I've accepted an invitation to participate at a conference in Oxford next summer on the ethics of using animals for scientific research. According to my friend, who is a member of the organization who puts it on, it's a dog and pony show for militant vegans. The scientist in me wants to hear their side, and try to educate about what I do and why. The asshole side of me is really looking forward to trolling some college students.Still I'm happy to see that PETA is at least re-directing their attention away from promoting the assault of scientists...
#PETA# [celebrity] dilettantes annoy the living snot out of those of us who actually know everything. If they had a truly intelligent strategic platform, they'd be screaming bloody murder about the quality of public education -- which is where civilized ethics ought to be taught, and taught properly at that. Raise a generation or two of critical thinkers who have intelligent and civilized ethical principles drilled into their heads in school and problems like Detroit would never occur in the first place[*]. PETA is mostly about band-aid solutions and copious amounts of media exposure. Poorly educated college students are easy meat for celebrity propaganda; trolling them should be almost too easy but you might get laid anyhow if you play your cards right. [*] non-trivial political objective. I think we'll have to get rid of organized religion first.
I wish you luck. A part of me feels like it's a futile task to convince some people of the value of animal research. The same vegan friend as above tried to convince me that animal research was unnecessary because we can just do the experiments on cells in a petri dish...