ERIC SCHEIE HAS SOME THOUGHTS in response to the animal-rights terrorism item I posted earlier:

I think that the tactic of threatening children (which I’ve posted about infra), while nothing new to animal rights activists, works as a “twofer.” That’s because it simultaneously accomplishes both of the following:

1. It intimidates the intended audience (all animal researchers, and especially other researchers who might so much as think about doing animal research); and

2. It advances the nihilistic ideology that there is no moral distinction between humans and animals.

The latter fires up the troops, and frightens everyone else.

These observations are not new for me, and I’m sure others have made them too. But the reason I decided to write this post was that the other day I had the occasion to talk to a genetics researcher who works in the United States but who comes from another country, and closely follows what goes on in his field worldwide. He told me that the animal research work is constantly, relentlessly, being shifted to China. (You know… “Outsourcing.”)

In an amazing coincidence, the outsourcing of animal research to China is also a “twofer”:

1. In China, the concept of animal rights is a laugh (even more of a laugh than human rights, which is also a laugh). This means animal research facilities are not subject to policing or inspections as they are in the West.

2. Chinese researchers are meticulous and hard-working, and cost a fraction of their American counterparts.

So, as a result of the fascistic activist tactics, animal rights research is farmed out to a basically fascist country, where animals suffer more, and where the research can be conducted inexpensively without any real ethical limitations.

Sounds likely to me.

UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails:

Well, in its own way China also upholds the principle that there is no ethical difference between human and animals (sorry, make that “non-human animals”). Animals have no rights there, and neither do humans.

It’s all making sense, now.