A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy

The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement

Wesley J. Smith

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781594034435
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politische Interessenvertretung

Over the past thirty years, as Wesley J. Smith details in his latest book, the concept of animal rights has been seeping into the very bone marrow of Western culture. One reason for this development is that the term "animal rights” is so often used very loosely, to mean simply being nicer to animals. But although animal rights groups do sometimes focus their activism on promoting animal welfare, the larger movement they represent is actually advancing a radical belief system.For some activists, the animal rights ideology amounts to a quasi religion, one whose central doctrine declares a moral equivalency between the value of animal lives and the value of human lives. Animal rights ideologues embrace their beliefs with a fervor that is remarkably intense and sustained, to the point that many dedicate their entire lives to "speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.” Some believe their cause to be so righteous that it entitles them to cross the line from legitimate advocacy to vandalism and harassment, or even terrorism against medical researchers, the fur and food industries, and others they accuse of abusing animals.All people who love animals and recognize their intrinsic worth can agree with Wesley J. Smith that human beings owe animals respect, kindness, and humane care. But Smith argues eloquently that our obligation to humanity matters more, and that granting "rights” to animals would inevitably diminish human dignity.In making this case with reason and passion, A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy strikes a major blow against a radically antihuman dogma.

PART ONE

“For the Animals”

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1

Animal Advocacy Isn’t What It Used to Be

When Arthur Rosenbaum, a pediatric ophthalmologist at UCLA, found a deadly explosive device planted underneath his car, only a defective fuse prevented the bomb from going off and killing him. Dr. Rosenbaum was not surprised to have been targeted. Like other researchers, he had been the victim of a sustained and vicious campaign of harassment and intimidation, subjected to vandalism, threats of harm to himself and his family, and now, a potentially deadly assault.

Why would someone want to kill or badly scare the scientist and his colleagues? He and the police knew precisely whom to blame. Nor were the perpetrators shy about their crime: A communiqué from the Animal Liberation Front (ALF)—the name used by decentralized terrorist cells of animal rights fanatics—acknowledged the attack, stating in part, “Rosenbaum, you need to watch your back because next time you are in the operating room or walking to your office, you just might be facing injections into your eyes like the primates [upon which you experiment], you sick twisted f—k.”¹ Yes, the researcher faced possible murder because—and only because—he conducts animal experiments.

The failed pipe-bomb attack on Rosenbaum was merely one skirmish in a years-long war waged by ALF against UCLA scientists. Another target was Dr. Edythe London, a lab administrator involved with the study of the biology of addiction. In October 2007, animal rights fanatics flooded her home, and ALF, as in other cases, claimed responsibility in an anonymous press release:

Edythe London, your job as administrator of the UCLA Center that addicts primates to methamphetamines is despicable. You appear to make all of the sick perverted vivisectors who addict primates to meth possible. . . . You may have the privilege of coordinating all of this pain and suffering from a slight distance, but as people who act out of conscience we will not allow you to simply lurk in the shadows of UCLA’s labs of torture.

After disclosing London’s home address for other liberationists’ information, the “communiqué” continued:

Here’s how we got started. We found your million dollar house in Beverly Hills on the windy night of October 20, we discovered you weren’t home so we snuck into your backyard. First, we effectively clogged the intake drain of your pool pump. It probably ran dry for a couple of hours and burned itself out. . . . Next we smashed a window and inserted your garden hose, turned it on to full blast of course. Bet you were surprised when you came home. Edythe, do you have flood insurance?

