The Hypocrisy of PETA, Hollywood Knuckleheads

By Tracy Sayler
Prairie Grains Editor
tsayler@prairieagcomm.com

Say what you want about PETA (which stands for People Extremely and Thoroughly Asinine—or something like that), but you have to admire the knuckleheads for their ability to get equally knuckleheaded celebrities to squawk their knuckleheaded notions. 

Take Pamela Anderson, for instance, an overrated plastic bimbo whose 15 minutes of fame should have expired long ago. A mouthpiece for PETA, she recently made the news with a request to meet with the CEO of KFC, to discuss what she calls “reasonable, positive changes for KFC’s chickens.” (Anderson was called in since demands by Jesse Jackson and The KFC Chickens Union for paid overtime, vacation time-shares, and more millet in their chicken chow went unheeded).

In a letter to KFC, Pammy writes that “I must admit from the outset that I can’t understand why a company that claims to care about animal welfare would continue to allow chickens to be bred and drugged to be so top -heavy that they can barely walk.” I’m sure you have seen this Silicone Sally; Holy Hooties Batman, what a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Anderson requested a boycott of the fast-food chain, which is not surprising, since celebrity loudmouths (Barbara Streisand, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, George Clooney, Kim Basinger, various Baldwin brothers, etc) are forever calling for boycotts and bans of something or other. But yet if someone or some group urges the public to do the same with their movies or music, they whine about being unfairly “blacklisted” and having their free speech rights infringed upon.  How incredibly hypocritical.

The Foundation for Biomedical Research points out further celebrity hypocrisies. FBR is the leading voice of scientific reason and medical progress in the ongoing, sometimes violent misinformation (incited in part by PETA) that surrounds animal research.

The FBR points out that animal research has played a vital role in virtually every major medical advance of the last century – for both human and animal health. Indeed, a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded that animal research has helped increase our life expectancy by nearly 21 years.

It is crucial to distinguish between animal rights and animal welfare, the group says.  “The scientific community supports animal welfare, which means guaranteeing the health and well-being of these animals.”

The organization does a good job of explaining questions and refuting myths about animal research on its web site, www.fbresearch.org .  There’s also an excellent piece that FBR chairman Michael DeBakey wrote for the Wall Street Journal about the hypocrisy of celebrities who blabber about animal rights while at the same time, don ribbons for the cure of AIDS and various other life-threatening diseases and afflictions—in which animal research is needed.

Dr. DeBakey’s words: “The fact is that the devastation, delay and outright intimidation that animal rights groups are imposing on the scientific community are greater today than any time in the history of biomedical research. As a result, research to prevent, treat and cure many of mankind’s greatest killers and cripplers is being slowed, halted or prevented. Animal rights fanatics have vandalized laboratories, destroyed vital equipment and data, harassed scientists (even at their homes) and caused millions of dollars of destruction to taxpayer-funded research.”

“Money raised at (high-profile Hollywood parties in support of animal rights) is going toward crafting legislation, filing lawsuits against research institutions and lobbying state and federal legislators – all with the sole objective of halting the use of animals in biomedical research.”

“I remember vividly how animal research was absolutely essential to our victory over polio, our progress in treating diabetes, and what we learned to enable lifesaving organ transplants. Any damage inflicted today on absolutely vital medical research will hinder for decades efforts to find cures for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, AIDS and other life-threatening diseases. Does the research community work hard to limit its use of animals? Absolutely. In fact, the number of animals (the vast majority of which are rats and mice) has been more than halved since 1968. Nonanimal research methods such as computer modeling are used increasingly. But the use of animals remains indispensable in many key areas of biomedical research.”

It was DeBakey and other U.S. doctors who developed successful coronary bypass operation procedures used successfully to operate on former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.  “I recall how crucial animal research was in making it possible,” DeBakey wrote.  “It was challenging work, and the techniques were perfected over many years. It is not the kind of progress that lends itself to movie lot photo-ops. But it saves lives.”

One can draw the same parallels with biotechnology research; I do not  understand why some people would want to destroy the very means of proving or disproving its validity and worth.  But that’s a topic for another time.

Back to Pam Anderson: earlier this year she revealed that she contracted hepatitis C. There are actually five different hepatitis viruses, known as A, B, C, D and E. There are vaccines available for some types of hepatitis, but not C. Ironically, animal research is being used to help find a cure for hepatitis C.

Here’s one final irony for animal rights knuckleheads to chew on.  In 1796, English country doctor Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox, a disease of cattle that causes little harm to humans, were immune to smallpox – a frequently fatal disease for people back then. The discovery led to the development of vaccinations to prevent smallpox and other diseases in humans and animals, and many types of vaccines are widely used today. True to its origination, the word “vaccine” is derived from the Latin word vaccinus, meaning “of cows.”