(no subject)

[aprilstarchild]

In response to an earlier discussion, information on animal testing for drugs, and their alternatives:

http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=125
http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=87

And a longer list of articles:
http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_experimentation.asp

I may have issues with how Peta runs some of their campaigns, but they're a good source of information.

Comments

[trillium-flower.livejournal.com]

PETA is just as slanted and biased as any other PAC. Here's (http://www.ampef.org/) an opposing view if you are interested.

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

I really, really, don't want to get into a discussion either way about Peta.

[trillium-flower.livejournal.com]

My comment was not about peta in particular it was about PAC's. I'm going to suggest to you that when you are having a discussion and you want to use a particular point you cannot then say, ignore the source and expect people to still respect the position presented.

Since you feel passionately about the issue then you need to find a source which you can support as much as the message.

[jameslentz.livejournal.com]

I'm not terribly interested in getting into a discussion about PETA, either, but I think you're blind if you think a vegan needs to go to some industry website to see an "opposing view."

[trillium-flower.livejournal.com]

My point was that lobby organizations are biased. I gave an example of a similar type organization. Your dismissal of their propaganda only further proves my point.

[jameslentz.livejournal.com]

And my point was that "lobby organizations" that lobby for the status quo aren't going to present anything new. Vegans, as I hope you've realized, don't have to search far for someone willing to attack them for their views.

And your "point" was rather needless. I think we all recognize that activist groups (and individuals, for that matter) have a bias, whether they're working to reduce suffering (as PETA claims) or to "protect your investment in research" (as the site you linked admits). It's rather insulting to suggest otherwise, though it does provide a convenient distraction from the actual subject of April's links.

I think April overestimated some in her audience. She presumed that her readers would be able and willing to evaluate the information presented without allowing personal bias against the source to interfere with that evaluation; the articles even provide citations so you can follow up on anything that strikes you. However, instead of thoughtful replies, she's gotten knee-jerk "PETA sucks!" reactions instead. Sure, she made a mistake in not finding an article from a less contentious source, but she made that mistake because she expected better of you.

[trillium-flower.livejournal.com]

I am choosing to step away from this discussion. April knows that I respect her position in regards to agribusiness and food. April also knows that I respect her intellect and ability to make reasoned decisions. She also knows that throwing some links to PETA will not persuade anyone (perhaps she was tired and preoccupied with her concert) and my response to her was one which she has gotten before.

When April takes the easy way out, her friends (rightly so) encourage her to think more, and be clearer. We listen and respond to her positions with far greater love and understanding than you might imagine. And by the way, we engage in the same type of dialog with each other.

April has an amazing mind, and an insatiable appetite for information. Many of us encourage her to discipline herself to use those gifts in a way which might make a difference.

[aeonflux1973.livejournal.com]

I didn't say they sucked. I said they are freaks.

I think that the religious right is a bunch of freaks too.

[aeonflux1973.livejournal.com]

I wonder if vegan's swallow?

[jameslentz.livejournal.com]

I don't think the distinction is significant.

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

The articles even provide citations so you can follow up on anything that strikes you.

Which is why I used those sources. If they were just stating things with no evidence, I wouldn't use them as a resource.

[axiom.livejournal.com]

When you think about it, nobody cares if your meds kill dogs, or work on rats. They care about how the meds interact with humans. When medical science advances to the stage where we get better information from testing methods that do not involve animals, then people will laugh at anyone who suggests that testing on animals is still a good idea and it will become obsolete. While PETA may say we are already there, the medical community obviously doesn't agree.

Until we get to that point, I don't see any purpose in holding the execution of standard testing practice against people like Katie. They work with what they have.

(On an unrelated note, PETA is a great example of how a political cause can work to ensure they will hurt their cause more than help it, and all the while make tons of money from people who sympathize with their propaganda. Lame.)

[jameslentz.livejournal.com]

I don't see any purpose in holding the execution of standard testing practice against people like Katie. They work with what they have.

