The following guest post is from Eric Raemdonck, who has a background in the aviation transport industry. Eric recently launched the Advancing Animal Research blog, whose purpose is to " establish bridges between the aviation world, the life sciences, health care, pharmaceutical, animal research industries, educational institutions and their affiliate or representative associations as well as Governmental organisations". Facing a … Continue reading Safeguarding medical progress means supporting animal transport
Tag: animal rights
Animal rights activists protest Curiosity driven research
The last couple of days was nothing but jubilation at NASA/JPL after the landing of the rover Curiosity on Mars. President Obama congratulated scientists on the occasion by stating: The successful landing of Curiosity -- the most sophisticated roving laboratory ever to land on another planet -- marks an unprecedented feat of technology that will … Continue reading Animal rights activists protest Curiosity driven research
The Speaker’s Corner Trust Debate
The Speakers' Corner Trust -- a charity organization that promotes free expression, public debate and active citizenship -- recently organized a debate on the role of animals in research. Michelle Thew of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) debated Tom Holder of Speaking of Research. In her opening remarks Ms. Thew compared … Continue reading The Speaker’s Corner Trust Debate
Cat Helicopter Exposes Moral Confusion Among Animal Rights Activists
Animal rights theorists argue that our moral consideration for a living being must rest exclusively on its intrinsic properties -- the notion of moral individualism. I explained earlier that accepting such an idea would imply our use of human or animal remains for an art project in school would be equivalent to using play-dough or … Continue reading Cat Helicopter Exposes Moral Confusion Among Animal Rights Activists
Animal Research in the Public Eye
The claim often made by animal activists is that much about animal research is hidden from public view and that the animal research community makes little effort to share their work and their perspectives with the public. There are a number of facts that not only provide the basis for a strong argument against that … Continue reading Animal Research in the Public Eye
Animal Rights Hacktivists
A handful of activists (maybe less) have begun to use digital means to take direct actions against those who are involved in animal research. All the hacks below involved gaining control of the website and either defacing the front page, or taking down the entire website. This is likely the actions of one or two … Continue reading Animal Rights Hacktivists
The Golden Goose Awards
Politicians sometimes deride research based on the what they perceive as being "silly" titles of federal funded grants. If they spot a title that deals with "games", for example, they may assume it deals with some sort of amusement of little value to society, instead of a deep, powerful branch of mathematics that describes the behavior of … Continue reading The Golden Goose Awards
Objections to the Marginal Case Argument
Scientists are often challenged with the so-called marginal case argument. We are asked to spell out the criteria that make our experiments justifiable in animals but not in humans with comparable abilities and therefore comparable interests. These criteria, we are told, must be evaluated for each individual separately (so-called moral individualism). The resulting argument against … Continue reading Objections to the Marginal Case Argument
Speaking of Research 