There are various degrees of acceptable insanity, but in general you would not want a person who thought a toad had the same intrinsic value as your mother to manage her Alzheimer’s disease. You would not want a person who equated the value of your daughter with that of a rat to decide whether she be injected with medicine still under trial, such as an mRNA vaccine. Or perhaps you would, as you may agree with the Lancet editorial in January 2023 that equates these, insisting: “All life is equal, and of equal concern.”
Whatever value system you apply to other humans, it is important to understand that international public health is currently dominated by such rhetoric, if not such thinking. This will greatly influence society and your health for the next few decades.
The Lancet is one of the most influential international medical journals. The above passage is not taken out of context. The editorial recommends we change the way society is managed:
Taking a fundamentally different approach to the natural world, one in which we are as concerned about the welfare of non-human animals and the environment as we are about humans.
To understand where public health has gone during the past few years, and why the Covid response could happen, it is important to pick this short editorial apart. Why did health professionals recommend children be denied the right to play together, and coerce pregnant women to be injected with novel pharmaceuticals that pass to their foetus? The answer lies partly in the dogma that now dominates health institutions and the journals that claim to inform them.
The concept that human health is influenced by the environment is as old as society itself. The ‘One Health’ label was attached to this a couple of decades ago to encompass the benefits of approaching public health in a more ecologically holistic manner. Bovine tuberculosis will affect humans less if it is controlled more effectively in cattle. Human well-being will benefit if forest preservation maintains local rainfall and shade, improving crop and animal production. Few would disagree.
Many religious beliefs also hold nature in high regard. Jains and some Buddhist schools hold that humans should minimise harm to any animal, maintaining strict vegetarian diets and taking steps to avoid the killing even of earthworms. Judaism and related beliefs hold that all of nature is God’s work and while humans have sovereignty over animals, they also have an obligation to nurture the world that God created. These religions maintain a strictly hierarchical view.
The difference with current One Health dogma is that it goes beyond revering nature to considering humans to be just one of many equal creatures. One Health in 2023, as the Lancet explains, involves “a revolutionary shift in perspective”. The Lancet’s editors are calling, specifically, for animals to be considered on a par with humans, dispensing with the “purely anthropocentric” or hierarchical view held by other nature-revering religions.
This insistence on inter-species equity is where the current One Health argument begins to come unstuck. Preserving an ecosystem (good) requires the infliction of staggering pain and suffering on many of its inhabitants by other, predatory animals (terrible for the victims). You cannot have it both ways. So, if you want animals to be treated like humans, either separate the animals from their natural predators, or leave humans also to the harsh cruelty of nature.
The Lancet opens by calling on indigenous peoples’ care for land to stand as an example. It then advocates that we do away with indigenous meat-dominated diets, quoting its EAT-Lancet Commission that it
…takes an equitable approach by recommending people move away from an animal-based diet to a plant-based one, which not only benefits human health, but also animal health and wellbeing.
The ‘welfare’ of animals, in the Lancet’s opinion, is better served by the cut and thrust of the savannah, where bovids are disemboweled alive by carnivores. This naïve view of indigenous people and nature smacks of the cultural paternalism of the Victorian romantics. Many indigenous peoples, together with species ranging from weasels to jaguars, will be hoping they take their equity elsewhere.
Being “as concerned about the welfare of non-human animals” as one is about humans (‘ecological equity’ in the Lancet’s parlance) is a dangerous position to hold. Equity means all animals and humans should have equal rights or outcomes. Consistent with this, management of a highway triage event would have to weigh a severely injured goat (or rabbit) against a severely injured human, and not discriminate based on species. If the goat is more likely to respond to emergency measures, then save it and leave the unfortunate human to his or her fate. While the Lancet‘s editorial team may hold this view, most people would recognise this as a degradation of humans. One Health, however, extends far beyond the Lancet, and is being woven into the proposed pandemic agreements by which the World Health Organisation and others hope to increase control of global public health.
If the public health industry truly views the world through this lens, then the public should consider whether its protagonists can be trusted with any influence or authority. If they view the world otherwise, then they should cease the false rhetoric. The idea that fellow humans are to be held at a higher level than animals underpins virtually all human ethical systems. These include the Nuremberg Codes developed after the medical profession led the degradation of human dignity before and during World War Two.