If something is "standard", but also morally reprehensible, that doesn't suddenly make it okay. Standard practices often remain standard long after they're the best option; from what I've read, the medical industry is particularly prone to orthodoxy simply because the moneyed interests are so powerful. In any case, there will be little impetus to change if everyone, from Katie to the fellow going in for a regular checkup, accepts the status quo.

I don't know if the practical benefits of animal testing outweigh its practical drawbacks. Frankly, I don't care if they do. As April said, it's wrong to cause another pain for your own profit, even if you believe you'll learn things that will help others in the future. That kind of decision is for the potential "subject" to make; if they're not able to make that kind of judgment (because they're a rat, a beagle, or a mentally impaired person), you don't take that as a free pass. If you do, it doesn't matter to me how "nice" you are otherwise; you are doing something evil.

This isn't (or shouldn't be) a case of "the vegans" versus "the meat-eaters." When someone makes the decision to become vegan, they aren't forced to toe some party line or adopt some set-in-stone rulebook. We don't suddenly stop being human, either. All of us, vegan and meat-eater, are making choices and trying our best in an imperfect world.

Most of the time I don't let my horror at the general acceptance of animal abuse sink in; those who do don't stay vegan long, since it's much easier to ignore that horror when you go with the flow, when you see meat as meat and not muscle tissue. If veganism is hard, that's why: we're surrounded by reminders that the society we live in doesn't share some of our basic values, and the pressure to repress what we know comes even from family and friends. It makes me very sad to think anyone would justify participation in animal abuse, at OHSU or elsewhere. I don't know Katie; I don't have anything personal against her. But I wouldn't eat lunch with her, either.

April considered how she would feel, and she decided it would make her uncomfortable, too. I find it sad that some of her friends have failed to respect her judgment (and, in one case, practically attacked her for it) and dismissed her sadness simply because they don't share her beliefs. I'm very proud of her for treating her emotions as valid despite the hostility of those who should support her. I'm proud of her for standing up for herself.

[axiom.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to think of a way to convey my central thoughts on a particular point since receiving your comment. Since I don't know you very well, I've had to go over your statements a few time to try and read them without bias from previous discussions with individuals who held close to the same views. I am explaining this so you will understand that my response is not something you should take personally. This is not about you.

That said... :)

Being Vegan is not the same type of decision as say, which socks to put on in the morning. It involves the understanding of, and decisions, regarding your individual place in this world, and your relationship to other living things. As such, it is a decision that is strongly motivated by your religious beliefs. That is not to say you have a Church of Vegan telling you what to think. I am saying that either acceptance or rejection of the various views you have heard from various religions on your place in this world with respect to animals is implicitly part of your decision to be Vegan.

There is little difference between the premise behind why someone decides to be Vegan, and why someone decides it is immoral to have an abortion. It might help you to see what I mean if you re-read your original post, replacing the animal-testing points, with anti-abortion points.

"If something is "standard", but also morally reprehensible, that doesn't suddenly make it okay."

This brings me to the core point of my post. That statement carries an implicit assertion that something can "be morally reprehensible" in an objective sense. No, it can't. Many people can believe that something is wrong, but that common belief is still nothing more than a collection of subject opinions.

It's all about tolerance.

I expect my friends to tolerate, and treat with respect, any woman who has decided that an abortion is the best thing for her. I expect them to do this without regard for their own religious views on the morality of abortion.

I expect my family to tolerate, and treat with respect, any gay members of my extended family. I expect them to do this without regard for their own religious views on the morality of homosexuality.

I expect my friends to tolerate, and treat with respect, any scientist working with animal testing. I expect them to do so with out regard for their own religious views on the morality of animal testing.

April screwed up. She is fortunate enough to have good friends who don't let her sit in her Happy Place when she does so. I personally think very highly of April, and to be honest, expect better from her.

I would be disappointed, and saddened if a member of my religious family were to say no to an invitation to lunch, purely because a gay friend of mine would also be there. I am likewise very disappointed that a close friend of mine is willing to treat another close friend of mine with the same level of intolerance.

