Sunday, May 9, 2010

An illegitimate position


”They protest everything, including things like fishing, circuses and any other things that involve legitimate use of animals.”

Say what?!

The speaker represents Covance, described in the Times of Trenton earlier this week as “a biopharmaceutical firm in Carnegie Center in West Windsor that primarily performs safety and efficacy tests for new medicines.” Laurene Isip, the spokesperson, dismissed the PETA demonstration that took place outside the annual shareholder’s meeting in Plainsboro.

A PETA rep indicated that the organization had discovered that Covance continues to use “cruel and archaic animal tests” even though “superior, non-animal methods are readily available.” Covance, said Kathy Guillermo, PETA’s VP of laboratory investigations, thus forces “animals to live in perpetual fear, suffer in crude tests and die in pain.”

PETA had bought stock in Covance so it could participate in meetings like this one at the Princeton Marriott at Forrestal.

The biggest surprise in this whole story was Isip’s quote. She seems to think there’s such a thing as “legitimate use of animals” in the drug testing world. Her company was reported as using “ ‘purpose-bred’ animals, creatures bred specifically for lab work” – that is, bred only to suffer and very likely die in the process.

Equally horrific is her apparent unawareness of the animal abuse inherent in fishing and circuses, which she includes in her “legitimate use of animals.”

Isip’s attitude harks back to the notion of “man” (including women and scientists, of course) having dominion over all the world’s creatures – a belief long since discredited as illegitimate.
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