specific group<\/em> of animal rights folks who are sickening monsters for what they’re doing.<\/p>\n The background: There’s a neurobiologist named Dario Ringach. Professor
\nRingach used to<\/em> do research using primates. Back in 2006, when he did
\nthat, animal rights targeted him, and his children<\/em>. The did things
\nlike vandalize his house, put on masks and bang on his childrens windows, and
\nprotest at his children’s schools. Professor Ringach disappointingly but
\nunderstandably gave in, and abandoned his research in order to protect his
\nfamily.<\/p>\n Fast forward a couple of years. Last week, Dr. Ringach, along with Janet and
\nseveral other people, participated in a public dialogue<\/em> about animal
\nresearch at UCLA. Dr. Ringach spoke about why animal research is important. That’s
\nall<\/em> that he did: present an explanation of why animal research is
\nimportant.<\/p>\n For that, for being willing to participate in a discussion, for saying
\nsomething the animals right people didn’t like<\/em>, the animal rights thugs
\nhave decided to protest. That’s bad enough: to stage disruptions against a
\nprofessor simply because he said something that you didn’t like. No, that’s
\nnot enough for these rat bastard assholes. They’re going to stage protests at
\nhis children’s school<\/em>. They’re going to harass his children<\/em>
\nto punish him for speaking when they want him to shut up.<\/p>\n I don’t care what you think of animal rights. I don’t care what you think
\nabout any topic. Harassment isn’t an acceptable response to speech<\/em>.
\nAnd no matter what, children should be off limits. Even if their father were
\neverything that the AR people claim that he is: if he really were a person who
\ntortured and murdered people for fun, going after his children<\/em> would be
\na disgusting, disgraceful, evil<\/em> thing to do. To do it just because
\nhe dared to talk<\/em> about something they don’t like? These people deserve
\nto be publicly condemned, and criminally prosecuted. Threats and harassment
\nhave no place in public discourse. <\/p>\n Personally, I’m a strong supporter of animal research. Of course it’s
\nimportant to minimize any pain and suffering that is inflicted on the animals
\nused in research – but people who do the research, and the organizations that
\noversee them, are extremely careful about ensuring that. And animal research
\nshouldn’t be done for trivial purposes: the work must be important enough to
\njustify subjecting living creatures to it. But the results are worth the cost.
\nI can say for certain that I<\/em> wouldn’t be alive today without the
\nresults of animal research: I had life-saving surgery using a technique that
\nwas developed using animals. I rely on medications that were originally
\ndeveloped using animal models. My mother is alive today because of animal
\nresearch: she’s diabetic, and relies on both insulin and medications which
\nwere developed using animal research. My father survived cancer for 15 years
\nbecause of animal research: his cancer was treated using a radiation therapy
\ntechnique that was generated using animal research. My sister isn’t a cripple
\ntoday, because of animal research. She had severe scoliosis which would have
\ncrippled her, but which was corrected using a surgical technique developed
\nusing animals. My wife would be terribly ill without animal research: she’s
\ngot an autoimmune disorder that damages the thyroid; people with it need to
\ntake thyroid hormone replacements, developed – all together now – using animal
\nresearch. I could easily go on: there’s probably barely a person alive today
\nwho hasn’t benefited dramatically from animal research. It’s an essential
\ntool of science.<\/p>\n While I’m ranting: one of the common responses from the animal rights
\npeople is that we don’t need animals for experimentation: we can use computer
\nsimulation, which will (supposedly) be more accurate, because we can use human
\nbiology in the simulation, whereas animals used as models are often
\nsignificantly different from humans, so that the results of tests on animals
\ndon’t translate well to humans.<\/p>\n
Everyone must, by now, have heard of the programmers mantra: GIGO: garbage
\nin, garbage out. A simulation is only as good as the knowledge of the person
\nwho wrote it. You can only simulate what you understand<\/em>. The problem
\nwith computer models for medical tests is that most of the time, we don’t
\nknow<\/em> how things work. The research is being done on animals precisely
\nbecause we don’t know enough about it to simulate it. For one simple example,
\nconsider cancer. There’s a lot of animal research done where we basically
\ndeliberately give cancer to an animal. We can’t simulate that, because the way
\nthat cancers grow and spread is still a mystery. We don’t understand exactly
\nwhat triggers a cancer; we don’t completely understand the biological
\nprocesses going on in cancer cells, or exactly what the difference between a
\ncancer cell and a normal cell is<\/em>. We can’t simulate that. Or, rather,
\nwe can, but only as an experiment with a real-world counterpart to verify it.<\/p>\n In any case, getting back to the original point: it really doesn’t matter
\nwhether you agree with animal research or not. The important point here is
\nthat using intimidation, threats, and harassment the way these AR groups are
\ndoing is absolutely, unequivocably wrong<\/em>. And to extend it from the
\nscientist to his children<\/em> is beyond wrong. It’s downright evil. And
\nto harass both the scientist and his children not for doing<\/em> the
\nresearch that they object to, but for talking about<\/em> why that research
\nis important? I simply do not have the words to express how repugnant it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This post is off-topic for this blog, but there are some things that I just can’t keep quiet about. Via my friend and fellow ScienceBlogger Janet over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, I’ve heard about some absolutely disgraceful antics by an animal rights group. To be clear, in what follows, I’m not saying that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chatter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-dE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}