Hi Dr. Isis,

Firstly, as an animal rights advocate, I could not agree more with your disgust for PETA. Their tactics are an embarrassment to the animal rights movement, and it is unfortunate that they garner so much attention. Their methods are sexist and self-righteous, and they will use almost any means to get their message across. Their exploitation of women is utterly inexcusable. Your analysis is spot on.

However, please do not cast aside animal rights based on their shamefully-conducted media campaigns. The entire animal rights movement is not extremist; sadly though, those who shout the loudest get the most attention.

Regarding the use of animals for medical research, you refer to the fact that children do not respond to all medicine and treatment the same as adults. However, the gap between child and human subject is far smaller than the cross-species gap between child and test animal. No amount of animal testing will be able to claim a treatment or medicine is 100% safe for human use — that element of risk will always be there when first trying them out on humans. Naturally, we want to reduce that as much as possible, but abusing highly sensitive, sentient beings doesn’t seem to me to be ethically responsible (I’m sure we differ on that point, that’s fine), let alone effective.

At the very least, I just wanted to clear up a few points, focused around the perception of the animal rights movement.

In agreement with your numbered points, firstly, the groups attacking scientists are not only terrible ambassadors for the animal rights movement, turning sensible people away from considering the ethical argument for animal rights, but obviously their harassment and violence towards research scientists is brutal, horrifying, and completely unjustifiable. No respectable human, vegan or not, would harm another human being, period. Nor would they exploit women (or anyone) for their own political agenda.

Secondly, please don’t whitewash the entire animal rights movement with those extremist segments — I completely agree that they are impossible to talk to. Those who refuse to engage in rational debate and choose militancy or other obscene tactics are utter fools.

All the best,

AFW