David Martosko is with the food industry-financed Center for Consumer Freedom, aka PETA’s Worst Nightmare. David’s genius is that he is as edgy and committed to fighting animal rights as PETA is in advocating the ideology. (The Center created the “PETA Kills Animals” campaign, for example). In any event, he has a letter in today’s Christian Science Monitor responding to an article I didn’t read. But his points are cogent and make points with which I completely agree:
In response to Barbara Cook Spencer’s recent Opinion piece on animal cruelty: The author exposes an interesting conundrum in her exploration of how modern society treats animals. While gratuitous cruelty toward animals clearly lowers humanity’s value, the same can be said of the gratuitous elevation of animals’ worth.
The same animal advocates who rush to judgment about the reckless behavior of a few slaughterhouse employees apparently see nothing wrong with extending legal “rights” to lab rats—regardless of the cost to cancer and AIDS patients.
Doesn’t the establishment of legal rights for these animals also debase humanity? At the end of the day, it is probably impossible to guarantee both “rights” for animals and disease cures for humans.
I see siding with my own species as the only compassionate option.
David Martosko Washington
The animal rights movement has the capacity to cause great human harm. Moreover, many advocates are anti human—as evidenced by some of the comments we get from movement members here. David is right: We can and should treat humans humanely as a unique duty of our species, but we also have duties to ourselves—including the curing of diseases which requires animal research.
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