Neuroscientist Halts Research to Stop Extremists 1047
FleaPlus writes "UCLA neuroscience professor Dario Ringach, known for his contributions to our understanding of how the visual system processes information, has been forced to give up his experiments by the actions of animal-rights extremists. Although he and his family had endured harassment and vandalization by animal-rights activists for years, Ringach reconsidered after extremists tried to firebomb a colleague's home and accidentally left their Molotov cocktail on an elderly neighbor's doorstep. Ringach sent an email to animal activist groups saying, 'You win... please don't bother my family anymore.'"
What I don't get (Score:5, Interesting)
While you certainly can't be expected to control all the actions of everyone who belongs to your group, there's still a duty not to turn a blind eye on purpose, and then pat them on the back after the fact.
Between Pavlov and Dr Moreau (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, I've gone and petitioned against trees being cut down. Indeed, we've even hugged a few and prevented their demise. But vigilante retribution was never the way to save animals. There have been transgressions on one side, but that doesn't justify the other side from commiting brutality.
Replacing cruelty to animals, with one towards mankind doesn't solve the problem - mainly because there is no Noble Savage unlike what Rousseau dreamed.
This is like terrorism with its own ecological brand (call it another religion if you want).Re:What I don't get (Score:3, Interesting)
Is why these groups are allowed to continue to exist.
The government would have to prove that leaders in the organization were directly involved in supporting the actions of some of its members. Look at organized crime as an example. The FBI worked very hard for many years to get prosecutions of the leaders of the mob. There would have to be a similar concerted effort to take down these animal rights people.
Re:Terrorists. (Score:4, Interesting)
Gandhi they are not (Score:3, Interesting)
FIrebombing, attempted firebombing, repeated assault, and even attempted murder (or manslaughter at the very least) are serious crimes that usually demand prison terms--sometimes lengthy ones. The animal rights activists probably think highly of themselves as brave and courageous but truth be told they just do these incredibly mean and destructive things, then go back to their drab little lives and 9-to-5 jobs at the end of the weekend. They probably believe they are making great sacrifices for their cause, and even compare themselves and their cause to the great causes they've all read about.
But, comparing them to those who have truly sacrificed for their cause they fall embarrassingly short. Think what you may about characters like Ghandi but he spent a significant amount of his adult life in prison for taking the actions he took. These bozos don't expect to be caught, tried, or punished. "I can't go to prison. I have to pick up Muffy from daycare at 6."
What's really depressing is these "cultural terrorists" are winning. {sigh}
Re:Always strikes me (Score:3, Interesting)
These guys are jerks and need to be locked up, but it's not like it's hard to understand where these people are coming from.
How to Counter Attack (Score:5, Interesting)
Easy enough. Do the same thing here. Go after the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) for encouraging this kind of thing. It's right on their website, the masks, clearly instruments of anonymity and terror. Take 'em down, they have it coming.
C//
Re:With the war on terrorism... (Score:2, Interesting)
The home grown terrorists who don't get much FBI attention are covered here http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.js [splcenter.org].
The interesting thing is that ALF, etc have never actually hurt anybody (at least there are no police records indicating they have) or called for the overthrow of the US government, while various Christian Identity and Nazi organizations definately have. We will leave the "Pro-life" Murderers out of this as we are trying to have a rational discussion.
My point is not to defend what was done here. It sucks, is immoral and constitutes a criminal enterprise which should be smashed with all due speed. But to say these folks are "terrorists" who are getting a "free ride" from "the authorities" or "the media" because they are "liberal" or "leftist" is to use all the words in quotes WAY outside thier proper definition.
P.S. I would have more sympathy for the moral high ground these folks tend to claim if they were doing civil disobedience; that is, when the Police arrive at a vandalized lab there are a bunch of people sitting there saying "We did this, please take us to jail and trial."
Were his, so called, "experiments" like this one? (Score:3, Interesting)
Then I'm sorry to say, I'm glad activists reached their goal. I don't approve of their methods, but I don't approve of vivisection either.
Re:What I don't get (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:With the war on terrorism... (Score:3, Interesting)
I always love people who delve into the meanings of words and present a very good treatment without resorting to terminology nobody understands.. very clear post, thanks!
Radicals anger me. (Score:3, Interesting)
Radicals really piss me off.
funny (Score:1, Interesting)
Since 9-11, soon thereafter, the US no longer maintains extensive bases in saudi arabia. They were "invited to leave" by the royal government there, and did so, even though they didn't want to of course.
coincidence?
Re:The lies are what clinch it for me. (Score:3, Interesting)
I did some animal research half way through my medical degree. It was on ways to improve the bionic ear.
I read Peter Singer's "Practical Ethics" about a year later, and that's when I became a vegetarian, which I've stuck to since. However, I'd still do animal research again if I thought it was going to help avoid the suffering or premature death of humans. A lot of the tablets I prescribe have a little bit of gelatine in them (which vegetarians like myself can't usually eat, but I'd certainly take such tablets if I needed them.) I have used anti-thymocyte globulin (used in various blood cancers, derived from horse blood usually), Herceptin (for breast cancer, made from mouse hybridoma cells), silk (sutures). Here's the difference for me: I can survive quite well without eating meat. But many other things essential to people's survival and happiness requires injuring animals; and I am generally willing to do that if required.
