Now that the campaign to save the deer in Shawnee Mission Park has run its course, activists with Bite Club of KC are turning their outrage on the University of Kansas Medical Center.
Last month, PETA called attention to KU Med's track record with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates animal research. Between August 2008 and June 2009, the agency cited KU Med for more than 160 violations of federal animal protections laws. PETA blasted the institution for subjecting monkeys to painful surgeries and allowing them to suffer "extreme weight loss, vomiting, diarrhea, and neurological disorders that caused them to tremble constantly and lose control of their hands."
Activists from Bite Club of KC already had KU Med in their crosshairs. In October, they held a sidewalk protest outside the institution during National Primate Liberation Week. With the revelation about the USDA violations, they're protesting again. But this time, they want to get inside, too.
The October protest set off an e-mail dialogue between animal rights activists and a KUMC official. On November 3, Ricky Setticase, a Gardner resident and Bite Club activist, fired off a letter to Marcia Nielsen, KU Med's vice chancellor for public affairs. He described research at KU Med as the "enslavement of sentient monkeys" and "torture porn."
Nielsen wasn't amused with Setticase's metaphors and took issue with the protestors' allegations. "They promoted false, misleading and inflammatory statements," Nielsen wrote back to Setticase. "They impugned the integrity of our researchers, who we know to be trained professionals committed to finding cures and discovering medical treatments that relieve suffering."
Setticase wasn't satisfied. He wants proof. "Can Bite Club, on behalf of the animals, witness this valuable research in action?" he asked Nielsen. "Will KU Medical open its doors to dispell [sic] the so called myths promoted by animal activists?
"We received your request for access to the University of Kansas Medical Center animal facilities," Nielsen responded curtly. "We are unable to fulfill your request since Kansas statute and KUMC policy prohibits unauthorized personnel from entering animal facilities."
A month later, Jason Miller, founder of Bite Club of KC, got after Nielsen. He asked for access to the labs and was denied. He railed against the "empathy-deficient, malevolent researchers" and promised further protests. "I wanted to remind you that while Bite Club and our members engage in aggressive activism, we act in above-ground and legal ways," he wrote to Nielsen earlier this week. "However, some of those in the animal rights movement, whom we don't know nor know how to contact, aren't so patient or nonviolent. While I have no knowledge of their identities, whereabouts, plans, or activities, I would be quite surprised if the militant direct activists of our movement didn't have KU Med on their radar screen."
Miller and Bite Club will take their "above-ground" protest to KU Med tomorrow, demonstrating at the corner of 39th Street and State Line Road at 2 p.m. Nielsen told me yesterday that KU Med respects the activists' right to rally: "But we remain committed to developing cures and treatments for disease and are greatly appreciative of the role animal research plays in that process."
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It ends with the death of us all, the death of mother earth, the death of this lowly conscious state where none recognize that the Mind scattered itself to perceive itself, and is in the process of remembering itself. Torturing ourselves is a fun pastime in the final days of human kind.
We are fighting the same anachronistic cruelty at the University of Wisconsin Primate Torture Center. I seriously think that humans who perform such atrocities for their paychecks and the $46 million it brings to the UW coffers from the archaic bureaucracy National Institute of Health - that these adult humans should be psychologically tested for sadism. How anyone could treat another living being in these blatantly cruel ways is beyond me.
For REALIST, if you want to save plant life - it takes 17 times the plant life, to filter it through an animal for your consumption. The Worldwatch Institute further states that slaughterhouse animal production contributes 51 % of all GLOBAL WARMING - much more than ALL transportation. Gandhi and Schweitzer stood for reverence for all life half a century ago and we have DEVOLVED to destroying 30-50% of the species on our planet - killing our oceans, and still killing and trapping for RECREATION - hounding, captive hounding, children killing baby bears, adults torturing primates (among the most endangered mammals on earth) - WHERE DOES IT END?
hahahahahaha!!! Realist, was that an attempt at humor because you totally rock the comedy ass! Kudos, Conan has some competition! I bet you're a real party at the local greenhouses, lol.
Ah, the well-presented and always-cogent plant argument. It's so unique, too, I think all you anti-AR peeps all sleep with The Boring Book for the potential osmosis effect. Um, maybe you missed the public in school and failed to go, but when you present that plants are somehow closer to humans than animals and try to establish some vegan contradiction that they are eaten and should be treated with compassion, too, you seriously need to talk with your doctor. Who thinks that plants have an inherent right to life yet not animals? You feel some compelling closeness to greenery that you honestly believe they should be considered with more compassion than animals? Hey, Realist, get a dictionary and look up the meaning of your name with associated synonyms: irrational, idiotic, ludicrous, moronic, and dipshit are all alternative descriptions.
