Animals and Law

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, animals, laws, legal system, humor

Mary Roach make serious subjects both interesting and humorous. In Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, she writes of animals who cause problems to people (besides ants at picnics or in the kitchen), and the various officers who must deal with them. We're talking serious problems here, from killings to theft, and, in later chapters, "invasions" such as the imported rabbits in Australia and rats in New Zealand.

On the scale of danger:cuteness ratio, bears rank right at the top. A young cub like the one shown here is probably just curious. However, the mother is likely to be nearby, and will object to her baby being this close to a dangerous human. It seldom occurs to us that bears consider us a risk; we're big enough to do them damage, and too big to be worthwhile prey. I wonder what followed this moment. Most likely, the mother made a "Whuff!" sound, at which the cub ran to her, and they trotted off together. I hope so.

Bears are too smart to be predictable. They are also loners, and get cranky if someone gets too close without permission. A cranky bear can slap you as he or she would another bear, and it'll take your head right off. Then, surprised at the result, after some thought, the bear could opt to take advantage of the free meal. Now we have a "killer bear". What is a forest ranger to do with it? There's a chapter on that. Guess what: relocating, whether bear or squirrel, just makes room for another to move in…and so does killing the offender.

Bears are most likely to kill unintentionally. Not so carnivores such as leopards, nor elephants. Each rates a chapter, and the stories range from quirkily funny to spine-chilling. While in India learning about leopard attacks, one evening the author heard a ghastly scream that she concluded came from a leopard's prey being killed. She and those with her decided to wait, to check it out in the morning, leaving matters to resolve themselves overnight. The villagers called it a case of demon possession, which she took for a double entendre, because the villagers had also told her that any leopard that had killed at least two people was considered a demon. Well, whoever died that evening was definitely "possessed" by that leopard at that point!

I haven't been the subject of an attack by anything bigger than a jaybird. But that can be painful enough! I found a blue jay chick in the driveway once, and picked it up to put in a nearby bush. A parent bird bombed me. Had I not been wearing a hat, it would have drawn blood. I've managed to avoid sea gull attacks by eating only inside at the beach! This fellow, according to advertising copy, was trying out a gull repellent method that obviously isn't working. I did note that two species of gull are shown here. That's typical at almost any American beach.

A lot of the book deals with the futility of not just trying to eradicate unwanted species (such as invasive rats on islands), but even counting them to know how big the problem is. Cougars (AKA pumas or panthers) are so elusive that animal "control" officers' most effective method is scanning an area for feces, called "scat". Unlike domestic cats, cougars just "drop and walk off". With experience, the officers can estimate how old a scat is, so with a little knowledge of scat-dropping frequency and a bit of math, they can estimate how many cats frequent a certain parcel of land.

The next-to-last chapter gets into humane killing. It's not quite an oxymoron, but killing most animals "so they won't notice" is nearly impossible, and anything less abrupt than the killing bar on a classic mousetrap will entail a period of suffering, from seconds to minutes to hours. Thus the last chapter deals with genetic methods. The scariest is the gene drive. Scientists working on this have figured out how to "fix" the genes in a female mouse so she will have only female offspring. Ordinarily, releasing a lot of such mice is self-limiting, and won't eradicate them. But the gene drive somehow guarantees that all her daughters will have the same trait. Thus, any male mice remaining will get older and older, as few males get born, and eventually none. A generation later, the oldest females die, and Presto!, no mice. (At least, I think that is how it works. I may have something backwards. Anyway, they all eventually die out.)

Very late in the book, the author writes of a farmer who has a more phlegmatic attitude: Do your best to keep from spilling food all around, and live with a little "shrinkage", just as stores know they can't eliminate all shoplifting, but reduce it as much as they think reasonable, and adjust to it.

Animals don't know they are breaking human laws. I suspect if they could know somehow, they wouldn't care. After all, they were here first. We're the invaders, breaking "their" laws! The cynic's Golden Rule applies: Them that has the gold, makes the rules.

It doesn't take much of a molecule

kw: drugs, laws

The concept usually called Therapeutic Window is relevant to recent news. First, there is the issue of a number of designer drugs collectively called "bath salts". They are hallucinogens with this characteristic: the amount that you need to get "high" is rather close to an overdose. They have a rather narrow Window. The range between overdosing, where psychotic symptoms can become permanent, and fatal overdose is, fortunately, a little wider.

This is one of the "bath salts" molecules. Strange that such a small molecule can have such profound effects. Of course, one of the smallest molecules, HCN, or cyanide, is fatal in very small amounts.

One fortunate circumstance: little Delaware is likely to outlaw "bath salts", perhaps as early as today. The world would be a better place if marijuana were legalized and the sale of "bath salts" hallucinogens were made a felony. Pot has a very wide therapeutic window. Whether used for pain management or recreationally, it is hard to kill yourself with it.

Then there is this stuff. Propofol, the molecule that killed Michael Jackson. In yesterday's court debate, the defense claimed that the doctor was weaning the singer off the drug. Strangely, he had just ordered another three gallons of it!

