Re: Feo: Justice Department


Posted by Amaranth Rose on May 11, 2004 at 12:45
(65.172.150.7)

Re: Feo: Justice Department (Kethrie)

I suppose you'd like to test those chemicals on your kids or mine. Or on convicts in prison. Or paid "volunteers". I don't want my doctor prescribing an antibiotic that's been developed without some kind of testing to determine potential side effects, what kind of bacteria it is most effective against, and in what organs it works best. I wouldn't want to be prescribed something that no one has any idea about the toxicity or antidotals. If animal testing had not been used in the last century, the drug thalidomide would have been released for use in this country as a medicament for morning sickness in pregnant women. How interesting our lives would be in that instance. NOt something I want to contemplate. I think life is precious and not to be wasted, myself; but the rats that died in the interest of investigating thalidomide were lives well spent, in my opinion. They had good, comfortable, predator-free lives and died in a practically painless manner. Many people could wish for no more. Few people have it as good.

But I suppose you feel that drugs should be tested on graduate students, since they are the largest group of non-human beings on this planet?

If you want to outlaw animal testing, prepare to give up a lot of advances in medicine and surgery. Be ready and willing to die of some fulminating infection for which there is no cure and no treatment--because you surely will, or you will condemn someone else to that horrible fate. Let's have the law of the jungle and survival of the fittest (best immune system) rule the world. This ought to please you very much. No animals would be used testing new drugs.

While we're at it we'll be sure and do away with selective breeding of domestic plants and animals, and go back to surviving as the stone age people did, growing Einkern and Kemmer for grain instead of modern multi-kerneled wheat, and herding scrawny, stringy cows and short-haired, fence-jumping sheep and gathering eggs from wild jungle fowl that lay a few small eggs a week. Let's go back to lying down uneasily with vulpine canids and sabre-toothed felids. Which species of prehistoric horse would you like to revive, Eohippus, Mesohippus, Merynchohippus? Maybe you'd like a gomphothere in your garden? You're right, animals around us "ain't what they used to be", and I for one am darned glad of the changes.

Animal testing doesn't sound so awfully bad to me, given the alternatives. But then, you can always say I am biased; if it weren't for antibiotics I wouldn't be alive today, without a doubt. And every one of those antibiotics was tested on animals before being released for human use.

Not everyone who uses animals to test pharmaceuticals is a heartless monster who likes to torture helpless creatures. Many of them are decent, loving, caring people who want to find a way to save the lives of other people. People like you perhaps. People like me. I owe my life to a lot of dedicated men and women who developed drugs and antibiotics and tested them on animals to ensure their efficacy, safety, and determine toxicity before they were prescribed. If you've never had a life-threatening infection or come very close to dying from an allergic reaction, I'm very happy for you. Maybe animal testing doesn't do anything for you and you could live without it just fine. But I never voted for you, and you have no right to legislate me to death because you don't think it's right to test using animals. It's easy to be righteous when you're comfortable and safe. You've never been tested in the crucible. Hold a dying child in your arms once and see if your picture doesn't get some new colors.

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