Thought for today...

[gemfyre]

gleaned from the lecture on animal ethics/welfare I had today.

Use of animals for teaching/research purposes has become very restricted nowdays. Some of this is for the good (some experiments are totally cruel and uneccessary) but sometimes it borders on depriving students of vital opportunities to learn properly.

Animals are also used for food, too many people are cruel to domestic animals, fishing is an accepted recreational sport, land clearing kills millions of animals pretty much every day, and in the wild most things die by being eaten alive.

So...

Are teachers and researchers an 'easy' target for concerned groups?


discuss.

Comments

[terrycat.livejournal.com]

Scary. I wholy agree with wayne! i mean this shouldnt happen, if only so we can have evilly fun arguments that last weeks. However, everything he's said i pretty much agree with.
I was once told by an american that we australians should be ashamed at how we treat the aboriginies. I had to explain to them that aboriginies get more benifits than anyone else, that we arent still repressing them, that we as a people are constantly apologising to their ancestors. im not saying they have an easy life, but on the other hand, who does?
whats the point im making? the point is that its easier for someone to blame and hate me for something they know nothing about, than find out the details and actually think about stuff.
same with animal testing. admittedly, some of it IS cruel and unnessesary, but most isnt now days. people protesting labs humanely killing rats for experiments are idiots! most of these people will without even considering the irony put down rat traps or poison., which is not a nice way to go for the poor little rats.
I am being pretty general here. Not all animal rights people are hypocritical morons, in fact most i know arent. but animal rights can be treated as either an issue or as a cause, and just like any cause the ill-considered and non-thinking flock to the banner to give their pitiful lives a sense of purpose. researchers are the perfect bad guy to these people, because of all the stereotypes of mad scientists, evil experiments, soulless monsters in white coats. coupled with cute fluffy animals, and its a guaranteed target.