Harvest: the donor debate

The problem with most of the debate surrounding medical research on animals is that it's always presented as an "us versus them" issue, the implication being that only people who secretly hate their fellow humans would vote for the welfare of animals over the potential benefit to humankind.
This is how this debate is being presented:

"Stem cell research is underway in Reno that could someday revolutionize the now clogged organ transplant industry. Scientists are attempting to "grow" humanized organs. The use of animals has some saying that it's just wrong. Others disagree.
...There is the possibility that in the future other organs, including humanized hearts and kidneys, could be grown in the animals and harvested as needed. Dr. Zanjani says this would ultimately have an unlimited potential for providing a variety of organs for transplant purposes.
Scientific gain at the animal's expense does not appeal to everyone. Jane Greenspun-Gale is Chairperson for the Lied Animal Foundation in Las Vegas. 'If an unborn, microscopic baby can have rights, why can't a living breathing animal.'"

The news story format doesn't allow the complexities of the debate to unfold. The position that Dr Zanjani takes explicitly is that there's a desperate shortage of organ donors and that new medical research must address this need. What isn't being aired is that stem cell research in human beings has become a politically rather than medically controversial issue, which is why stem cell research is being carried out on other animals instead. Humans vote, animals don't.
On the subject of legal rights for animals, Steven M Wise makes a powerful case in his book, Drawing The Line. He mentions the particular cases of humans who have "little or no autonomy but [do] have legal rights": a 67-year-old man with an IQ of ten, a 10-month-old girl born into a permanent vegetative state. Then he mentions Koko, the gorilla who can sign "SIT KOKO LOVE YOU", "SMOKE MOUTH" for cigarette and lots of other things.

"Compare our baby girl to Koko," he writes. "On what nonarbitrary ground could a judge find the little girl has a common law right to bodily integrity that forbids her use in terminal biomedical research, but that Koko shouldn't have that right, without violating basic notions of equality? Only a radical speciesist could accept a baby girl who lacks consciousness, sentience, even a brain, as having legal rights just because she's human, yet the thinkingest, talkingest, feelingest apes have no rights at all, just because they're not human."

How can we insist on compassion for one and only one animal, the naked ape, and ignore all the rest?

Over 1,000 birds dead in China

The sad thing is that the biggest reason this story made the headlines is because of human fears that we might be exposed to bird flu, not because of concern for the birds themselves.

"More than 1,000 migratory birds have died of avian flu in western China, but no human cases of the disease have been found, the country's chief veterinary official said Friday.
The dead birds were found in Qinghai province and included bar-headed geese and great black-headed gulls, Jia Youling, director of the Ministry of Agriculture's Veterinary Bureau, said at a press conference. On Thursday, the ministry said 519 dead bar-headed geese and other birds had been found in a nature reserve. Jia did not say where the other birds were found."

Why lab rats don't make good crystal balls

"I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers."--anonymous.
Oh, there's also this:

"Pregnant women may unknowingly be putting their unborn children at risk of birth defects by taking over-the-counter medications and prescription drugs, and using common household chemicals, according to a new study published in the May issue of the research journal, Biogenic Amines.
“The Future of Teratology Is In Vitro” shows that many common drugs and household chemicals have been certified as safe for humans on the basis of animal tests that are accurate on average slightly more than half the time.
Potential teratogens-drugs and chemicals that can cause birth defects during pregnancy-are tested on animals, including mice, rabbits, dogs, and monkeys. None of these animal tests can accurately predict how the substances will affect humans, said Dr. Bailey. “There are simply too many differences in physiology and biochemistry,” he noted.

Going to bat for vegans...sort of

From ABC Sport:

"Australian cricket legend Greg Chappell has begun his stint as India's national coach with a public plea against killing animals and eating meat, saying the secret of good health is to become a vegetarian.
Chappell, 56, teamed up with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for an Indian ad campaign that promotes veganism - a diet free of meat, eggs and dairy products.
The advertisement shows a fighting-fit Chappell holding a bat below the tagline: "Don't settle for less than a century. Go vegan"."

Update:
Chappell today clarified that he had not teamed up with PETA.
"PETA had issued a statement a few days back, saying Chappell recommended vegetarianism in his book titled 'Health and Fitness'.
The former Australia captain said PETA was wrong to use his name for their 'wider campaigns'."

What the cows foretell

I'm still not sure what to make of this one, but as a ritual involving sacred animals, it certainly beats animal sacrifice:

"Cambodia's royal cows have signalled bountiful harvests of rice, beans and corn this year in a traditional ceremony marking the start of the ploughing season...
The royal cows were led to seven dishes -- rice, corn, beans, sesame, grass, water and alcohol -- laid out on trays.
"The royal cows ate 90 percent of the rice offered to them, meaning the rice harvest this year will be good," chief astrologer Kang Ken declared before thousands of onlookers.

How veggie are we?

