AR-News: Selection of Times letters on 'Violence and Vivisection" (UK)

[Karen Dawn]

The Times (London)
April 29, 2004, Thursday

 Violence and vivisection


IN RESPONSE to your article on so-called "animal rights fanatics" (April
23), I think that I represent the great majority of animal rights supporters
in decrying violence. The case for animal rights rests on human rights. When
we violate one, we violate the other.

Vivisection labs cause animals pain, misery and death, and should be
actively opposed -but not by violence and intimidation, which entrench the
opposition and stigmatise a social movement that deserves support.

Jonathan Balcombe, York
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Bullied but unbowed

THE police and courts have not been idle over this issue. People have gone
to prison for very petty offences which, in any other circumstances, would
have been ignored. Activists have been put in hospital by security guards at
peaceful demonstrations.

I myself sustained a fractured femur, lost a litre of blood and suffered
permanent scarring and a limp after an unprovoked attack by a police
officer. This might be considered a little over the top if, for example, I
had been a drug dealer or someone who battered old ladies. As a midwife
involved in non-violent direct action, the consensus -certainly where
politicians and the media are concerned - has been to turn a blind eye.

Lynn Sawyer, lynn at sawyer8749.freeserve.co.uk
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Expose the extremists

MY PARTNER works for a healthcare company which has recently been targeted
by an extremist animal rights group. The actions have included demonstrating
at the company's head offices and defacing property owned by the managing
director and chairman. We have now received advice that these protesters may
target our home, which is unacceptable behaviour for any cause.

We do not have children, but a close friend, also in the company, does and
is very concerned about the effect an attack on his home will have on his
family.

I would like to see the names and addresses published of any animal rights
protester convicted of criminal damage to someone else's property. What
gives them a right to anonymity that is not extended to their victims?

What exactly do these people think they are going to achieve? They may
succeed in stopping animal testing in the UK and Europe, but this will only
result in the testing being moved to other countries.

Name and address supplied.
----------------

Fuelled by cruelty

YOUR question is the moral equivalent of an apartheid hardliner in 1975
asking what should be "done" about the ANC, or of a reactionary in 1913
asking what should be "done" about the suffragettes.

The campaigns of the conventional animal welfare organisations are generally
ignored by the media or belittled by commentators. The vast majority of
extremists are sincere and compassionate people appalled by the unspeakable
things that happen in vivisection laboratories, and frustrated into
unacceptable actions by the fact that no one seems to care -least of all the
present Government.

Of course, vivisection is a difficult and complex issue. But it is not
thoroughly or openly debated, and laboratories never allow objective
observers to see what happens behind their locked doors. As a result,
ordinary people know little about the true nature of animal experiments.

It cannot be right that more than three million animals should die every
year in British laboratories, often after prolonged and excruciating pain
and often for totally trivial purposes.

If stringent laws were introduced to control the vast, powerful and
underregulated vivisection industry, then the extremists would be denied the
oxygen that gives them life.

Antony Crookston, Waterlooville, Hampshire
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Unequal rights

WE CAN argue about the rights and wrongs of animal experimentation as much
as we like, but to give those who engage in these activities special status
denied to the average citizen who does not, surely amounts to little more
than supporting animal cruelty. The most important point, which is hardly
ever mentioned, is that the value of experimenting on animals for things
that will be consumed by people is questionable at best. Biologically,
animals are vastly different from human beings. If these experiments are as
important as vivisectionists claim, could not a more effective scientific
case be made for testing such products on those who most closely resemble
the beneficiaries? This is no more extreme that the special protection being
proposed.

Timothy Jones, Lewes, East Sussex
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Humane protest

ACTIONS such as harassment, false allegations, sabotage and threatening
behaviour are wholly wrong. There is a line to be drawn between legitimate
protest, encompassing the rights of individuals to have their say, and that
of extreme protest where one seeks to intimidate and discredit the work of
others such as Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Powers need to be in place to curb the violence against individuals who
carry out work that others consider immoral, unethical and murderous -but
how can simple protest through correspondence, petition and abstention be
enough? I would prefer a society without animal experimentation or animal
exploitation. But I know this will not be achieved by intimidation and
violence. Nor will it be achieved by apathy.

Brendan Quinn, Cannock, Staffordshire