kill infants, very often its not wrong at all"), and I just happened to have all of the books at hand, quickly found the quotes and discovered just how far out of context they were taken. I would take your list of quotes with a grain of salt.
But at the very least, regarding your concern about AR activists who make anti-human comment, I won't doubt that some misanthropic AR activists out there. I know I've made more than my fair share of very misanthropic comments.
You have to look at it from an AR point of view, or better yet a utilitarian point of view: for all the good people do for humanity, they contribute to more harm and suffering than anything else on the planet. For a start, look at factory farming:
- People are more than happy to say that they would never become a vegetarian because they just couldn't give up the taste meat. Its just too delicious. That justification comes up in 100% of animal rights debates that ever take place, but is it a good justification? The "its delicious principle" means the intense suffering and misery that feeling beings are put through before they are slaughtered matters less than the trivial, fleeting satisfaction people get from a
flavor. The imbalance of harms over benefits is unimaginably profound, but no one seems to care.
All of the harm caused in factory farming is gratuitous and preventable, but its protected by the government. Its reasonable to ask "why would the government protect that kind of practice?", but no one seems to care. People don't think about the suffering caused by factory farming, or they don't seem to care; those same people will mock you for thinking that an animal's suffering is more profound than their preference for flavors.
That kind of mentality, where governments make it a right for people to cause as much harm to feeling beings as they want for trivial benefit, looks like a parody of morality to me... is it really unreasonable for a person to have misanthropic feelings about people who cause so much harm and don't even care? I don't think so.
Kopji,
Kopji said:
All medical devices undergo some kind of pre-human testing, this is a requirement of the FDA (in the US).
So help change my mind. What has PETA done to change government requirements for medical device testing? Do they protest at the FDA to eliminate government requirements? Work to change laws demanding results that only come from using animals in research?
Are you asking me whether PETA has ever overturned laws requiring pre-human testing of products before they reach the market? As if PETA won cases allowing the FDA to market untested drugs? No, PETA has never done anything like that. However, PETA has won cases which severely limit the capacity of researchers to use live animals in experimentation.
Regarding PETA and medical testing, here is a short list of things they've accomplished (
source):
- 1981: PETA's undercover investigation of a primate laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland, resulted in the first suspension of federal research funds for alleged cruelty, and the first animal-rights related case to be heard by the United States Supreme Court.
- 1983: successfully stopped a United States Department of Defense "wound lab" which had allegedly planned to fire missiles into dogs and goats.
- 1984: released video footage shot at the University of Pennsylvania head-injury laboratory, showing the alleged treatment of primates there. The Secretary of Health and Human Services subsequently cut off all funding to the laboratory and the experiments were stopped.
- 1985: revealed details of the treatment of dogs at the City of Hope laboratory in California. The government fined the center $11,000 and suspended more than $1,000,000 in federal funding.
- 1986: stopped the total-isolation confinement of chimpanzees at a Maryland research laboratory called SEMA.
- 1987: launched the Compassion Campaign to fight cosmetics and personal-care product testing on animals. By 1989, PETA had persuaded nearly 500 companies to abandon such practices.
- 1988: video shot inside East Carolina University and distributed by PETA showed an allegedly inadequately anesthetized dog undergoing surgery during a classroom exercise. The university subsequently declared a moratorium on the use of live animals.
- 1990: exposed the beating of orangutans by Las Vegas entertainer Bobby Berosini, who used the primates in a nightclub act. His captive-bred wildlife permit was suspended by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and his show closed. Four years later, the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously ruled in PETA’s favor and overturned a Las Vegas jury’s $3.2 million defamation award to Berosini.
- 1992: called attention to the details of U.S. foie gras production, documenting the gavage (force-feeding) of geese. Police subsequently conducted the first raid on a factory farm in the United States.
- 1993: PETA revealed details of scabies experiments using dogs and rabbits at Wright State University. The university was subsequently charged with violating the Animal Welfare Act, and the experiments ended.
- 1994: Buckshire Corporation, a laboratory animal breeding facility, was charged with violations of the Animal Welfare Act after a 38-page complaint was submitted by PETA.
- etc
I think those kinds of actions are extremely admirable, because they get real work done, and that is the only reason why I support them in light of their public image.
