Fw: Doggett part 2

[Guest guest]

Headline: Straits Times, 16 February 2001, Interview with Marjorie Doggett

 

Animal research has often delayed medical advances

 

Q: What is your view on the use of animals in medical research for the

benefit of mankind?

 

A: Just a load of lies. There is a mass of information to show how

misleading research has been when scientists use animals and relate it to

humans. I think scientists are working in the dark ages. They would rather

cut up an animal than work with computers, human organs and placentas. I

can think of very, very few cases which have benefited mankind. In most

cases, animal research has held back medical progress. It would be years

before they would use insulin to treat diabetes because they had found

insulin had no effect on the dogs they had been testing it on.

 

Q: Why do you say you are not a conservationist but an animal welfare activist?

 

A: I am in it because of the cruelty. Conservationists will say this animal

should be saved because it is endangered. But laboratories breed thousands

of white mice and nobody complains because there are masses of them. What

is the difference? Whether it is the macaque monkeys that you have

thousands of, or a chimpanzee that is going to die out tomorrow, the pain

and suffering is the same.

 

Q: What is the main cause of environmental degeneration?

 

A: Overpopulation. I hope the world-population people are doing something.

A hundred years ago, you did not need to talk about conservation because

the forests were there and people thought they would go on for ever.

Singapore became a concrete jungle because of the rapid increase in

population. We are a limited island with little space to spread out, so

everything just vanished. Once the forests are gone, the animals go as well.

 

Q: Does the rate of environmental degradation in Asia worry you?

 

A: Oh, it does, tremendously, but I don't see any solution. It is being

done by people to get rich while they are alive. Government officials

become rich by giving foreign logging companies the concession to free-fell

the forests. They don't care that their forests are going and burning to

the ground.

 

Q: Does this mean the future of animal welfare in Asia is bleak?

 

A: In some ways yes. You have rich countries like Taiwan which have such an

appalling record. On the other hand, you have countries like Indonesia,

where there are people who do not even have enough food to feed their

children. So how do you say to them: 'There is a starving dog outside, why

don't you go and feed it' ? There are societies for wildlife protection in

Indonesia, but I do not know of a local SPCA. But I think things are

improving slowly.

 

Q: What about Singapore's animal-protection record?

 

A: I would say Singapore, besides India, is the leader in Asia, in terms of

animal welfare. We have laws when some Asian countries do not. It is true

that Singapore took over the laws left by the British and some need to be

updated. Even so, concerned people are needed to carry them out and the

Agri-food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) has them. AVA's job

is very difficult. It is torn between people like myself and people who

consider cats and dogs as vermin. So you have got people who ask for traps

and people like us who want to set them free. So AVA started a cat-feeding

scheme which sees volunteers feed strays in a hygienic way and have them

sterilised, after realising that shooting them has no effect on the

population. I do not think any other Asian country would go to the trouble

of doing this. The Government will listen if you have any issues and you

want to get things done. Enforcement is difficult but it tries.

 

Q: Some people have accused the SPCA of being more concerned with putting

strays down then saving them. Is that fair?

 

A: Who abandons them? The public is to blame. The SPCA would be delighted

if it never had to destroy another animal, but these people throw the

animals on the streets or leave them with the SPCA when they get a bit

troublesome. People then accuse SPCA of destroying them. But what is SPCA

to do with the hundreds of dogs it gets each year? The problem of strays is

not unique to Singapore. It is a situation that arises because people do

not care.