Animal Rights vs Human Rights
PETA and Peter Singer regard abuses of humans as a lower priority than
abuses of animals. (Star Parker, "PETA: Sicker Than Vick," Miami Herald,
August 24, 2007) This standard is institutionalized in state and US
laws. Animal Protection Act of 1966 has fines and jail time for violations of
animal research laws. There are no penalties for violations of the laws on
humans used for research (Title 45 CFR Section 46). Office of Human Research
Protection refers complaints about unlawful research using humans to the accused
institution for processing.
After 7 humans died in medical experiments at Harvard teaching hospitals in
Boston there were no criminal proceedings, unlike in the Vick case abusing dogs.
Roy Bercaw, Editor, ENOUGH ROOM
Posted on Fri, Aug. 24, 2007
STAR PARKER: Who is sicker, Vick or PETA?
MiamiHerald.com
The Michael Vick dogfighting scandal is morphing into a broader NFL dogfighting
scandal, as other NFL players also appear to be involved in this very weird
pastime.
But as animal-rights groups get more aggressive in their accusations and
demands, the whole scene is getting stranger and stranger. And the closer you
look, the more you see the deep conflicts in core values that fracture our
society.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) wants the NFL to "add cruelty
to animals - in all its forms - to its personal conduct policy." What, for PETA,
is "cruelty to animals - in all its forms"? According to its Web site, we should
not eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment or abuse animals in any way.
So PETA's problem is well beyond the sick and cruel murdering of these creatures
of which Vick and others are allegedly guilty. Dogfighting for entertainment, or
any other use of animals for entertainment, is itself, for PETA, cruelty.
If it's relevant to look for any kind of logic here, why would it be decent
entertainment to watch hulks of men ram the daylights out of each other as they
move a ball across a field, but cruel to watch dogs fight? Why would the NFL
sign on to such a thing?
More specifically, among PETA's prohibitions, is the use of animal skins. The
ball, as in football, is an inflated leather object endearingly called the
"pigskin."
Why does PETA oppose existing NFL conduct policy, and not football itself?
J.C. Watts, Chuck Colson and others have asked why abuse of dogs is outrageous
to so many who see no similar outrage in the 800,000-plus abortions that occur
in the United States each year. At the most intuitive level, there is something
unsettling about an attitude for which abuse of a dog is intolerable, but women
destroying their unborn children with impunity is not a problem.
[...]
PETA provides material on its Web site to explain the rationale of the
"animal-rights" concept that drives its worldview. "When it comes to pain, love,
joy, loneliness, and fear, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy," says PETA founder
Ingrid Newkirk.
For more extensive exposition, the site refers to the writings of Princeton
philosopher Peter Singer, author of "Animal Liberation."
Now Singer has written on a great deal more than animal rights. He's the author
of "Practical Ethics," in which he offers his justifications for euthanasia,
abortion and infanticide.
According to Singer, parents should be permitted to kill a baby born with a
tragic illness or defect. In "Practical Ethics," he argues that "... the fact
that a being is a human being, in the sense of a member of the species Homo
sapiens, is not relevant to the wrongness of killing it; it is, rather,
characteristics like rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness that make a
difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot
be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious
beings."
Thus, through a long and twisted road of logic, beginning with one man's own
premises about existence, we are led to a conclusion that killing animals is an
outrage, but an infant, not.
[...]
* Star Parker is president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education
(www.urbancure.org) and author of three books. She can be reached at
parker@urbancure.org.