Your ludicrous and egocentric speciesism is pathetically embarrassing and incomprehensibly unethical. I'll tell you what: when you learn to spell foreign, I'll actually treat you other than the murderous suck you are. And here's a thought: why don't you run out in the jungle sometime and see how easily your scientific definition protects you... You're not even worth my bandwidth; my finger has more intellect and worth than six billion of you. Please extend my condolences to all who live with or near you.
To you animal rights people: Plant life is also being "murdered" (gasp) at the expense of humans. Does it not have the same value of life and "choice" that a dog or cat has? Animal rights activists should stop eating because you(we) are murdering the innocent "plant life." (blantant intentionally nonsensical sarcasm)
Compassion is a virture that has is generally misplaced on animals, as opposed to humans. (Yes, I do know the actual scientific definition of animal.)
When dogs/cats/mice/gerbals can speak in a "foriegn language" then I will treat them as something other than animals.
Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.
~George Bernard Shaw
Jason Dill, thank you for such a logical and well-versed comment; congratulations for sharing your true age, I find it applaudable that mommy and daddy let Jason Jr. play on the computer. Unfortunately for you, though, I've seen better arguments in Dick and Jane books, but even those are perhaps too advanced for you, so get a dictionary and let's do this, shall we?
The idea that anti-vivisectionists are misanthropists is pathetically flawed, your attempt to promote animal experimentation while fostering hatred against those who oppose it. I learned that tactic in sixth grade, but I've since grown up. Your use of emotional constructs exploiting children to garner support for your belief is disgusting. It's really no wonder you embrace vivisection considering you have no compassion or maturity either; it's so easy using compromise when it's not your life, isn't it?
Furthermore, did you know that greater than TWO MILLION adverse reactions occur ANNUALLY in the US due to unpredicted results of medications? And that only reflects the reported ones that are serious enough to require hospitalization and cause severe complications including fatalities: all from drugs deemed safe as the result of animal testing. Feel free to share with us, again, how reliable animal testing is - I bet those people will invite you over for tea and crumpets your position is so understandably unbiased and rational.
Oh, and if animal testing is so reliable and effective, why do you suppose human trials are legally required prior to an general approval and administration of a drug as mandated by the FDA? Yeah, the only way to effectively test a drug is to use subjects for which they are intended and who can extend permission.
Furthermore, perhaps you can answer a question for me: why is it that if I claim a mouse and human are similar and both deserving of life free from suffering, people such as yourself indignantly claim that, nowaynohow can you compare an animal to a human, yet you champion using them as human replacements for testing? They're alike enough some ways yet not in others? How convenient to describe them based on your egocentric mindset. I'll tell you what, junior, get a chemistry/biology/physiology/ethics degree and then come back and we can discuss this, child and doctor, okay???
Yes, show us proof that these animals are not being harmed. If they were not being abused in the KU MED labs they would let us in for sure. In other words KU does not want us to see what they are really doing. For starters, anyone can check with the National Institute of Health, they give these types of med labs the money to do their bloody research which is really the tax payers money and that's what it's all about folks, getting your tax dollars so these so called "Professionals", can have a free living on the suffering of innocent beings. So if Neilsen says he is interested in ending human suffering, but the animals are suffering. There are more kind ways to do reasearch for humans without animals. The National Institute of Health has to recieve the documents that have every detail of what the med labs are performing detail by detail. So if a med lab is cutting the animals skulls open or draining their blood ect... those details have to be in the document in order to get our tax dollars and they get millions to billions of tax dollars, no wonder the economy so lop sided. To learn more about lab cruelty go to www.saenonline.org or get the dvd movie to Earthlings. www.earthlings.com
"However, some of those in the animal rights movement, whom we don't know nor know how to contact, aren't so patient or nonviolent.
Why was this voiced at all? Animal extremist talk. They have been known to be violent and on terrorist lists in the US. This was an attempt at intimidation. Animal research has produced life saving drugs and techniques. They would rather there be no treatment for a four year old human suffering a terrible disease, than animal research. These nuts bomb, burn and intimidate to get their point across. I worry more about them next door than an animal research building.
Where's the proof? Show us the proof the tortured animals have helped. KU Med and animal torturers making a living on the suffering and misery of innocent primates and call it finding cures and discovering medical treatments that relieve suffering.
Where's the proof?
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