Which is not to say that animal suffering is meaningless. It's the reason I don't eat meat. And I wouldn't, say, torture 100 primates with near human intelligence to death to, say, prolong the life of a single patient with advanced dementia, unable to communicate. But notwithstanding extreme examples like this, human suffering will generally outweigh animal suffering for me.
I think the animal liberationists who go around trying to thwart the work of this professor should consider: if they had a deaf child, would they decline to let them have a cochlear implant (bionic ear) on the basis of development by animal testing?
Given that basic understanding of the visual system contributed to by researchers like this professor underpins current (basic but evolving) efforts to restore vision in a similar fashion (electrical - neural interfacing, a much harder problem in the visual system than in the auditory system), they should realise that their actions indirectly cause much human suffering. The first cochlear implant was on 1 August, 1978. Approximately 100,000 people have been given hearing by this device since this time - ie thousands per year. This suggests delaying visual research, even by a year, means thousands of people will miss out (get too old / die) / be implanted later (which due to diminishing plasticity with age will probably be less effective).
I guess all this is 1. unlikely to be read by the relevant animal liberationists 2. unlikely to change their minds, but I wish they'd stick to stamping out wanton cruelty in food production and leave medical research, where animals suffering has an essential purpose and is minimised as much as possible, alone.
Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
a "fossilization of the mind" -- what's that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not... (Score:2, Interesting)
By the way, there was a muslim empire [wwu.edu] that stretched all the way from the middle east to spain. (on the african side) I heard somewhere they only punished other religions with slightly more tax. (could be wrong though)
I really dont know shit about this, though.
You're missing that the word Jihad has different meanings for different people, just like crusade..
Re:Why not... (Score:5, Interesting)
The crusades came about in large part because the Benedictine monks of Cluny were struggling to reform and control the Roman church after it had absorbed a large number of northern European barbarian chieftans and their retainers. This was the context in which the Eastern and Roman churches split. Just because they were baptized, these barbarian warriors did not change overnight, giving up their habits of pillage and petty warfare. The Cluniacs came up with a program which must have seemed to them, in the words used by Col North do describe the Iran Contra deal "a neat idea". They'd harness the martial energy of the barbarian knights to a useful purpose, at the same time the effort would provide a kind of military pilgrimage that would tutor them in Christian spirituality.
So, what the Cluniacs and their sophisticated disciples intended was very much a kind of struggle of the sort I describe. The knights, however, perceived the effort in a much simpler and more familiar way: vendetta. Somebody else was holding clan lands. Plus they decided that they had an issue of blood to settle with the Jews. Up until this point, anti-semitism as we know it did not exist.
The second reason is that allowing that "crusade" could be used would weaken my point, which was probably the more telling of the two reasons. Then you had to come along and notice. Thanks much.
Re:With the war on terrorism... (Score:5, Interesting)
The behavior of the patriots was thoroughly inconsistent with the established contemporary customs of war. And they generally didn't wear uniforms either, and they tended to hide their weapons and fighters amongst the civilian population.
The boston tea party destroyed commercial assets, in order to have a political effect, which by the present US government's definition [wikipedia.org], is in fact terrorism. Their intention is irrelevant; the act itself could be construed as subversive to the government, particularly since it stood to loose enormous tax revenue from the tea that was dumped.
If someone tried to start the Million Man (really 300,000 man) March today, they'd never get the permission to march that many observant Muslims in the capitol, and if they tried to do so without permit, they would certainly, under the current regime, be liable for arrest as a terrorist (as opposed to being arrested for merely being disorderly).
So sed -e 's/Sunni/Tory/' | sed -e 's/Iraq/Colonies/'. Maybe Iraq's off to a good start, after all.
Don't want to know: don't want to think about it. (Score:3, Interesting)
The public treats animal experimentation as it does anything which is an inconvenience.
The public does not want to know about it.
The public does not want to think about it.
The public wants simplicity and convenience in its life.
And the government knows this. (added for the paranoid)
Re:More nits than one (Score:3, Interesting)
You missed the weasel words "as we know it". It's not that there was not anti-jewish sentiment, even strong anti-jewish sentiment at times before the Crusades. You can look in the Bible and see the seeds of anti-semitism in the books written at the latest dates. Yet these were an ideological splits within Judaism, not anti-semitism as we know it.
To my way of looking at thinks, "anti-semitism" as we know it has several characteristics which make it both especially obnoxious and durable. The first is scape-goating, not just for the crucifiction of Jesus, but for all the ills experienced by the poor and powerless class. This unleashes violence on the Jews by the weak which is sanctioned by the powerful because it deflects attention from their own misdeeds. The second is opportunistic thievery, which in the poor amounts to a license to loot and in the powerful amounts to extortion, or expulsion followed by charging for reentry. The final element is mythology: myths of Jewish conspiracy to control finances, government, or simply to commit bizarre and inexplicable crimes like cannibalism and well poisoning.
These elements, combined with the international nature of the disapora, make anti-semitism a special case among ethnic hatreds. They did not exist as far as I know prior to 1095.
The relations of Muslims to Jews were, as you say, more complicated from the beginning, particularly after the alliance of the Umma with the Jews of Medina fell apart. But it did not constitute what we would call "anti-semitism".