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Sunday, June 18, 2006

Going ape over hogwash

I'm still irritated by the San Francisco Chronicle's publication of that Discovery Institute fellow's article without warning its readers in any way that the author is associated with a group known as a Christian extremist group that promotes pseudoscience and gives evidence of being heavily influenced by radical clerics.

And I began to wonder how accurate a picture he was giving of the allegedly factual parts of his article. So I did a quick search of the archives of the Spanish newspapers El País and El Mundo.

I did find some references to the animal-rights group, the proposed Spanish legislation and the activist, Pedro Pozas (full name Pedro Pozas Terrados), that Wesley Smith references in the Chroncile article. It seems that a Spanish Green, Francisco Garrido, who votes in Parliament with the ruling Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), introduced animal-rights legislation that was due to be debated in Parliament this past April. It was aimed at protecting the members of the "great ape" family from various kinds of mistreatment, including laboratory experiments.

Smith's article says that Pozas "was boosting Spanish legislation that would grant human-type rights to apes"

But Pozas himself denied that the legislation he was promoting would extend "human rights" to the apes.

The government's official spokesperson also expressed herself on the question.

According an El Mundo report from April:

Por su parte, la ministra de Medio Ambiente, Cristina Narbona, ha desmentido que su partido vaya a solicitar al Congreso de los Diputados que se reconozcan los 'derechos humanos' de los grandes simios. Según Narbona, lo que el Ejecutivo apoya "es una proposición que pretende proteger el hábitat de los simios, evitar el maltrato de los animales y que éstos sean utilizados en circos y zoológicos", pero en ningún caso "dotarles de derechos humanos".

My translation:

For her part, the Minister of the Environment, Cristina Narbon, has denied that her party [the PSOE] was going to ask the Congress of Deputies to recognize "human rights" of the great apes. According to Narbona, what the Executive supports "is a proposition that attempts to protect the habitat of the apes, stop maltreatment of animals and that [would protect] those that are used in circuses and zoos", but in no case "to give them human rights".

I was unable to find in my brief search any report on the law having been voted on, or how controversial it may have been. What I take from Narbon's statement is that the PSOE is in favor of stronger protections for great apes, but her quoted statement didn't mention laboratory experiments. So I'm assuming the governing party (PSOE) isn't supporting that aspect of the proposed legislation.

Here is an article by Pazos himself from 2004: Expecismo entre animales: un llamamiento a la coherencia/Rompiendo la barrera de la especie de Pedro Pozas Terrados, REDcientifica.

Spanish-speakers or others who want to put this through a translation program can check out for themselves what he says in the article. I read him to say that there should be a more clear definition and a more expansive one about what rights species of animals have, especially the great apes who are closest biologically to humans. I don't agree with everthing he says.

I'm by no means convinced that banning all medical experimentation is a valid goal right now. But I am very aware that chimpanzees in particular show definite signs of what we would call "culture" among humans, including transmission of cultural traditions. So I am very sympathetic to their concern for the great apes.

Polemics are polemics, so the fact that Smith characterizes Pozas' proposal the way he does isn't necessarily bad in itself. But did anyone at the Chronicle bother to check out whether their contributor was presenting a reasonably accurate picture? I did an archive search of the Chronicle, and this was the only reference I found to Spanish animal-rights activist Pedro Pazos. And it appears that Smith's characterization of him may have seriously misrepresented Pazos' position.

Smith also says of the (apparently still pending) legislation, that its "ultimate goal is the implementation of a broad animal liberation agenda that would eventually elevate all mammals to moral equality with humans". Since both Pazos and the Spanish Minister of the Environment said explicitly that it was not their intention to "elevate all mammals to moral equality with humans", Smith (at best!) is making a stretch of an interpretation.

My basic evaluation of Smith's article didn't change after an hour or so of Googling the thing. It seems to me to be a typical creationist-type piece aimed at trying to boost the "scientific" image of the flat-earthers at the Discovery Institute while primarily aimed at defending an anti-ecological interpretation of Genesis, the Biblical book that is the object of the creationsists' obsession.

But I do hope the Chronicle will reconsider the practice of helping religious extremist groups like the Discovery Institute pass themselves off as defenders of science. They're not.

Michelle Goldberg in Kingdom Coming (2006) describes the Institute as follows:

... a Seattle think tank that's funded in part by savings and loan heir Howard Ahmanson, a leading patron of Christian nationalism. Ahmanson spent twenty years of the board of R.J. Rushdoony's [radical rightwing "Christian Reconstructionist"] Chalcedon Foundation, which advocates the replacement of American civil law with biblical law. "Chalcedon does not appeal to modern liberalized generic Christendom any more than it appeals to theological liberalism itself," it says on its Web site. "Rather, we appeal to those devout, rock-ribbed saints who believe that if the Bible is good enough for the church, it is good enough for the school and state; who believe that if Jesus Christ is Lord of the family, he is also Lord of the laboratory and the board room; who recognize that if Christianity is good enough for them, it is good enough for their great-great grandchildren." (my emphasis)

Referring to the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, Goldberg writes that it:

..speaks in two languages - one for the general public, and one for the faithful. Talking to the latter, it's been candid about its true grandiose goal of undermining the secular legacy of the Enlightenment and rebuilding society on religious foundations.

A key part of their strategy, of course, is getting secular institutions like the San Francisco Chronicle to help them pass themselves off as something very different than they are.

Smith has a blog, Secondhand Smoke. In the world of the Christian Right, Smith passes as a "highbrow" propagandist. But a Christian Right propagandist is what his articles show him to be.

posted at 11:45:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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