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Sunday, October 18, 2009

New Comers

It's a sad irony that the few vivisectors with the cojones to speak out in defense of hurting animals are so poorly informed about the history of the animal rights movement, and particularly the movement's past twenty or so years. They seem to have no knowledge of the years of failed effort by activists to engage with them in public discussion about the way animals are treated.

These newcomers seem to think that people like Dr. Jerry Vlasak have come to a snap conclusion that violence will likely be necessary to curtail the massive unrelenting enslavement and torture of animals. Vlasak is a trauma surgeon who actually saves people's lives as opposed to, for instance, vivisectors who make wild claims about pie-in-the-sky possibilities that driving monkeys insane might one day lead to some understanding of the chemical mechanisms of some currently used drug.

These newcomers have no knowledge, apparently, of the literally hundreds, maybe thousands of polite invitations to talk about and debate the issue publicly that have been left unanswered, dismissed curtly, or that have been ridiculed by their peers and predecessors. They seem not to know that people like Vlasak, very long-time activists, have come to their conclusions by way of years of refusal by vivisectors (and other monsters) to talk openly in public with their critics, of the industry's legendary secrecy, of case after case of hideous abuse and essentially no punishment.

The current state of affairs is the natural consequence of a long history of arrogance; a history of hiding in the ivory towers and hoping that the mob outside the door would just go away. They haven't, and they won't.

The newcomers don't seem to understand who made the bed they are lying in today.

A pretty good article that demonstrates this increasingly hopeless morass can be read here:

Researchers to animal-rights activists: We're not afraid. CNN October 9, 2009.

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