The Animal Rights activists, the Environmentalists, The Global Warming Loons, so many of them are out of control. They are determined to get the rest of us to fall in line, and if we don't well they will show us.
I know it is not all of them, but enough are trying through intimidation to tow their line.
I agree Peacemaker, I just don't think it will happen.

There is always going to be a group protesting against something!

"Research from the Jules Stein Eye Institute has led to advances in gene therapies to treat inherited blindness-causing diseases, and it is credited with a breakthrough for curing visual loss in patients with the eye disease known as Stargardt’s."

Pure poppy-cock.

The American Macular Degeneration Foundation says:
"At present there is no cure for Stargardt’s disease and there is very little that can be done to slow its progression. Wearing sunglasses to protect the eyes from ultra-violet (UV) and bright light may be of some benefit."

But Joan, it is happening! That's why people like "peacemaker" go to so much effort to try and stifle the truth, but the truth will out eventually. Many scientists doubt the benefits of animal testing, but you rarely hear about it in the mainstream media. Here's just a few quotes from scientists, wise men, and our own FDA Secretary!

~Mike Leavitt, Health and Human Services Secretary, FDA
"Currently, nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies."

~Dr. Charles Mayo, Founder of the Mayo Clinic: "I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better, it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil."

~Albert Einstein: "Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

~Dr. Christian Barnard, pioneering heart surgeon. "I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures."

~Mark Twain: "I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race. The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."

~George Bernard Shaw: "Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research."

Philos, peacemaker hasn't made any attempt at stifling truth as far as I can tell. He/she even left a multitude of sources that you may check out regarding eco-terrorism.

Just because you shotgun off a few quotes doesn't mean facts can be denied. Since you are a strong believer of truth, here is some for you to digest:

According to Wikipedia, "treatments to each of the following animal diseases have been derived from experiments involving ethical vivisection:"

rabies
anthrax
glanders
tuberculosis
Texas cattle fever
hog cholera

rbogle & Philos, while we might debate the cures that Jules Stein Eye Institute is advancing, are you both telling me that you condone the violence these animal rights groups advocate and use?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1879624/posts
reports that:
Research at the Jules Stein Eye Institute has led to advances in gene therapies to treat inherited, blindness-causing diseases, and UCLA is credited with a breakthrough for curing visual loss in patients with the eye disease known as Stargardt’s.

There are clinical trails being conducted at this moment
regarding the Jules Stein Eye Institute's reported advances with Stargardt’s.

UCLA remains commited to the lawful use of laboratory animals and ethical vivisection in research for the benefit of society and UCLA complies with federal laws and is subject to federal inspections.

The term vivisection is not generally used by present-day scientists, and at least one professional scientific society claims that animal rights advocates attempt to use the word to recast the terms of the discourse on animal research to favor their position. Therefore, the word "vivisection" is used almost exclusively by opponents of animal research.

~Mike Leavitt, Health and Human Services Secretary, FDA - Quote is non-specific to the Jules Stein Eye Institute.

This is arguable, but not connected to this opinion.
~Albert Einstein: "Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

Dr. Christian Barnard was notorious for his animal experiments, he only gave them up at the end of his career. He did use drugs that pased trials on animals. Specifically ciclosporin with Norman E. Shumway, MD in their joint efforts to find an immunosuppressive drug and counter-act rejection of the newly transplanted organ.

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish dramatist, literary critic, and socialist, hardly an authority on atrocities in laboratories, or animal rights activism.

Mark Twain's quote is from May 26, 1899, and was given in acknowledgement of becoming an honorary member of the London Anti-Vivisection Society. Maybe find some more from this century.

Animal Activist -


Peacemaker
Many published sources are reporting this.
Here are two such sources.

www.nndb.com/people/181/000136770/+Jerry+Vlasak,+divorce&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0272244/bio

ZZxv:

Presenting only one side of a story is not presenting truth. And citing alleged medical advances, without also citing the many failures is not truthful.

Many of the alleged advances in medical science using animal testing were failures and ended up being harmful to humans. An FDA report considered all the drugs approved for human use over a ten-year span. Out of 198 drugs approved and marketed, after extensive animal testing, 102 - more than half - were either withdrawn or relabeled due to severe, unpredicted side effects.

