page_title: Ingrid Newkirk
section_title: Public image
hierarchical_section_title: Ingrid Newkirk / Newkirk's work with PETA / Public image
caption_attribution_description: English: Ingrid Newkirk and Matthew Gilkin by David Shankbone.
context_page_description: Ingrid Elizabeth Newkirk is a British animal welfarist and the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the world's largest animal rights organization. She is the author of several books, including Making Kind Choices and The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble.
  Newkirk has worked for the animal-protection movement since 1972. Under her leadership in the 1970s as the District of Columbia's first female poundmaster, legislation was passed to create the first spay/neuter clinic in Washington, D.C., as well as an adoption program and the public funding of veterinary services, leading her to be among those chosen in 1980 as Washingtonians of the Year. She is an atheist.
  Newkirk founded PETA in March 1980 with fellow animal rights activist Alex Pacheco. They came to public attention in 1981, during what became known as the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Pacheco photographed 17 macaque monkeys being experimented on inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland.
context_section_description: Newkirk and her cause provoke strong feelings, both positive and negative. Specter, who did not see eye to eye with her, wrote:
  Newkirk is well read, and she can be witty. When she is not proselytizing, denouncing, or attacking the ninety-nine per cent of humanity that sees the world differently from the way she does, she is good company. After years of detestable public behavior, however, she has the popular image of a monster. Whenever I mentioned her name to friends, they would recoil. And she becomes more disliked with every peta stunt; she can't walk through an airport without accosting any woman who is wearing fur. She no longer takes vacations in tropical or poor countries like Mexico, because "I spend the whole time rescuing animals from their horrid owners."
  Specter also questioned her about a 2003 letter that she wrote to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to protest the use of a donkey as a suicide bomber. "We are named People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals", she replied. "There are plenty of other groups that worry about the humans."
  Elsewhere, Newkirk has said:
  In this business I am very easy to cubby hole. As someone said to me the other day—they had seen the HBO special—and they said, "Are you really a sad obsessed person?" And I thought, No, I'm not really a sad person, except when I lie awake at night in winter thinking about all the animals out without shelter, and then I'm sad! Who wouldn't be? Wouldn't anybody be sad if they have a heart? It's just that I've seen so much.
  Newkirk has had celebrity friends and admirers who have spoken highly of her. Sam Simon said in an interview: "I learned about animal rights from my favorite person in the whole world, Ingrid Newkirk at PETA." Also, Alec Baldwin contributed the following blurb to Newkirk's book Making Kind Choices: "Ingrid Newkirk is not only a thoughtful animal rights and environmental activist. She is an inspirational leader. A heroine. A woman upon whom so many depend, around the world, for information and guidance. In a world where all animals, everywhere, are more threatened than ever, Ingrid Newkirk is their champion."
  Newkirk has been accused of employing a double standard for her organization's practice of euthanizing animals for which it has neither the space nor resources to shelter. Debra Saunders, a critic of Newkirk, argues that "PETA assails other parties for killing animals for food or research. Then it kills animals – but for really important reasons, such as running out of room". Newkirk explains on PETA's website that, "As long as animals are still purposely bred and people aren't spaying and neutering their companions, open-admission animal shelters and organizations like PETA must do society's dirty work. Euthanasia is not a solution to overpopulation but rather a tragic necessity given the present crisis."
  Newkirk and PETA both oppose animal testing out of principle as well as on practical grounds. Specter asked whether she would be opposed to experiments on five thousand rats, or even chimpanzees, if it was needed to cure AIDS. She replied: "Would you be opposed to experiments on your daughter if you knew it would save fifty million people?"
caption: Newkirk and Matthew Galkin, who directed I Am an Animal, the story of Newkirk's life[31]
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