Human Exceptionalism

Animal-rights and animal-liberation advocacy has, over the years, become a radical and subversive enterprise. To see this phenomenon at work, one need look no further than the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the movement’s leading advocacy group. PETA’s latest campaign blitz, the “Animal Liberation Project” (ALP), is a case in point, blending moral relativism with extremist rhetoric.

It comes on the heels of PETA’s pro-vegetarian “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign, which claimed that the worst crimes of the Shoah were morally equivalent to eating meat and wearing leather; that one set off a firestorm of criticism and condemnation from Jewish groups and the media. It took two years, but PETA leader Ingrid Newkirk finally issued a non-apology apology for the indefensible comparison.

But, of course, defend she did; PETA hadn’t changed its mind about the campaign’s essential message. Enter ALP, which again asserts a moral equivalency between using animals and some of history’s worst crimes. ALP’s overarching theme is: “We are all animals.” While this is biologically true, PETA isn’t merely stating a scientific fact. Rather, by the statement PETA means that humans and animals are moral equals. Hence, everything we do with and to animals should be judged morally as if the same things were being done to people.

The news about the dangers of abortion is getting out, despite suppression by scientists and other vested interests — in particular, the relationship of abortion and subsequent breast cancer in the youngest women, those under age 18. They should be informed about the abortion-breast cancer link, especially if they become pregnant unexpectedly. Read More ›

RALPH NADER once mused to me about what a terrible thing it was that Jack Kevorkian was (at the time) the world’s most famous doctor. He was right. That distinct honor should have belonged to Dame Cecily Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement who died last week at age 87 in London at St Christopher’s, the hospice she Read More ›

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is one of the world’s most successful and effective advocacy organizations. Dedicated to the “rights” of animals with a devotion so fierce it borders on fanaticism, PETA activists practice propaganda as an art form and are so skilled at in-your-face advocacy and agitation that executives of the world’s most powerful corporations cow when the PETA activists pound on their doors.

The constant flow of press releases, boycotts, movie-star endorsements, and never-ending (and often funny) street demonstrations–such as the recent “Running of the Nudes,” a naked protest against Pamplona, Spain’s famous running of the bulls–not only keeps PETA continually in the news, but also serves to mask the organization’s bizarre and rigid ideology. But now with the recent arrest of two of its employees for cruelty to animals in North Carolina, the true weirdness of the cult-like group may finally receive the attention it deserves.

For those who missed it, here’s the story: Adria J. Hinkle, 27, and Andrew B. Cook, 24, were arrested in Ahoskie, North Carolina, after a four-week law-enforcement investigation into the illegal dumping of about 100 dead dogs into area trash receptacles. The illegal dumping began around the time PETA arranged with local animal shelters to transport stray animals that would otherwise be killed in area pounds to their Norfolk, Virginia, headquarters, purportedly to find homes for the animals–or, for the ill and unadoptable, to submit them to euthanasia.

FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR Mario Cuomo is one slick fella. Like all effective propagandists, he’s smooth, articulate, eloquent—and he doesn’t let the facts get in his way. Take for example his most recent polemic in the debate over embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). In “Not on Faith Alone,” published in the June 20 New York Times (where else?), Cuomo takes Read More ›

Does Oregon have the constitutional right to force the United States government to permit state doctors to assist patient suicides with federally controlled substances (narcotics)? Or is the federal government entitled under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to prevent these federally regulated drugs from being prescribed for lethal use regardless of state law? The Supreme Court will tell us soon in Gonzales v. Oregon, a case that will not only influence the course of the euthanasia and assisted-suicide debate, but will also profoundly impact the delicate balance of power between “states rights” and the overarching sovereignty of the federal government.

So far, court decisions have favored Oregon. Most recently, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Oregon’s right to regulate medical practice within its borders prevents the federal government from punishing state doctors who prescribe federally controlled substances to end their terminally ill patients’ lives. Under this view, the federal government can punish doctors who prescribe lethal doses of controlled substances for use in assisted suicide in states where the act is illegal. But punishing Oregon doctors would violate the principle of federalism because assisted suicide has been explicitly made a proper medical practice under Oregon law.

London THE MOST IMPORTANT BIOETHICS LITIGATION in the world today involves a 45-year-old Englishman, Leslie Burke. He isn’t asking for very much. Burke has a progressive neurological disease that may one day deprive him of the ability to swallow. If that happens, Burke wants to receive food and water through a tube. Knowing that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) rations Read More ›

This article, published by National Review, contains an interview with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith:

As the House of Representatives Tuesday votes on possibly expanding federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research — legislation the president has promised to veto — there are some real concerns about how far we’ve already stepped into a “Brave New World.” With those concerns in mind, and a big-picture look at all the issues involved in this new world, Wesley J. Smith, a lawyer and consumer activist (friend and collaborator of Ralph Nader even!) recently produced A Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World. He addressed some of these issues Monday in an interview with NRO editor Kathryn Lopez. Bottom line: All is certainly not lost. However ….

National Review Online: With the news out of South Korea last week, are we all one step closer to designer babies?

Wesley J. Smith: Absolutely. Apparently the South Korean researcher Wu Suk Hwang has learned how to reliably create human cloned embryos. Human cloning is the essential step toward biotechnologists learning how to genetically engineer progeny, a new eugenics project that enjoys great support among futurists, bioethicists, and some within the science establishment. For example, James Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, is a big booster of creating designer babies who have been enhanced for intelligence, health, looks, etc. There is even a nascent social movement that has formed around creating a post human species known as transhumanism. Princeton biologist Lee Silver put it this way in his book Remaking Eden: Without cloning, genetic engineering is simply science fiction. But with cloning, genetic engineering moves into the realm of reality.

This article, published by National Review, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: “Here in California,” says Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, “we are sacrificing present medical needs as our emergency rooms and trauma centers are shutting down for lack of funds as we borrow hundreds of millions of dollars each year to pay corporate welfare to Read More ›

Ingrid Newkirk, the alpha wolf over at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has just issued a classic non-apology “apology” for PETA’s odious “Holocaust on Your Plate” Campaign, which explicitly compared eating meat to participating in the gassing of millions of Jews. The purported equation between the Holocaust and normal practices of animal husbandry wasn’t presented between Read More ›