Date: 15 Dec, 2001
In the pursuit of knowledge, we hurt some very innocent mice. We injected them with insulin, glibenclamide, placebo and a plant extract. Then we extracted their blood through their tails. For what? To determine if this plant could be an alternative treatment in the battle against diabetes.
It is a necessary evil, one might argue. How could we heal people if we don’t hurt mice? Hmmmm. Interesting question. Certainly it is much more evil if we experimented with humans. But hey, that is coming from the selfish human point of view. I keep on wondering if our roles were reversed and giant rats (the kind that teenage mutant ninja turtles follow around) ruled this earth and we were tiny little humans who lived on sewers. And that they would experiment with our best friends, with our father, our sisters, our pastors, our teachers (you get the point) so that they could find a cure for a disease that is afflicting them…. Inhuman we might say.
Memories of countless frogs being dissected come to my mind. I mean really now, do we really need to know what the insides of a frog look like? Do we really need to kill those poor frogs just so we could observe how the lungs work and how the heart beats? I really don’t think biology students should do such things. So what am I saying? I don’t know…
I guess what I am trying to say is this: It is a necessary evil but I think we should limit it. There are some things in which the benefit outweighs the risk and some that are really just plain stupid. We could go for virtual frogs. Let the frogs (as slimy as they are, and as you guess, I am no big fan of frogs) jump happily and live their life. Hell, they are not after us.
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