Standing up for yourself is significantly easier, and more self serving, than being tolerant of someone who is associated with something that you hold as morally reprehensible. Making your way through an imperfect world is more than retreating to your cave and huddling together with people who hold the same views as you.

(I am not saying that standing up for yourself is inherently wrong. I am saying that it is a flimsy justification on its own.)

Now, if you have noticed - my posts to April have not been lecturing her on being tolerant. I know better. Instead I have tried (as I have been trying for years now) to point her toward a possible path in her life where she could spend her energy, excitement, and motivation and at the same time be making real progress toward the social changes she cares so much about.

(And at this moment, I will end the post because I just realized that I am exactly like my Mother. She never says what she is really thinking until pressed either. Oh well, there you have it - my real thoughts.)

I feel like we're talking about April while she's in the room

[jameslentz.livejournal.com]

I don't know you well either, but what I do know I like quite a bit. I appreciate your contributions to this conversation :)

To build on your analogy: if a pro-life person worked as a medical assistant at a hospital that provided abortions in a different wing, and the pro-lifer knew and respected one of the doctors who conducted the procedure, I would consider it perfectly reasonable for that pro-life person to decline an invitation to eat lunch at the hospital with that doctor. (I say that as someone much more likely to be the abortion doctor than the pro-lifer, by the way.)

If a friend of mine were that pro-life person, I wouldn't suggest she was being intolerant with that refusal; I'd assume she'd merely evaluated her own needs and recognized what she was capable of. If she refused to associate with that doctor in any context, however, I would share your disappointment in her lack of tolerance.

April hasn't "screwed up"; She's respected her own right to make judgments about her emotional needs and established an appropriate social boundary. I think April's willingness to expand on her position despite the hostility is further proof that she's far from "retreating to [her] cave and huddling together with people who hold the same views." Most of the responses to April have assumed that she thinks Katie is a bad person because of what she does at work; I've seen nothing from April to suggest that.

As I said, I don't know you well, so I hope you don't take this personally. But I think part of the reason this subject has prompted such a strong reaction from April's non-vegan friends (and spawned the assumption that April thinks Katie is a bad person, despite her statement to the contrary) is that they've unfairly taken April's discomfort about eating lunch with Katie not only as a judgment against Katie but as a judgment against them -- not just for supporting medical experimentation on living creatures but for the whole vegan shebang. I think the resulting defensiveness is informing a lot of the discussion.

And I appreciate your honesty; I know it takes hard thought and effort to speak respectfully and accurately about issues like these.

Re: I feel like we're talking about April while she's in the room

[axiom.livejournal.com]

I had to split my post into two chunks because it went over the stupidly-low word limit.

---

In the same way that being Vegan is one of your personal causes, being tolerant of others has always been one of mine. Given that, I freely admit that my idea of tolerance is possibly stretched a bit farther than most other people's, even in liberal and progressive circles. Since this has come down to what qualifies as tolerant, or not, I think I should expand a bit on my views regarding tolerance.

In my opinion, tolerance is not an issue when everything you do is within your comfort envelope and as such, does not in any way threaten your emotional state. Tolerance is an issue when you are dealing with people and situations that are outside of your comfort zone, and possibly a threat to your emotional state because of religious preferences, or variations in experience.

Simply put, when someone faces interaction with another individual who makes them uncomfortable purely because of religious views, then putting the conflict caused by those views aside and interacting with that person in an attempt to get to know the rest of them is an act of tolerance. That was why I focused first on the impossibility of separating being Vegan from religious influence. In retrospect, I should have focused on the belief in animal rights instead of being Vegan, as it would have actually applied to the discussion. (wee) But that said, replacing being Vegan with believing in animal rights in my earlier post still lets the intent of the post hold.

The hope that comes from promoting tolerance is that once someone looks past their emotional discomfort and gets to know the person, that their connection with that person will become more important to them than giving attention and energy to the conflict caused by different religious views. Tolerance takes effort and work on the part of the person being tolerant.

