On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, Lawrence Upton wrote...
>I have been listening with great interest to all the nonsense being talked
>about the protests against animal testing - I forget the name of the
>company, but it's up your way Chris
>
>For those who don't know about this, it's a company / facility for testing
>pharmaceuticals on animals which has been targeted by protests and claims to
>be in severe trouble - shareholders getting out etc
>
>an executive described the campaign as terrorism
>
>during the afternoon I heard a speaker for the campaign being interviewed
>aggressively & he asked what was so bad about "outing" (my word) those who
>experiment on animals when there had been so much "name and shame" here of
>paedophiles
>
The campaigners have done rather more than "out" the experimenters.
There have been bricks through windows, cars torched, etc. The
executive's description of the campaign was accurate. "Terrorism" is a
technical term, as well as an emotive one. (You might say it's justified
terrorism, and it certainly seems to be effective terrorism, but it's
definitely terrorism.)
One difference between animal experimenters and paedophiles is that the
activities of the former are legal and those of the latter are not.
While I don't necessarily think this makes everything all right, I do
think it's a rather *important* difference.
I'm afraid I'm feeling sufficiently nervous about this post to want to
mention the (hopefully obvious) facts that anyone who thinks I'm in
favour of wanton cruelty to animals a) is wrong, and b) has missed the
point.
Best,
--
Peter
http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/
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