Fur Is Evil

Among the first animals in China to be identified as carrying the SARS virus was a raccoon dog. It was at a live market where civet cats and raccoon dogs were for sale. (If you’ve followed our campaign, you will know that Chinese raccoon dogs are a big part of Google’s fur advertising revenue stream.)

I was reading up on the scientific literature on this, when I came across this page about MINK as potential receptors for SARS-CORONAVIRUS.

Incredibly, right next to an abstract where RACCOON DOG is identified as a known carrier of SARS, we’ve got ads for raccoon fur and ads for “fake fur” from Alibaba.com, literally one of the world’s biggest advertiser of dog and cat skin, among other fur-bearing animals.

WTF?

Please, Google, either your technology completely sucks and/or your moral compass sucks.

SARS, which claimed the lives of approximately 800 people worldwide, was considered to be a “close call.”

Surely, a scientific paper on the transmission of SARS among caged animals in live animal markets in China is NOT an appropriate place to be peddling the products of caged animals in live animal markets in China.

Please, Dr. Larry Brilliant, can you not get a meeting with Sergey and Larry and Eric — three of the richest people on the planet — and sort this out?