In my life, and from my point of view I hold (subjectively, obviously) that tolerance is more important than individual views in most of the current social issues being debated across the globe, at this point in time. I often try and nudge my friends and family a little closer to that view, with the personal understanding that the difference in opinion (with respect to tolerance itself) does not imply that any one person is more right than another. In my original response to April, I was trying to nudge her toward thinking more about how she could work toward the things she wanted, instead of just be upset with people who have different views on animal testing.

Your point regarding context is a good one. It also helps shed some light on where someone could assign boundaries in a situation like this. In your extension to my analogy, you stated that it would be OK to decline an invitation for lunch at the hospital, but refusal to interact in any other context (I am reading that use of the word context to mean "environment" or "setting") would imply a lack of tolerance. This statement implies that the setting of the hospital is the key to the appropriateness of the decision. If this is the case, then working at the hospital should also cause discomfort and April should look somewhere else for work. My view on that particular point is that April should eat lunch with Katie, and get to know Katie, and her friends, and managers of their labs. April could do significant good and make progress toward research without animal testing were she to get involved in the research process and work to both understand and marginalize the forces intent on maintaining the status quo. But that's me, obviously.

(continued)

Re: I feel like we're talking about April while she's in the room

[jameslentz.livejournal.com]

...then working at the hospital should also cause discomfort and April should look somewhere else for work.

In our hypothetical situation, why is "stepping outside her comfort zone" to work at the hospital considered an inappropriate choice, while "stepping outside her comfort zone" to eat lunch with someone who experiments on animals considered a "tolerant" choice?

Re: I feel like we're talking about April while she's in the room

[axiom.livejournal.com]

I know that April likes Katie. That's why this whole thing surprised me so much. If Katie were to hear that April refused to have lunch with her because Katie works in animal testing, then I imagine that Katie would respond the same way anyone else would. She would feel like someone had judged her personally based on their views regarding animal testing, and the details of her work. She would rightly feel that this was a judgment of her as a person.

Now, a significant number of people who sometimes go out with Katie and April both present will know that April disapproves enough of Katies line of work, that she would refuse one-on-one interaction with Katie over a personal lunch that was in no way involving what Katie does for a living.

Sadly, this is one type of situation where an action that fits my view of intolerance ends up sending the wrong message, and the right message, both at the same time.

---

Now, this needs to be put to rest. I respect April, and I respect her right to decide what tolerance means to her. I also know that when she gets home from singing, she is going to read all of this, and feel a little odd that we have been analyzing a single sentence that she posted in her own journal. My original intent in responding to her posts on animal testing and Katie was not to lecture her on tolerance. My comments have been aimed specifically at the way I want things to be, not the way I demand my friends behave. April is perfectly free to decide she is being tolerant and has no reason to feel guilty or regretful about her decision. Or, she could consider herself sufficiently spanked, and change her mind.

I would also not mind if anyone reading this took a moment to consider that tolerance is not something only the religious right has a problem with.

I wanted to reply to this separately

[jameslentz.livejournal.com]

Being Vegan...involves the understanding of, and decisions, regarding your individual place in this world, and your relationship to other living things. As such, it is a decision that is strongly motivated by your religious beliefs. That is not to say you have a Church of Vegan telling you what to think. I am saying that either acceptance or rejection of the various views you have heard from various religions on your place in this world with respect to animals is implicitly part of your decision to be Vegan.

I really enjoy conversations about spirituality and religion, quite possibly because I was raised an atheist (and remain one). I'm curious if you recognize that "acceptance or rejection of the various views you have heard from various religions on your place in this world with respect to animals" is implicitly part of your decision to remain a meat-eater as much (or more, since I was raised with more secular values than most) as my decision to become vegan. In any case, I'm not really sure what bearing that has on our original topic of conversation. It's an interesting subject anyway, though :)

However, I strongly disagree that "There is little difference between the premise behind why someone decides to be Vegan, and why someone decides it is immoral to have an abortion." While that may be true for some vegans, it's not a rule. One of the more secular values that informs my veganism, in fact, forms the root of my pro-choice stance as well: the right of individuals to maintain control over their own bodies. Of course, pro-life people sometimes use that same notion as support for the right of an unborn child to be carried to term. And then there's a big one that veganism and pro-lifers share: the belief that it's important to apply your ethics to how you live.