We got an anonymous comment on the blog today that's worth sharing:

"Btw: I would like to know, do you mind a helping hand (links/articles...etc) from a non-veggie himself? I know I sound like a full-time hypocrite, but I do care for torture of animals, and whenever I find a hungry dog staring at me outside a bakery or a shop, I do feed em sometimes....
Just want to know the editorial stand of this blog. Is this a strictly black-n-white blog ? or any help/pointers you get from shades of grey is welcome ? You might want to write up a post on it, and keep it permanently in your sidebar, so as to allay such fears. Coz most often than not, such forums rapidly turn into a sharp Us-v/s-Them divide, and soon enough you'll see non-veggies - even if they are reading this blog - refraining from sharing their thoughts or input."

I know Uma will want to come in on this, but here's my two bits. First off, the editorial policy: this blog is open to anyone who cares about animals, regardless of where you are on the learning curve. It's not open to carnivores who want to lecture vegetarians on the necessity of eating meat, it's not open to vegetarians who want to lecture carnivores on how meat is murder. It is open to different points of view, however, so long as you keep it polite.
When I started it off a few months ago, I was deeply uncomfortable about whether I qualified to do this at all. I've been a practising and very happy carnivore for 30-odd years, and am becoming a slow convert to vegetarianism, with Uma and other friends offering me a helping hand on the way. (Uma, on the other hand, is a committed vegetarian, but she might want to tell you about her decisions herself.) The reason I decided to go ahead and do this was simple: no one else was doing this, and I believed that if you do care about animals, your progress down the path to enlightenment has to begin somewhere. This is one of the places where it begins for me; if I'm still eating meat a year down the line, go ahead and call me a hypocrite.
Two things: one is the fact that if you do care about animals and think they should have rights, sooner or later you might end up not wanting to eat them. In my case, I'm a fairly reluctant herbivore. I love vegetables, but no, my stomach does not automatically turn at the sight of a plate of butter chicken. But everybody seems to have their personal moment of truth. For a friend of mine who gave up eating meat a few years back, it came because he used to follow chicken trucks--the ones with crates of chickens stuffed into the back on their way to the market--on his way to work, and he decided that he didn't want to be part of the slaughterhouse cycle any more. For me, it's realising that there was something schizophrenic about being willing to eat goats and chickens whom I don't know but absolutely unwilling to eat cats and dogs whom I see as friends. I'm still an occasional carnivore, but it's getting harder to eat guilt-laden meals!
And two, I don't think that the animal rights movement should be about lecturing people; making them aware of the connections between the actions they take in their lives and how it affects other species, yes, but it makes me feel terrible that anyone who wants to make a start on working with animals or working for animal rights should feel that they're not pure enough to qualify.
On this blog, you have the benefit of two perspectives. I'm the unenlightened beginner working my way up the learning curve; Uma, on the other hand, has gone through her own process of learning already. There's a sometime carnivore and a practising vegetarian here, and we'd both like to think that food choices are one part, but only a part, of the entire animal rights movement. So: no attacks on Maneka Gandhi or PETA, please, no sniping at vegans, and welcome.

We never met an animal we didn't like

I loved Disney's Fab Four take on vultures, but outside The Jungle Book, vultures have had to grapple with a serious image problem. It's always easier to drum up support for saving cute, furry animals or the king of the jungle over scavenger birds. But wildlife conservationists in India have been worried for a while over the disappearance of vultures; this Independent story explains why.

"Indian ornithologists announced they would be carrying out a census of vultures across the subcontinent. They will be assessing the damage done by the astonishing collapse of India's vulture populations over the past 10 years, in which it is estimated that tens of millions - that's right, tens of millions - of the birds have died...
The great Indian vulture crash was a complete mystery at first; enormous though it was, there was no discernible cause - just as there is still no discernible cause for the disappearance of the house sparrow from the streets of London. It was thought that a mysterious virus was probably responsible.
Last year, however, the mystery was dramatically solved: the culprit was found to be not a virus at all, but a veterinary product, a painkilling drug given to cattle, diclofenac. Scientists found that the drug, which was harmless to humans and to cattle themselves, was highly toxic to vultures of the genus Gyps.

Dalai Lama to the rescue

The conservation movement gets a shot in the arm from...His Holiness.
From The Bangkok Post:

The WTI and the UK-based Care for the Wild International recently launched a groundbreaking ``Tibetan Conservation Awareness Campaign'' to make Tibetan expats in India realise the importance of protecting endangered species of animals and to wean them off participation in the illegal trade in animal parts. The campaign has received the full support of the Dalai Lama.
"Tibetans are basically Buddhists in the Mahayana tradition and we preach love and compassion towards all other living beings on Earth. So, it is our responsibility to realise the importance of wildlife conservation," the Tibetan spiritual leader said at the campaign launch in New Delhi.
In Tibet, some people use fox tails to decorate their head gear and this forms a part of their tradition. We must realise that because of our own follies a large number of our animals are getting killed or destroyed and we must stop this. The message of mahakaruna has clearly asked us to follow and preach love and compassion for all living beings."