I, personally, shall not entrust my children’s welfare to the hands of people who consider them on a level with the rodents I regularly trap and kill. I want to minimise the trauma I put these rodents through, and I want to see their species thrive in the wild, but I don’t want them crawling in my children’s beds. That means killing them, because they thrive otherwise in the local environment in which we live, and we don’t have the capacity, as the Lancet editors might, to maintain a fully rodent-proof house.
One Health, as a recognition of the close ties between human health and the health of the environment, is not new. Caring for and loving nature is also nothing new, and is a healthy state in which to live. Minimising pollution and maintaining diversity is an important part of this. So, incidentally, is eating meat. Siberian tigers and poodles agree.
A rational One Health approach does not require a fanciful world in which gazelles, lions, hyaenas and humans drink from the same cup. It has nothing to do with a code of medical conduct in which the life of a lemming is weighed against the life of a baby. We have just been through three years in which novel drugs were trialled en masse on children and pregnant women, and corporate investors enriched themselves through the coercion of millions. This repulsive devaluation of our fellow humans needs to stop.
Health professionals who do not prioritise people over animals may get by as veterinary surgeons, but are unsafe with people. It is time for those who believe in the intrinsic and undefinable value of each human to find their voice, and rebuild our institutions on that basis. Public health should elevate humanity rather than degrade it.
Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. Previously, he was Director of the Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in the USA, Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva, and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. He is a member of the Executive Committee of PANDA.
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There is a long history of comparing humans with animals in comic literature and in comedy programmes.
Bertie Wooster memorably compared his aunts to a pair of mastodons bellowing at each other across the primeval swamp.
Reginald Perrins mind’s eye at every mention of his mother in law conjured up the image of a hippo at the wallow.
Is just me or is there something of the beastly crisp muncher about that diminutive rodent shown above?
Darwinism.
Evolution.
You are an ape. Nay, bacteria. By stuff happens, with trillions of years, by luck, you ended up with 70 Trillion cells and are the same as a rat or a banana.
Darwinism is a religion. And a very unpleasant, anti-science one at that.
A lot of the malaise around us is due to this material religion, which is the demonic spawn of the ‘enlightenment’ (all hail reason, what reason one might ask looking around…)
‘You are an ape.’
Speak for yourself.
Darwin simply observed how evolution proceeds, it’s for adaptation to the environment and it proceeds according to mathematical choices on a grand scale. There is no controlling intelligence.
I ear wot you are saying.
“We have just been through three years in which novel drugs were trialled en masse on children and pregnant women, and corporate investors enriched themselves through the coercion of millions. This repulsive devaluation of our fellow humans needs to stop.”
Spot on Dr. Bell.
Does this philosophy put viruses on par with other animals?
If so, is it then cruel to jab people with mRNA transfection agents in order to kill viruses?
If not, where is the magic line between valued animals and those we can kill?
The Lancet has become nothing more than parody.
One could aptly say that they’ve gone ‘full batshit crazy’ now.
There is also the not insignificant longstanding legal matter and treatment of this distinction. Animals are treated as objects in law. You don’t get life in prison for killing a dog.
Does this mean they will stop mass slaughter of animals on the pretext of containing disease outbreaks? Or will they instead start mass slaughter of humans on the pretext of containing disease outbreaks?
My guess would be the latter.
They have tried to do this with known dangerous “vaccines” recently, there is no proof that the products were designed to be prophylactics.
Hmm. An excellent and pertinent question.
Aside from this, all the toads I know can look after themselves very well.
“Lancet pushes dangerous theory.”
The title seems almost to give credence to the idea that this is bad science. It is, of course, just bad religion, in a journal which would certainly not allow someone to publish good religion because it claims to be scientific.
Does that include viruses and bacteria?
It seems to me as if current scientific orthodoxy has a distinctively genocidal attitude towards viruses in particular.
As far as I know, the complete One Health scope is Taking care of health of humans, animals and the planet. Two things one should immediately notice here is that it’s wrongly claimed that humans are not animals (and hence, that it’s ok to treat them worse than some animals) and that plants are conspicuously absent here.