What premise do you see behind veganism?

Re: I wanted to reply to this separately

[axiom.livejournal.com]

I will get back to this, but I really need to do something else with my Saturday aside from code and post on LJ first.

:)

Even better, the code has been for an LJ related program, so I have been working on LJ stuff *all damn day*.

Re: I wanted to reply to this separately

[axiom.livejournal.com]

It surprises me how far conversations can wander, without straying too far from one or two basic connections to the original topic.

I'm curious if you recognize that "acceptance or rejection of the various views you have heard from various religions on your place in this world with respect to animals" is implicitly part of your decision to remain a meat-eater as much (or more, since I was raised with more secular values than most) as my decision to become vegan.

Of course.

Since I have known a fair number of people who have exposed me to many views on the morality of eating meat, I have been forced to make many decisions; both on the validity of those views, and the extent to which I wish to adopt them as my own. Granted, those decisions are sometimes conscious, and sometimes automatic.

Depending on your particular interpretation of the practice of atheism, a discussion on the impossibility, or possibility of being both atheist and vegan would be interesting.

One of the more secular values that informs my veganism, in fact, forms the root of my pro-choice stance as well: the right of individuals to maintain control over their own bodies.

Before I jump too deep here, I need to know if you consider your secular view of the right of individuals to maintain control over their own bodies as an issue of morality, or economics. (Or something else, but if so - please explain.)

What premise do you see behind veganism?

I am working toward this with the above question.

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

Instead I have tried (as I have been trying for years now) to point her toward a possible path in her life where she could spend her energy, excitement, and motivation and at the same time be making real progress toward the social changes she cares so much about.

I wish you would trust me to do this on my own. You seem to have your mind made up as to what I should do with the rest of my life, and it's starting to bug me.

I am not snubbing Katie. I've been friendly with her when we're out as a group, and I like being around her. But I'd be uncomfortable meeting up with her for lunch at OHSU (which, I'd like to remind you, is at this point a complete hypothetical situation anyway--I haven't even finished the application process!), because I don't want to think about what she does for a living.

I think it's possible to define some things as wrong. To use an extreme example, the Holocaust was wrong. That is "morally reprehensible in an objective sense."

Causing pain to living things is hardly the same thing as disliking people because they're gay.

[axiom.livejournal.com]

I wish you would trust me to do this on my own. You seem to have your mind made up as to what I should do with the rest of my life, and it's starting to bug me.

I have no idea what you should do with the rest of your life. I just keep seeing things that you could do, were you so inclined. If you want me to stop pointing those out, I will. It has been pointed out to me that you have developed an oversensitivity to some aspect of this. Maybe it's just me.

[sarcasm]

It must be rough to have so many friends who believe you are capable of amazing things.

[end sarcasm]

I think it's possible to define some things as wrong. To use an extreme example, the Holocaust was wrong. That is "morally reprehensible in an objective sense."

Nope.

http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=267410

Someone once told me that the Holocaust never happened, and if it did, then the Jews deserved it.

The point is you don't define something to fit your opinion, when others don't agree, then call it objective. It's subjective. When it comes to the question of animal testing, it is even more of a stretch for a minority of people to define an opinion as objective.

It is important to remember that an opinion being subject does not imply it is incorrect.

Causing pain to living things is hardly the same thing as disliking people because they're gay.

When compared detail by detail, of course.

But when you look at the justifications for each view, you often end up debating religious (or the lack of) justifications for some "moral standard" that one side is trying to impose on the other. That was the justification for the assertion.

[aeonflux1973.livejournal.com]

PETA are a bunch of freaks.

Nothing personal April.

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

Like I said to Trill, I really don't want to get into a discussion about Peta one way or another. However, they are often a good source of well-documented information.