Animal Rights Activism

It's hard to believe that there are people who go well beyond having a deficit in compassion for animals, who see no value in their presence in the world we share. So many people have a true and abiding love for companion animals, the dogs and cats who share their very personal lives. Which isn't to say there aren't more than enough people who own cats or dogs and neglect their needs to the point of criminal intent. They're not, though, in the majority.

Most people do see value in the animals who inhabit our world, whether they're our family pets or the wild creatures who live in urban or rural settings, or in the great forests of this country. The multitudes of birds, of small forest creatures, of urbanized 'pest' animals like squirrels and raccoons all have their value. As do other domesticated animals whose presence on farms provide us with a source of food.

So it's hard to believe there are people who deliberately and with full intent make an effort to destroy animals they happen to come across. From a snake on a rural property whose presence brings revulsion to a property-owner, to a beaver whom an angry property owner traps to stop it bringing down his trees. Still, they can likely rationalize the inimical nature of the animals' relationships to their properties.

What possible excuse could there be for the 3% of motorists whom an Ontario study has found - mostly men - who will deliberately swerve on a road to intentionally run over a snake, a turtle, a small mammal. The May issue of the Human Dimensions of Wildlife journal conducted a controlled experiment that illustrated drivers run reptiles over deliberately.

And then there's the 'on the other hand', those people whose emotional connection to animals as equal to humans leads them to behave in violent and illegal ways to bring home their point. Most of us are complicit in the use of animals for our own needs, like food and footwear, clothing - and alas, scientific experiments.

Nature has constructed us this way; animals of one kind or another, including humans, are predators, using other animals to fulfil their own needs.

A new film, has just been launched titled "Your Mommy Kills Animals"; a take-off of PETA's mock comic book. In the film a physician and trauma surgeon defends the idea of killing scientists who make use of animals in research. He obviously represents the lunatic fringe of the animal rights movement. On the other hand, when computer models can be used for scientific experiments rather than animal models, the choice is obvious.

Yet the world owes a great debt in many instances to medical scientists whose work was completed with the use of animal models, for there are many instances where only live animals used in experimental ways can bring results that are of value to mankind. The experiments of Banting and Best which brought much-needed results in insulin production in 1921 to enable those with insulin-dependent diabetes to live with their affliction, is a case in point.

Animal rights activists who 'liberate' animals from their cages so their pelts cannot be used in the fur industry may feel they're doing a great service to the animal world, but what they're managing to do is 'free' animals that are functionally incapable of living on their own in an alien environment, animals bred in captivity, never having had to hunt for themselves, never knowing that predators can imperil their existence.

And the fact is, not everyone is willing to forego eating meat to satisfy the anger of animal activists.