Letters by Boz

Animal Research Won't Cure Alzheimer's

Top Alzheimer's Disease researcher and neuroscientist Lawrence A. Hansen, M.D, has written an important article questioning the place of animal research in finding a cure for this awful disease (which, incidentally, killed my grandmother). He describes some research methods... 

One particularly egregious example is a decades-long series of highly invasive monkey experiments performed at universities across the country to study neural control of visual tracking. Luckless monkeys have coils implanted in both eyes, multiple craniotomies for electrode placements in their brains and head immobilization surgeries in which screws, bolts and plates are directly attached to their skulls. This is followed by water deprivation to produce a "work ethic" so they will visually track moving objects.

... before concluding

Because such monkey torture will not lead to improved human health, you don't need to be an animal rights advocate to wonder if an ethical cost-benefit analysis might conclude the ends just don't justify the means, especially since rapid advances in sophisticated high-resolution neuroimaging on humans will very soon obviate the need for such invasive techniques.... Most animal experiments on monkeys, dogs, cats and other animals are not related to human benefit, and describing such research as "humane" requires an Orwellian-newspeak definition of the word. "Humane" means to treat with kindness, consideration or mercy, and as long as words have meanings that cannot be twisted Humpty Dumpty-like into whatever we want them to mean, animal experimentation is not and can never be humane.

Based on my readings, many animal researchers simply believe in experimentation for the sake of experimentation. They enjoy the scientific process, and if animals are tortured in the process, so be it, as long as it's in the interest of the great god Science. Whether or not there is any actual relevance to the research seems to be besides the point.

Shooting Cats: Evil

From the great folks at Alley Cat Allies: 

Lately Alley Cat Allies has heard from our supporters and seen more than one news item about people who should know better—elected leaders no less—suggesting that the best way to handle feral cats is to shoot them.

To take action against this horrible practice, go here.

If only it were possible to arm the cats with little tiny firearms of their own...

Slave Bear Rebels, is Killed

A sad story out of Boratesque Kyrgyzstan:

An ice-skating bear with a visiting Russian circus turned on its trainers on Wednesday, killing the circus director and seriously wounding another man during a rehearsal in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan.

via www.cbc.ca

As so often happens, the bear was shot dead. 

It is important to remember that animals forced to perform in these despicable circuses are often cruelly mistreated. Per the Voice for Animals Humane Society, 

This circus featured bears wearing skates and playing hockey. It is difficult to imagine what the trainers must have done to these animals to make them perform this act. While in Alberta the bears were housed at Doug’s Exotic Zoo in Red Deer in individual cages so small that most of the animals were unable to turn around or stand up to their full height.

I recommend reading more about the subject here. 

Newest Sadistic Thrill for Animal Hating Scum

Police in Shelton, Conn. have arrested 19 individuals in connection to a canary fighting ring. In order to satisfy their deranged need for bloodsport, scummish people would apparently watch as these beautiful creatures were made to fight to the death. What type of person looks at this defenseless creature and thinks to himself, "I want to see that bird fight for its life!"? A sick person. I could care less about "culture" or "tradition." Animal fighting -- chickens, dogs, horses, whatever -- is just disgusting and wrong, and those who indulge in it are mere sadists.

 

Obama Crazies and the Spirit of 1776

The September 28, 2009 issue of New York has a good (if somewhat cursory) article about the nuttiness of some anti-Obama activists. A few pictures of the various cretins can be viewed here. (The chubby hick chick giving the middle finger pretty much sums up the class and intellect of these people.) Most of the things throwing the wingnuts into conniptions are lies and mistruths we've all heard countless times already: Obama is a Muslim/Nazi/Socialist/Communist, he wasn't born in the U.S., and so on. 