There is no way it ought to be used as a sleep aid. It is used for a quick knockout when a patient is being prepped for surgery. Its effects only last for ten minutes, by which time safer long-term anesthetics have been administered.

Basically, if you can't sleep without an injection of something, you've got huge problems. I suspect the King of Pop was using stimulants to sustain his frenetic performances, to the extent that he couldn't sleep without something equally powerful to counteract them.

Finally, heads up on book reports: I am a quarter of the way through a 990-page novel, so it'll be a while before I get it done and review it.

Legislation and Morality

kw: laws, ethics

I began to hear something new starting in the 1960s. People began do oppose or disparage laws proposed or laws existing, by saying, "You can't legislate morality." My response is always, "Oh, really. Can you tell me anything we legislate that is not morality?" Where there is no moral issue, there is no need of law.

Every system of law is based on a moral code. Like it or not, the legal system of all Western societies is rooted in the second five of the Ten Commandments. At times, groups or nations have experimented with adding "theocratic" laws, those based on the commandments related to worship, idolatry, blasphemy, sabbath-keeping, and filial piety. All such experiments have failed, though a few lasted a generation or two. But the strictures that prohibit murder, theft, adultery, perjury, and greed are all upheld at some level by legislated statutes.

By making such laws, we as a society declare our minimum standard of moral behavior. We state that we will sanction behavior that falls below that standard (whether or not such sanctions are enforced consistently). While we may expect most people to live by a standard higher than "what's legal," we refrain from legal action until the line is crossed.

Let's take commandments in order. While not all killing is murder, the state reserves for itself (that is, to its agents) the right to kill for judicial purposes, or for conducting war. A few narrow areas are exempted, primarily for self defense. Even then, someone who kills another while defending herself is likely to suffer legal consequences nearly as great as someone convicted of lesser degrees of manslaughter. Few deny the government the power to decide the boundary between justified and unjustified killing. What is subject to current legislation (and court action) is the rather mobile location of that boundary. For example, killing a fetus was once defined as unjustified murder. Now it is is not.

Recently, a man was allowed by the court to finally accomplish a killing that it seems he began to perpetrate about fifteen years ago. When that happened, I said to my son, "It may happen in your lifetime that you will be asked to determine if my life should be ended for the sake of convenience."

Theft, we all know what that is, don't we? We all agree it is wrong, but we do not all agree on where the boundary lies between legal taking and illegal taking of another's property. Taxes are considered a legal taking (by most, anyway). Recently the boundary moved, in two areas. An airline company was allowed to deny pensions to many employees, even removing funds that some employees had "earned" in the pension plan. One could say that is a theft, but the courts ruled otherwise. Of course, now we are talking judicial action, not legislation. Congress is presently struggling with new laws to reverse this. They are unlikely to succeed.

Another case that has so far been decided only judicially is the vast expansion of eminent domain powers, so that a city can raze a neighborhood for the sake of replacing it with something like a mall, that will of course bring in more taxes than the residential properties could. This effectively eliminates the value of holding property, and I predict there will be vigilante action before the matter is sorted out. Dear reader, please note that I do not state actions I might take, but predict the actions of others.

Third, there are quite a number of laws still on the books in various places that disallow various sexual actions. Once "no-fault" divorce became the norm, the police in most places stopped enforcing them. Gay rights activism led to "de-enforcement" of quite a number of others. So far, nobody has persuaded the government of any U.S. state or county to de-criminalize sex between an adult and a minor. It could happen...

This is a hot topic these days, particularly now that Canada has enacted statues that allow and support "marriage" between two people of the same sex. Many U.S. states have laws, recent or not, that disallow such unions. These are being attacked by likening them to old miscegenation laws that disallowed unions between black and non-black. The issue isn't the same, for it requires re-defining the word "marriage," in a way that it has not been used, in any society, since there was human language.

Some Native American societies had a system in which a woman could take another woman as a "wife," but the union was not called a marriage. They had other words, in every known case.

Perjury, and deception. We have lots of laws about this. Not enough to keep your nest egg safe from the next con artist who rings your phone, but enough to keep things to a dull roar. We came close to convicting two Presidents of perjury (Nixon and Clinton). But the sanctions for most kinds of lying are pretty minor. Particularly when we enter the realm of "white-collar crime," we find that paying fines for committing deception is considered a cost of doing business...if you're caught.

Just think. If you cut off a carpenter's arm, you could get 20 years for battery, and be paroled in nine. Kill the same carpenter, and with a plea-bargain you'll still get about twice that. But if you cause an Enron crash, removing the livelihood of thousands of people, leading to hundreds of untimely deaths on the side, you get five-to-eight, if you get any time at all, and you can be paroled in a year.

Oh, well. My point here is not whether the laws are equitable, but that they are all moral. One more. Greed. The former four Commandments are all results of greed of one kind or another. We have very few laws addressing greed itself, and for good reason. It is hard to measure. Covetousness may lead to all kinds of other misbehavior, but the legal system waits for the misbehavior before taking action.

I suppose that's as it should be. Attempts at thought control have a more dismal record than theocracies. But, I hope you find yourself with a more clear response when someone says, "You can't legislate morality." We can so. We do so. And we must, if we are to have society at all.