Car bomb attack against scientist
by KrauzeA group of radical creationists placed an explosive device under evolutionary biologist Arthur Rosenbaums car; a faulty fuse was the only reason it didn't go off. Pro-science blogs are roundly condemning this attack, which they claim is impeding scientific progress.
Nah, just kidding. In reality, Dr. Arthur Rosenbaum is a pediatric ophthalmologist using animals in his research at UCLA, and it was radical animal rights activists that placed a deadly explosive under his car. Oh yeah, and the reaction from the self-described "pro-science" blogs has been deafening silence.
It gets worse. A prominent spoksesperson of the violent animal rights-movement is Jerry Vlasak, a 49-year-old trauma surgeon working at several community hospitals. From the article:
Besides posting communiqués and press releases on the NAALPO [North American Animal Liberation Press Office] Web site, Vlasak understands that his medical background gives the animal-rights movement a certain amount of cachet. Journalists come to him for quotes, and he gives them. In a 2004 interview with the London Observer, he said, "I don't think you'd have to kill too many [researchers]. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million nonhuman lives." Those remarks caused him to be banished from England, but in Southern California, he practices surgery at Riverside Community and Parkview Community hospitals in Riverside County, as well as Community Hospital and San Antonio Community Hospital in San Bernardino.
A little tip for intelligent design-friendly researchers who fear having their scientific careers derailed: Simply use your scientific authority to call for the murder of your colleagues, and the ID critics will ignore you as well.
(Hat-tip to Secondhand Smoke for the story.)
August 10th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Krause,
I am not defending violence here.
But do you (and Mike Gene) think there should be any limits on the kinds of experiments people conduct on animals? Particularly higher primates?
I've worked in a research lab before caring for animals, and frankly the way we treat them horrifies me. My dad is an occupational physician and after working with the employees in a chicken plant for a couple of years and seeing how industrial meat production works, he will no longer eat any factory-farm meat.
Do you think there might be some validity to the animal rights protestors positions (if not their methods)?
Comment by mcromer — August 10, 2007 @ 11:04 am
August 10th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Well at least some pro-science organizations are coming in defense of humans.
Here is one pro-science blogger:
Medical Researchers Under Terrorist Threat
And this blogger will speak at the Discovery Institute August 16, 2007:
Animal LIberation, and the Threat to Human Exceptionalism
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — August 10, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
August 10th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
IDists praise Judge Jones for a thorough and thoughtful handling of the Dover trial. Nah, just kidding, he received death threats - oops, bad link - death threats (not that you would know about it by reading TT).
Big arrest in the UK. The violent acts of extremists are clearly against the law, and the law enforcement agencies are doing their jobs as best they can - but don't let that get in your way. I know! You could point out how there are homicides every day, but nothing from those atheist bloggers - show how they just don't value human life! (Of course, you may want to throw up a couple token blogs about how crime is bad and human life is good so you don't look like a complete hypocrite - when you have time, I mean - don't want to distract you from all that really interesting ID-as-idea blogging you do.)
Comment by JAllen — August 10, 2007 @ 12:28 pm
August 10th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
"But do you (and Mike Gene) think there should be any limits on the kinds of experiments people conduct on animals? Particularly higher primates?"
My two cents - I think there are two errors that can be made. One is to deny that cruelty to animals is an evil, and to callously treat them like things when they are more than just things. The other is to deny that they are not human, and intrinsically less important than humans. Animals are neither people nor things and should be treated as such.
So I think animal testing and farming is not intrinsically wrong, but it may be that the actual practice of animal testing and farming is wrong.
Comment by BenK — August 10, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
August 10th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
No not in the least. Their position is philosophically incoherent and goes far deeper than not eating factory farmed meat.
There is a place for humans to treat animals properly and for human treatment associationas but these anti-human idiots are not them.
Comment by thesciphishow — August 10, 2007 @ 8:05 pm
August 10th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
thesciphishow:
For the vegan wannabe terrorists, the position isn't the least bit inconsistent. Although for the most part, I'd advise them sternly to consider what prison diets are like…
I'm not vegan, but I am an aware semi-vegetarian and have been for ~35 years. Raised my children thusly, and one of my grandchildren. All of whom turned out taller and healthier than me. A good part of the reason I don't eat any red meat or chicken is that I object to farming practices. That's also why I won't buy hormone and antibiotic laced milk or cheese or butter. I have alternatives locally. And I grow my own veggies and fruit.
I do have a serious weakness for trout. We've browns and rainbow here, and they're the most delicious thing ever concocted when wrapped in sassafrass leaves and grilled slow with the smoker-top down. A summertime treat I simply cannot give up. So I catch, kill and clean my own there too. I figure if I meet the critter, look it in the eyes, and have no big guilt killing it, I can eat it. Guess I'm a species-ist, but fish really don't bother me. Neither do poisonous snakes or bugs, but I don't eat those I kill. Go figure…
Animal testing has provided spectacular benefits to humanity. It is in many cases necessary, so I accept it. Cruelty at any level of the process is entirely unnecessary, and I object to it. There are a great many things tested on animals cruelly that don't need to be tested on animals at all. I think it should all be minimized as much as reasonably possible, including husbandry for consumption. People are dying all over the place from their irrational consumption habits, as well as from the unhealthiness of the process. That's just plain stupid. On a level of resource management, it's even stupider.
All that said, I'd never terrorize or kill anybody for their stupidity. Though once when a local paper company magnate brushed off physical evidence that his dioxin releases were causing diseased fish and shrimp (and ruining those industries), I was sorely tempted to rent a helicopter and dump a huge netload of open-sored rotting fish into his back yard swimming pool in the middle of the night. Luckily I was too poor to pull it off, or I just might have done it…
Comment by Joy — August 10, 2007 @ 9:07 pm
August 10th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
oh come off it joy.
Comment by dantedanti — August 10, 2007 @ 10:15 pm
August 10th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Off what? My once-upon-a-time evil (but pointless) plans for some corporate polluter's swimming pool? My fondness for trout (which I do indulge in at least twice a year)? My neglect of state fishing license when I do that (in my own creeks, on my own property)? My apparent lack of concern for living, breathing sassafrass leaves?
Not getting it, dante. What's your beef?
Comment by Joy — August 10, 2007 @ 10:52 pm