Taking more of a big picture view, the planet is a thing and not a being and its health isn’t a well-defined concept. Which reduces this grandiloquent claim to We want to get access to public health budgets in order to funnel the money into arbitrary political pet causes of us. Even to the detriment of humans, other animals and plants: It’s about the planet, stupid! Unfortunately, we must cull your cat and sell your daugher into slavery (or the other way round).
Addition: It’s already known what health the planet usually means, namely combat so-called climate change. There are certainly a lot of ‘interesting’ NPIs to try in this area.
“If the public health industry truly views the world through this lens, then the public should consider whether its protagonists can be trusted with any influence or authority.” The public does not have the choice. Welcome to pagan Britain.
Medieval, surely
“The Lancet’s editors are calling, specifically, for animals to be considered on a par with humans”
But only the cattle. I very much doubt this concept includes them or their morally malignant bourgeoise circle.
As ever, all animals are on a par, but some animals are more ‘on a par’ than others..
“Taking a fundamentally different approach to the natural world, one in which we are as concerned about the welfare of non-human animals and the environment as we are about humans.”
Not fundamentally different at all, it’s Paganism – it’s Nature-worship, the worship of the gods of the forest, gods of the rivers and seas, the animal gods, the weather gods, Mother Earth. Father Sun, Daughter Moon.
It’s about superstition, Anthropomorphism, sacrificing Humans… particularly children and enemies… to propitiate the gods and atone for sins against Nature.
Time for a religious pogrom.
This is parroting exactly the sort of guff the Club of Rome has been coming out with recently: https://www.clubofrome.org/impact-hubs/emerging-new-civilization/
But of course an organisation funded by oil barons to maintain their interests through political manipulation, now controlled by their moronic billionaire grandchildren with open wallets for any cause that compensates for their lack of imagination and buys them moral absolution, couldn’t possibly have any influence on medical journal already known to slavishly follow the dominant progressive narrative. That would sound like globalism, and we all know globalism is a conspiracy theory, right?
Given that The Lancet is a medical journal, where does this article Dr Bell is citing, with it’s ”all life is equal” stance, sit with the subject of vivisection? I mean, this is a topic that makes my fillings itch, it’s so nasty and cruel, but we’re told so necessary to drug testing and medical advances. Doesn’t this just smack of hypocrisy? Is there an alternative? And I love rats. Not the vermin kind, but as pets they are very under-rated.
There’s no hypocrisy if researchers equally use humans in their cruel experiments. I have no doubt the Uyghurs are familiar with this practice of equality among species. And rats are affectionate, intelligent, and yes, entertaining, pets.
When these paragons of scientific and medical virtue lead by example I might consider taking their message seriously. I bet they wouldn’t be preaching this message ‘that all creatures are of equal worth’ when standing naked on the African savannah confronted by hungry, prowling lions. What utter fools these people are.
The Lancet editorial looks like another desperate but subtle attempt to give credence to the (implausible) theory that the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by coronavirus-infected animals at the Wuhan wet market.
“But understanding the causes of the pandemic demands a broader ecological perspective. This lesson has not been fully learned and so we remain susceptible to future lethal emerging infectious diseases.”
“..For example, demanding that wet markets be closed to halt an emerging zoonosis might be technically correct, but if it does not account for those who make their livelihoods from such markets…”
Maybe just ensure that a virus can never escape from a lab again.
I’ve been happily vegetarian for all of my adult life, and I would never go back to eating meat, not least because I wish to be kind to animals.
However, the animal to whom I am most kind is my cat, whom I love and care about as much as any human, and she eats meat, and could not live without meat. Cats cannot live without meat (whereas dogs possibly can). I buy cat food for her because I love and care about her, and the cat food is mainly chicken, duck and turkey. So I cannot treat all animals equally. I value my cat more highly than the chickens, ducks and turkeys who have to be killed so that cats can live. That’s the reality.
Going to an extreme of trying to treat all animals equally makes no sense, and going to the other extreme of not caring about the welfare of animals makes no sense. We all have to settle for what we believe is best in our own lives and nobody should feel the need to preach to us about what we ought to do, because going in either direction to its logical conclusion makes no sense.