Then came the unveiled threat:

One more thing Edythe, water was our second choice. Fire was our first. We compromised because we in the ALF don’t risk harming animals human and non human and we don’t risk starting brush fires. It would have been just as easy to burn your house down Edythe. As you slosh around your flooded house consider yourself fortunate this time. We will not stop until UCLA discontinues its primate vivisection programe [sic]. We are ALF.²

These were not empty threats. In February 2008, the ALF ratcheted up its terrorism, setting fire to Dr. London’s house by exploding an incendiary device. She was not home when the blaze was ignited and fortunately nobody was hurt. But the fire could easily have turned into a conflagration, destroying London’s and other homes and perhaps killing firefighters.³ And just as before, the ALF bragged about its criminality in a press release.⁴

At about the same time, a similar intimidation campaign was also being waged against a UCLA scientist named Dario Ringach, who had been experimenting with monkeys to find ways to allow the blind to see through an optical implant in the brain. But helping the blind wasn’t worth the lives of monkeys to the ALF terrorists. When Ringach began to fear for the safety of his children, he decided the time had come to capitulate and buy some peace. According to “ Throwing in the Towel,” a story published in Inside Higher Ed,

The constant calls, the people frightening his children, and the demonstrations in front of his home apparently became a little too much. Dario Ringach, an associate neurobiology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, decided this month to give up his research on primates because of pressure put on him, his neighborhood, and his family by the UCLA Primate Freedom Project, which seeks to stop research that harms animals. . . . In an e-mail this month to several anti-animal research groups, Ringach wrote that “you win,” and asked that the groups “please don’t bother my family anymore.”⁵

Whether Ringach would have succeeded in helping the blind to see cannot be known. But this much is sure: a talented scientist was driven from legitimate work by terrorists who cared more about monkeys than about people suffering from visual impairments.

Animal rights terrorism is an international phenomenon that if anything has been waged even more ruthlessly overseas, especially in the United Kingdom. Consider the plight of David and Christopher Hall, owners of the Darley Oaks Farm and targets of a nasty campaign of threats and vandalism by animal rights radicals because they raised guinea pigs for use in medical research. An incendiary device was left on the porch of John Hall’s daughter. Other family members “were accused of being pedophiles and banned from their local pub and golf course.”⁶ As the Telegraph reported,

For years the gang tormented the Halls. . . . Petrol bombs, death threats, voodoo dolls, graffiti, slander, vandalism to cars and houses, they stopped at nothing as they reveled in their reputation as untouchable sophisticated terrorists. The Halls were, in fact, terrorized: Chris Hall said, “ We were under siege. We might as well have been in prison for six years.”⁷

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And the terrorism was not restricted to the Hall family either. According to the Guardian, “Almost 100 people connected to the farm were targeted. Explosive devices were sent to some, mail threatening to kill and maim to others. There were attacks on homes, cars and businesses.”⁸

For years the Halls stood fast. But then, the liberationists escalated their war to a macabre extreme: They robbed the grave of Gladys Hammond, the mother-in-law of Christopher Hall, and refused to give her body back until the family stopped raising guinea pigs. Finally, the exhausted Halls could take no more. They promised to cease raising guinea pigs, issuing a statement saying: “We hope that, as a result of this announcement, those responsible for removing Gladys’s body will return her so she can lie once again in her rightful resting place.”⁹

Four animal liberationists eventually were arrested and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to blackmail, receiving sentences ranging between four and twelve years.¹⁰ The perpetrators were an odd lot to have engaged in such cruelty, coming from the bedrock of respectable society—including a former teacher, the son of an Anglican vicar, and a psychiatric nurse. Gladys Hammond’s body was eventually returned to her grave, when a few days prior to sentencing one of the criminals told police where it could be found in the hope of getting an easier deal.¹¹

What source of disdain and loathing could drive people to plant bombs, terrify children, disrupt neighborhoods, destroy property, commit arson, intimidate families, harass entire villages, rob graves, and as we shall see later, even justify murder? It comes down to a fervently held belief that borders on religious dogma: animal rights/liberationists hold that what is done to an animal is morally equivalent to the same action done to a human being. Because humans have the right to life, so do animals. Since we are entitled not to be enslaved, animals too have the right not to be owned.

So fervently do animal rights adherents hold their beliefs that thousands of activists dedicate their lives to impeding the humane use of animals through means fair—demonstrations, political activism, properly brought litigation—or foul, including frivolous lawsuits and mendacious advocacy, while the more radical fringe presumes the right to prevent animal “exploitation” through criminal actions and even thinly veiled threats of murder.

