September 9, 2007Hi
again.
Welcome to Part 2 of the Weekly E-mail.
I apologize to anyone if I left out something you sent for inclusion.
We missed an event in Part
1: There will be a Trivia Night to benefit the
MO Alliance for Animal Legislation (MAAL) and Stray
Rescue on Saturday, September 22, at 7:00 pm
(doors open at 6:00 pm). It will be held at the
American Legion Post 162, on South Broadway, in Lemay. The cost is $20
per person, $160 for a table of eight. You can make reservations by
calling 314-432-6090.
A) Continued Neglect
at St. Louis Zoo
B) Whoopi Goldberg
Defends Michael Vick
C) SLU Med
School Ends Live Animal
Use!
D) Drug-Induced
Diseases
A)
Continued Neglect at St. Louis Zoo
The St. Louis Zoo continues to neglect
its inmates even as it continues to draw huge crowds. People just do
not want to believe "their" zoo could be so bad. It's better than a
lot of zoos out there, they insist. Sure, but "better" is a
relative term, and when you know what is going on away from the public
eye, you realize it can be a downright meaningless term.
We told you about the
citations against the zoo
for the deaths of the two Polar bears.
Clara, the elephant,
was in obvious distress for a very long time before her death. Zoo
officials do their best to drive
peaceful demonstrators away from public property. Zoo
guards harass anyone they believe is photographing animals for
evidentiary purposes. Pearl, Raja's mother and Clara's best friend, is
suffering from a prolapsed uterus, and
pictures of her show an obviously unhappy animal, who
deserves sanctuary. The Zoo Director himself is playing childish games
with START's right to see copies of veterinary reports. Our request for
these public records was met with an enormously
inflated estimate for copying charges. These charges are beyond what
the law allows, but fighting them will require even more time, money,
and effort. Is this really how a tax-funded institution and
professional administrator should operate?
B) Whoopi
Goldberg Defends Michael Vick
On "The View" last week, Whoopi Goldberg
made some surprisingly supportive excuses for Michael Vick's behavior.
(You can read what she said in the
Google AR-News.) Her comments indicated her belief that
Vick is a product of his environment, a victim of his upbringing and
culture. That may work when attempting to understand sociological influences on
crime, but it cannot stand as a way of escaping responsibility for gross
cruelty. Certainly, we can point to nature versus nurture arguments
from Psych 101, and almost everyone would agree that one's environment
does play a role. Yet, at some point in our adult lives we all make
decisions that define who we have become, and if we get caught making
the wrong ones, we can't expect to back-pedal our way to innocence by
blaming our old neighborhood.
No matter where you grow up, no matter who
your relatives are, no matter who you associate with, intentionally
inflicting pain on an animal or another human being is wrong. It's not
kinda sorta possibly wrong; it's wrong. Add to that the additional
strikes that this torture was done on a regular basis, done in a
clandestine manner, done in the pursuit of profit, done with the
assumption that one's fame would dispense with any punishment, and then
-- when all else failed -- blamed on others, and you not only have a
very serious crime, you also have a very unstable and cowardly
individual.
Please, contact Whoopi Goldberg and ask her
to rethink her support for Vick. Excusing him doesn't benefit those who
have worked hard to escape terrible situations and made the right
decisions in their lives.
C) SLU
Med School Ends
Live Animal Use!
The Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine (PCRM) announced
this week that St. Louis University Medical School has joined the 90%
of American medical schools NOT using live animal labs for
instruction. A letter from the Dean stated, "As of August 15, 2007,
animals are no longer used for teaching purposes in the M.D.
curriculum of our School of Medicine." Thanks to everyone who wrote
or leafleted, asking for the practice to stop.
D) Drug-Induced Diseases
The advocacy group Public Citizen
recently wrote an article about illnesses caused by drugs prescribed
for other conditions. These are adverse effects not predicted by
multi-species animal tests. They detail some of the effects in
their newsletter
Worst Pills, Best Pills. Often these illnesses go
unreported because the patient is unaware of the connection between
the prescribed medication and his or her symptoms. (If you are
unable to open the link,
let me
know and I can send you the article.
It may be a members only page.)
E) Points of Interest