The Lancet article states: “all life is equal, and of equal concern” – I don’t think anyone who lives in reality believes that. Does the writer believe that the life of a house fly is equal to the life of a human being, and of equal concern? I don’t believe the writer of this article is sincere.
I don’t know about where you live but I am finding it increasingly common to see the addition of veggie ingredients in wet cat food. And it’s no longer just run of the mill peas and carrots, but apparently obligate carnivores cannot just eat the animal protein without the addition of cranberries, quinoa, rice, tomatoes, lotus flower, and on and on it goes. I’ve even seen pineapple in there! It definitely never used to be so bad that the majority of foods have unnecessary carbs in them. Weird. They don’t require such things and my cat will ingest a bit of grass now and again if she needs to vomit a fur ball up.
Yes, I see some wet cat food is touted as grain-free but then vegetables are added instead. I try to buy low-carbohydrate food for the cat, keeping in mind offal and road kill are allowed and are used in cheaper pet food (at least in the US). Exhausting.
I wonder how the ground-up insect powder will be described on the labels? I call it s**t but I suppose it will have some fancy camouflage name.
Cats and dogs need to be fed just raw meaty bones in appropriate sized pieces, not processed junk food. Chewing, gnawing, ripping, tearing cleans their teeth and exercises their jaws. They are carnivores. All my dogs and cat fed on that for 20 years. Labs who reached 16 and 17 without once having their teeth “cleaned”, no skin issues, calm temperaments without the additives. The kindest thing we can do for our pets!
Some vegetarians also do not realize how many animals are killed on crop farms. Mice, rats, voles, snakes, and birds are all killed during harvesting. These aren’t the cute, doe-eyed mammals that we don’t want to kill and eat for meat, yet they’re killed nonetheless. Additionally, farmers are very quick to kill pest animals like skunks, coyotes, and raccoons that are attracted to the crop food chain on their land. Badger-killing is an issue in the UK, as I recall. Tough decisions all around, but as humans we can be humane.
Something a lot of vegans also don’t realize is that there’s going to be detectable animal contamination in all of their industry foods because of animals living in or close to the machines used to produce it who are also feeding on it. Everywhere where edible stuff is handled in quantities in a somewhat open location, omnivorous rodents won’t be far away and not all of them will make it out of the machinery all of the time before production starts again. And then, there are of course lots of much smaller animals, from insects down to monocelluar organisms which are everywhere where food is to be found, anyway.
It’s hard to know even what to eat. Some legume and insect meat substitutes cause allergies. We don’t eat mammal meat in my household because of alpha gal tick allergy. My husband read about factory farming and now he doesn’t want to eat chicken. We don’t like fish and avoid after learning about factory-fishing and over-fishing of the oceans. Processed food and seed oils will kill you. Pick your battles I guess.
Sounds to me the Editor of The Lancet should be taken straight to the local loony bin. What a horrible person to suggest the degradation of the human race. Dare I use the H word…?
These technocrats have assumed the position of overlords of the universe without anybody electing them to this status. They are one world eugenicists of old. The same process is used by climate alarmists et al. The process goes like this, buy a load of compliant “experts” come up with a jazzy name for a think tank, buy a load of compliant journalists, get them to quote the think tanks gibberish, Hey Presto, you have a “main stream” accepted wisdom.
I suspect this theory won’t be applied to themselves or their own nearest and dearest. They are “a protected species.”
As a Master student in One Health I do take issue with some of the rhetoric.
One Health basically tries to use human-, animal-and environmental health perspectives when looking at solutions for health issues. Most of the time these 3 pillars have operated in silos in the past, but these are intrinsically linked. If you plan to intervene in one you need to be looking from all angles to make sure that the eventual outcome is makes sense and is a better outcome than doing nothing.
And this is exactly what is needed in this current world.
Too many people trying to solve issues by just having one perspective, rather than trying to work out all permutations. Just as we have experienced with the pandemic response and climate.
So it is not about saying that you are worth as much as a rodent. That is not what One Health is about.
I’m quite fond of rats. I believe they are loving and loyal little critters, unlike their human counterparts.
I can think of a few sports presenters that are less valuable than rats.
I hope they don’t call in the pest control teams
Seaside town residents invaded by ‘monster rats’ ‘living in terror’ https://mol.im/a/11877781 via https://dailym.ai/android