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“Animal Welfare” versus “Animal Rights”

It wasn’t always like this. Animal protection advocacy has a noble history, such as the many societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals and the local humane societies that shelter stray dogs and cats and operate neutering clinics. Today’s animal rights movement is often conflated with such “animal welfare” activities, but it grows from a dramatically different concept. Both movements are concerned with the way people treat animals, but that is where the similarity ends. In fact, animal welfare and animal rights represent incompatible moral principles and mutually exclusive goals.

The first difference between the animal rights and animal welfare philosophies is that the latter doesn’t regard animals as being entitled to human-type “rights.” As we shall discuss more fully in the last chapter, only moral beings possess rights, since that entitlement assumes concomitant duties. But animals are amoral and cannot conceive of honoring the rights of others or of bearing obligations.

The only true moral species is Homo sapiens. We understand the concepts of right and wrong, good and bad. Hence, in free societies at least (and even tyrannies give mouth service to the notion), we are deemed each to be born with fundamental rights such as those mentioned in the Declaration of Independence—the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

But that isn’t the end of the story. Human exceptionalism also imposes responsibilities upon us—one of which is to treat animals humanely. And here is another difference between animal welfare and animal rights: As they call upon us to seek ever-improving methods of animal husbandry, welfarists also acknowledge that, assuming appropriate practices, we are entitled to benefit from animals in furtherance of human interests.

Perhaps the most important difference between the two belief systems is that unlike animal rights advocates, proponents of animal welfare do not seek to create a moral equivalence between human beings and animals. As Michael Schau, an attorney in the emerging field of animal law, wrote in a law review article on the issue:

Animal welfare is rooted in the principles of humane care and treatment. Welfare positions are founded on the basic premise that animals can and will be used to benefit humans, and the responsibilities created by this carry certain obligations for humans to the animals. These responsibilities include appropriate husbandry, provision of essential food, water and shelter, health care and maintenance, alleviation of pain and suffering, and other needs. Some animal advocates assert that there are essential uses of animals such as biomedical research and nonessential uses of animals such as entertainment. These advocates will ardently support animal use practices that are perceived to produce widespread benefits to society, thus justifying the required use of animals, but reject support for nonessential use.¹²

Animal rights activists, on the other hand, deny that human beings have the right to use animals to further any human purpose—no matter how beneficial. Knowing that most of society disagrees with this proposition, animal rights organizations often hide their radical ultimate agenda (to end all human use of animals) behind a façade of animal welfare-style activism. But in reality, the animal rightist disdains the animal welfare approach precisely because animal welfarism accepts that human beings have greater value than animals, and more centrally, that we have the right to own and use animals for our benefit. True animal rights activists reject the idea that animals can ever properly be considered property. As one of the world’s leading animal rights advocates, Professor Gary L. Francione of Rutgers University’s Animal Rights Law Center, explained:

Recent scholarship on the human/animal relationship contends that the modern animal “rights” movement is fundamentally different from its historical predecessor, the animal welfare movement, or the humane movement. These differences reflect the rejection by rights advocates of a central tenet of animal welfare: that non-humans are the property of humans and human obligations to non-humans are limited to a prohibition against the unnecessary infliction of pain or death on non-humans. Rights advocates generally hold that at least some non-humans possess moral rights that protect certain interests in a more absolute way, just as human rights protect certain human interests.¹³

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Co-opting the Welfare Approach:¹⁴

Disdaining animal welfare as a philosophy doesn’t mean, however, that animal rights activists are not more than happy to co-opt the abundant goodwill earned by the animal welfare movement to further their own agendas. The advocacy of Henry Spira, an early animal rights activist, is a prime example. As Peter Singer describes it in his biography Ethics into Action,¹⁵ after embracing the ideology of animal rights in the early days of the movement, Spira understood that claiming human-type rights for animals would not go down well with a general public that loved animals but still considered them less important than people. So, instead of pursuing his actual agenda openly, Spira organized a campaign to stop the American Museum of Natural History in New York from conducting experiments in which cats were surgically altered...