And as I mentioned above, Health and Human Services Secretary Levitt agrees that "nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies." (Secretary Levitt's position has nothing to do with the JS eye-institute of which I am unfamiliar. Levitt's quote is relevant to the broader question of the efficacy of animal testing applied to humans.)

As Joy Williams asks in her article in Harper's Magazine:

"...what is all this "research" for? Artificially induced diseases in animals practically never result in a cure that can be applicable to humans...Still, researchers work hard at public relations... Misleading monkey experiments delayed an effective polio
vaccine for decades. (As for insight into the cancer problem, 46 percent of substances deemed carcinogenic in mice are found not to be carcinogenic in rats.) Successes in human kidney transplants, blood transfusions, and heart-bypass surgery all resulted only when doctors ignored the baleful results of experiments on dogs and used human material."

"Guinea pigs die when injected with penicillin. Thalidomide was found safe for rodents; so was Opren, an arthritis drug that caused fatal liver toxicity in a number of human patients before it was taken off the market.

"The tobacco industry was able to deny a link between cigarette
smoking and lung cancer for decades because many thousands of dogs, monkeys, rabbits, and rats, fitted with masks and placed in 'smoking chambers', immobilized in stereotaxic chairs with tubes blowing smoke down their windpipes, could not be encouraged to develop carcinomas." [Vioxx was tested expensively on monkeys and proven to be beneficial
to monkey hearts, but this mistake will probably end up costing Merck & Co. billions. The list of failures causing harm and death to humans is overwhelming]

But we almost never hear this side of the story. Nor do we ever see exactly what it is that the animal-rights advocates are complaining about, because the real issue is hidden from the public by the animal-user industries and their PR firms.

As Matthew Scully, former assistant and chief speechwriter for George W. Bush, wrote in Dominion:

"In its current form...the AWA [Animal Welfare Act] is a collection of hollow injunctions, broad loopholes, and light penalties when there are any at all..."

And in The American Conservative, May 2005, he said our cruelty statutes:

“address mostly random or wanton acts of cruelty. And the persistent animal-welfare questions of our day center on institutional cruelties on the vast and systematic mistreatment of animals that most of us never see.”

But there is a simpler argument that animal experimentation to gain insight into human health, disease and well-being is either morally or scientifically dubious: The animals must be a great deal like us for the results to be scientifically unproblematic, but very different from us in order to be morally unproblematic.

When we want scientifically useful results, the more like us the animals are, the better. When we want clear consciences over causing disease, suffering and death to innocent creatures, the more like us the animals are, the worse.

Perhaps people should grow up and quit trying to have it both ways.

Mankind has had many failures before finding success. Not only the medical institution alone has this issue.

This is the tug-a-war society is wrestling with.



But as to the violence on other humans because we disagree with their currently lawful testing?

Of course violence is wrong. But just because something like testing is lawful doesn't make it moral. In our recent past owning slaves was lawful. Now we know that owning slaves was immoral. In the past women were denied the vote. Now we know that was wrong. There are numerous other examples of lawful, yet immoral practices.

And yes, it is a tug-of-war society is wrestling with, but the ethical issues must be addressed. An important one is whether or not humans have a right to use other beings (whether it's slaves, women, other races, animals, or aliens) for our own benefit or whether other beings have a right to their own lives.

When animal advocates maintain that animals matter in their own right, that amounts to acknowledging the possibility that something could be beneficial to us, but still be morally dubious. There may be benefits we're not entitled to or that it would be wrong for us to seek out and pursue. If so, there may be hard questions about just what we must be prepared to give up.

But assuming that human benefit trumps everything else-- and that nothing should be changed unless equal human benefit results from the change-- would be a bit like insisting that the opponent of slavery must show how everything would be peachy-keen down on the plantation without slaves to keep on picking cotton.

If what's being done to the slaves is fundamentally wrong, then the slave-owners aren't entitled to the prosperity and life-style purchased with the slaves' labor. The same principle holds true for the animals and any other sentient being.