One small item did catch my attention. One sign at a Scranton, PA teabagging party apparently read, THE ANSWER TO 2009 IS 1776. What, I wonder, was so great about 1776? In 1776, country was involved in a bloody war. Hundreds of thousands of blacks were held in slavery, while countless whites were locked into the virtual slavery of indentured servitude. Participation in politics was pretty much reserved for white, male property owners, leaving huge chunks of the population disenfranchised. Essentially, the U.S. in 1776 was a far more tyrannical place than the U.S. in 2009. Free, libertarian 1776 America never existed except in the fevered minds of some reactionaries, and is just as fanciful as the supposed Marxist dictatorship we live under now.

Hot-Buttered Torture

I've already given up meat and poultry, and am moving to greatly reduce my consumption of dairy products and eggs. This video from an undercover PETA investigation of a Land O'Lakes dairy supplier shows why:

Palin... the GOP's "Fatal Cancer"

The Huffington Post has a short piece quoting a recent interview with David Brooks:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

Wow, that really nails it. The GOP celebration of all that is ignorant, provincial, anti-intellectual, philistine, and yes, hickish is truly dispiriting. Give me a Rockefeller Republican any day over a Redneck Republican.

Remembering Buckley

Someone asked me a few weeks ago if I  would ever consider going on one of those annual National Review cruises. Weeks trapped aboard a ship with a bunch of earnest conservatives discussing politics? Not my cup of tea. But I did admit it might be worth it just for the chance to meet William F. Buckley, Jr.
    Alas, that chance will now never come.
    William F. Buckley was my first exposure to conservatism. In my early twenties I found myself becoming increasing disillusioned with the vaguely democratic socialist  political philosophy I had embraced since my teens. One day I stumbled on to a collection of Buckley's essays at a used book store. Despite my left-leaning sensibility, I had always had a sneaking admiration for the conservative gadfly, largely from watching "Firing Line" with my great-grandparents as a child. So I decided to buy the book, The Jeweler's Eye, in hopes of getting a new perspective on politics. It was a revelation to me. At the time, the conservative tone was being largely set by Rush Limbaugh, who was a bit obnoxious for my taste and actually served to keep me away from the Right. Buckley's writing was anything but obnoxious. It was clever, erudite, and witty, and he more than anyone else set me on the road to conservatism.

USDA: The U is for Useless

In the wake of the scandal of sick, tortured cows being slaughtered for human consumption right under the eyes of the Keystone Kops at the USDA, one lawmaker has concluded we probably need to rethink the federal government's relationship with the food industry. From an MSNBC.com article:

A lawmaker called Tuesday for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be stripped of its responsibility for food safety in the wake of the nation’s largest-ever meat recall.

The agency’s twin mandates of promoting the nation’s agriculture and monitoring it for safety have become blurred, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro said.

“Food safety ought to be of a high enough priority in this nation that we have a single agency that deals with it and not an agency that is responsible for promoting a product, selling a product and then as an afterthought dealing with how our food supply is safe,” said DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for the USDA’s funding.

    The USDA is hamstrung by its ties to the very industry it is supposed to be monitoring. It is well-known that there are never really any surprise visits to processing plants and slaughterhouses, and as Michael Pollan described, inspectors biggest concern is often whether or not they have access to private bathroom during their inspections. Toughen up standards in the food industry, and create an agency with real power to enforce the rules, and let the corporations worry about "promoting a product."

Philharmonic in Pyongyang

The New York Philharmonic just played a historic concert in the totalitarian state of North Korea. Under the baton of Lorin Maazel, the NYP played a variety of tunes of a distinctly American flavor, including Dvorak's "New World" symphony, Gershwin's "An American in Paris," and, amazingly, "The Star-Spangled Banner." The crazed dictator Kim Jong Il was not in attendance. Perhaps was busy sentencing someone to a slave labor camp, hosting a party with kidnapped foreign starlets, or was drunk on rare cognac.
    I was initially very much against this trip, fearing it would merely add to the corrupt North Korean regime's legitimacy. However, and article in National Review by Jay Nordlinger made me at least reconsider my opposition, though not actually abandon it. Nordlinger's piece basically summarizes the opinions of some very respectable experts concerning the concert...