Glowing Dogs and the Problems with Letting Others Speak for Us

An article at Reason insists that "activists yawn[ed]" with indifference this year when it was announced that a cloned beagle litter's genetic material had been messed around with to make parts of the puppies' bodies glow when under ultraviolet light. The writer's proof that animal activists didn't care? HSUS and PETA didn't publicly object. And unfortunately, like too much of the public, the writer seems to think that HSUS, PETA, and (arguably even more oddly) ASPCA represent all animal (rights) advocates--and, apparently, that folks like Peter Singer and Matthew Scully are the chief animal rights, or "beast-friendly," philosophers. Take a look at one section of the article before we continue:

After several false starts, Ruppy and her littermates grew to term and were successfully delivered. The glowing beagles have now reached spawning age.

The most striking thing about Ruppy is how little attention she attracted from animal rights activists. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals made no comment. Nor did the Humane Society, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or such beast-friendly philosophers as Peter Singer and Matthew Scully. What objections did come were infused with sarcastic Weltschmerz rather than outrage. “Now those women who insist on being impregnated even though their bodies clearly do not believe they should be…can potentially become pregnant more easily because of poor glowing puppies,” wrote the blogger VeganVerve.

You might attribute the blasé activist reaction to the built-in ethical dilemmas of Ruppy’s case. To argue that the scientists have mistreated these dogs you’d need to establish that the beasts would have been better off not existing in the first place.

Where to begin? Let's start with what and whom article author Cavanaugh associates with animal rights. A lot of animal advocates continue to be hesitant to publicly disagree with or distance themselves from the likes of HSUS, PETA, and Singer, even at times when there is good reason to, and the result is that the media and the mainstream continue to think that they speak authoritatively and even exclusively for the animal rights movement. And they don't. Groups such as HSUS and the ASPCA don't even lay claim to the terms "animal rights" or "animal liberation," nor should they because that's not what they promote, and PETA and Singer are anything but noncontroversial in the animal rights movement--in recent years, both have done and said their share of things counter to animal rights and/or counterproductive to the fight for animal rights.

And directly on the topic of what scientists have been doing with litters of puppies, is there indeed a problem here? Of course! As for why more animal rights advocates and organizations beyond those cited in the article didn't speak out at the time of the announcement, I can say only that there are countless daily news stories about animals being exploited and killed, for research, for food, and for dozens of other excuses. And commenting on every instance simply isn't possible (to be fair, this goes for the groups mentioned in the article too).

But yes, there's an ethical problem here. Aside from the moral issues with treating these specific dogs as an experiment, as objects, and messing around with their genes--inserting genes from other species, in this case sea anemone, into their systems--with no real knowledge of what problems and suffering that very well may cause them in time,¹ the whole point of this research is to set dogs up to be "models" of human disease, to create disease and suffering in them in order to study them. (I also have to wonder, what happened to the 20 different beagles they used as surrogate mothers for 344 embryos in their continued attempts to succeed with this experiment?) So no, we're not "yawning" at what's being done to these dogs.

Indeed, the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) did condemn the research (as well as similar research involving glowing cats), as did Dr. Ray Greek with the National Anti-Vivisection Society, which Reason's Tim Cavanaugh would have known if he'd done his own journalistic research.

Later in the article:

Animal cruelty legislation presumes that nonhuman creatures are more than inanimate property but less than creatures with full-fledged rights. How broadly should animal welfare law infringe human welfare? I’m not sure a dog’s right to life should take precedence even over the right of NFL fans to see a great athlete in his prime. And I’m positive it shouldn’t supersede an adult human’s right to liberty.

He's right, of course, that all our anti-cruelty and reform legislation still presents our fellow animals as less-than, but I'm bothered by the use of "presumes" in reference our fellow animals' being "more than inanimate property"--how about "acknowledges"?  But then there's this: "I’m not sure a dog’s right to life should take precedence even over the right of NFL fans to see a great athlete in his prime." And that's just mind-boggling. Right to life versus a "right" to watch an animal abuser play a sport? How does anyone write a line such as that in seriousness? Attitudes such as this are precisely why we have a society in which even the forms of animal abuse not tolerated and supported by most of society are still so rampant.

Indeed, although animal advocates need to start speaking up separately from (and yes, even out against, when necessary) the major animal welfare and rights groups, it wouldn't hurt if the media also stopped letting people with so little knowledge of and compassion for animals or familiarity with animal rights--or, for that matter, the implications of the research at issue in this case--be the ones to write on the topic.

But until more animal rights advocates (and organizations) start standing up and pointing out, loudly and consistently, what actual animal rights positions are, the media and the public are going to continue misrepresenting our positions, misrepresenting animals, and treating as our (and the animals') representatives groups and people who are not representative of what we believe, where we stand, what we're fighting for, and what animals deserve.

1. From the AAVS statement noted above:

The unintended and unexpected side effects of genetic engineering and cloning, and the corresponding concerns for animal welfare, have all been well-documented – in the scientific literature and by advocacy groups.  Animals with deformities, abnormalities, and pathologies, and a terribly high likelihood of death (some 97-99% of experiments fail) are all the norm.

Because of this, it typically takes hundreds to thousands of animals to create a “line” of transgenic animals who can be used in a research project, many of whom suffer pain and distress.  Adding cloning to the equation, equally inefficient and harmful, only worsens the situation.  Then, the whole process would need to be repeated for every different research project.  The sheer waste of animal life is staggering.

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Photos by researcher Byeong Chun Lee