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Dear Editor:
I personally don’t condone violence of any kind, whether it’s toward animals or humans. And as for “rights,” it seems to me that other creatures have as much “right” to live as we do. The perceived sanctity of our lives is simply something that we have accorded ourselves, anthropocentrically. As long as we believe that our lives are more important than animals’ or other creatures’, we will continue to make myopic, morally compromised, and disastrously ignorant ecological choices, such as hysterically overusing antibiotics to the point of creating multiply resistant superbugs, treating dogs and monkeys in heinous ways that we would never want to be treated ourselves, and filling in salt marshes that help protect our coastal cities from hurricanes. But it seems to me that using violent or threatening tactics in order to prevent violence is misguided and, in the long run, perpetuates the cycle instead of ending it. Such individuals believe that the end justifies the means; but I believe that, when we believe this, we have fallen in step with whomever we think we’re opposing.
The good vs. evil mentality in our culture makes someone like Gandhi’s tactics seem laughably idealistic and quaint, but in my opinion, his way was a truly revolutionary approach—nonviolent, simply noncompliant, very effective. If we don’t think it’s right for these medical research companies to conduct tests on animals, we should not use their products. If enough people do that, it will make a real, economic difference. Of course, if we choose not to use their products, perhaps we will be putting our lives at risk. We have to decide: If it’s important enough to risk someone else’s life, is it important enough to risk mine? It is something that we can each, individually, do, something that involves using our own free will, rather than trying to impose our will on another person or creature.
Not only that, it’s important to remember that other effective methods of healing that don’t involve such measures—that have instead, been tested on willing human subjects for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years—are readily available. I successfully treated my life-threatening asthma with Traditional Chinese Medicine until I managed to clear it up completely with a new technique derived from acupuncture. Essential oils are very effective at treating infectious diseases Healthy diet, exercise, clean air and water, strong social ties, dealing constructively with stress—I’ve heard family practitioners say that addressing these issues would clear up 75% of the cases they see. The pharmaceutical industry itself admits that adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in this country. We believe so passionately that we need these drugs—and some people with certain illnesses do, I’m not disputing that—but I think that we’ve lost sight of what life is all about in our desire to conquer death.
Life involves death. It is a biologic fact. All living creatures die at some point, and all living creatures must kill and eat something, even if it’s as small as a bacterium, to survive. I am not a vegetarian, since I feel that most plants don’t want to be eaten any more than animals do (with the exception of some fruits, who use their enticement to be eaten as a way of distributing their seeds) and I don’t want to demonize predators. I even believe that bacteria have as much “right” to live as I do; but I will take antibiotics to survive a bacterial infection. The question isn’t whether we are ever justified in taking a life—since we must, to live—but how we view taking the lives that we do. If we do it with reverence and an awareness that our very survival literally depends on the collective and individual well-being of all other creatures on the planet, I believe that humans might just make it. But if we think, instead, that our welfare somehow justifies morally reprehensible behavior, that we have more “right” to live than other creatures do, and that the ends justifies the means, whatever the ends are, then we might find ourselves as an evolutionary dead-end on the phylogenetic scrap heap.
