For someone claiming to be a law abiding and peaceful activist, Camille Marino is back to her double standards again.
This time she is suing the University of Florida due to their unwillingness to disclose information which she claims she will use SOLELY for demonstrative purposes.
Except Camille Marino has threatened students in the past. Specifically from the University of Florida and the information requested does carry names of people involved. She has even threatened to assault the disabled should they fail to do as she says rather than do as she does (she utilised medical care developed through animal research to save her own life.)
And she still continues to to host threats against biologists on her site. Look it’s simple, I feel for a lot of things, but death threats will be condemned. Any and all. They show an utter lack of perspective and are a sign of severe privilege that someone can think a mouse has the same value as a human even while being part of a system that harvests food on a scale that requires the death of rodents in order to ensure our grain can feed the population rather than the mice and rats that can plague us.
Her current target of ire is Donal O’Leary who is the Director of Cardiovascular Research at Wayne State University, and her site hosts this lovely little tirade. (It is rather NSFW being a death threat and all but I trust my readers are sensible!)
For starters I do call Camille names but I don’t wish her death even if she is a horrid human being whose sense of perspective is clouded by her extremism resulting in a frankly criminal level of human ignorance. She has a right to live the same as every human on earth, but this little tirade is frankly disturbing.
It’s not by her (it’s linked to someone writing under the name of Freddie Kruger and Jason Voorhees.) but she has specifically given the threat it’s own thread in order to showcase a good post in the same way that a good point made on a proper blog may get it’s own blog post to showcase and highlight the points made in an archive format.
 |
| Hey Freddie! What are we going to do tonight? The same thing we do every night! We try and post death threats on the internet! |
It’s a frankly disturbing read, it’s either written by some kid who thought he was being smart (death threats are threats irrespective of source and the internet is less anonymous than one thinks and are valid anywhere in the world as a legitimate reason for investigation.) or worse by someone who genuinely can think of doing these things to someone. I mean, at some point I will have to insert needles into people and cut people open (I wish to go into surgery) but the very thought of doing it to a living human makes me nervous because I cannot simply say that “I would cut you open and wear your skin like a puppet” without actually imagining it and I would be rather uncomfortable doing it.
This is not the Badass Boast of a hero as Camille thinks. This is the psychotic threat of someone who is genuinely scary and who genuinely may be a threat to Dr. O’Leary.
Maybe I haven’t seen that many Animal Liberation death threats, maybe this is a normal one for their ill breed which may be why so little is done about it. Maybe it’s all talk and no trousers, but frankly? I don’t see why we should wait till someone is hurt or killed before stamping down on this sort of thing.
It is not a threat against a single individual. It is a threat against all the people who work in medicine and biology and any field that involves animal research. It threatens not just him but his family as well.
This isn’t a movement of love, it’s a movement of fear. They are no different from terrorists of every sort. From the IRA who claimed to have a love of their country but instead killed people for belief in a different variant of their god to the muslim extremists who we are so familiar with.
What can we do? Well for starters we need to start protecting students from these people, they are the most vulnerable as they are poor and easy to physically get hold of and harass. We need people to see the genuine benefits of animal research rather than hiding them away. In short we need a new movement in the USA to campaign outright for animal experimentation in the same way that PETA does.
You cannot ignore them, the more you ignore the greater the support they drum up. You cannot hide because the more you hide they more you are portrayed as Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Moreau. The fear of medicine and the fear of the unknown science is an old one and the only way to fight it is to prove that science isn’t scary and to make it accessible to all. You have to meet them on the battlefield of public opinion and crush them. It was done in the UK and it can and must be done again.
This isn’t just about students, this is about teachers, this is about doctors and most importantly this is about the environment and patients. The biggest environmentalists are the very people the animal liberation movement attack (Banner Waving and harassment won’t save Tigers. Captive breeding can.). The biggest source of medical research for a new generation are the people we abandon today to be harassed by these luddites.
Are we so cowardly and incapable as scientists to start campaigning against them and for research rights? For me it took the work of Laura Cowell to start fighting, I hope her story encourages those who read to realise what our patients go through and what animal research represents for medical progress.
To borrow Laura Cowell’s joke, I rattle too.