Struggling against the almighty tides of eventuality

I’ve gotten an uptick in comments on my blog in the past few days. Like, I’ve gotten three. From three different people. That’s an increase of hundreds of percent over the norm. What I found most odd, though, was that 66 percent (i.e., two) of those comments were on my ResearchSaves.org blog post. I find this very curious.

My curiosity led me to Google, whereupon I realized that my humble blog post with its stupid subtitle (which I still need to change, so, please give me ideas) is the second hit for ResearchSaves.org. What I haven’t been able to find, is whether there’s been a recent upswing in marketing from them. It seems that’s the only reason people would be taking a sudden interest.

Of course, despite repeated comments from rakaur (Eric), I haven’t changed my stance. In fact, I don’t think he really said much that I didn’t already think about the whole thing, although he had a much more defend-the-science approach to it all. I’m not going to advocate animal testing. I know it saves human lives. It ends animal lives in the meantime. Predators in the wild also end animal lives, though usually less slowly and painfully (usually). The sooner we get a viable alternative working to animal testing, the better. I’d give ideas for the alternative, advanced simulations, etc., but that’s what we pay the scientists for.

Incidentally, according to Twitter, at least, ResearchSaves.org is related to the Foundation for Biomedical Research. This is hilarious to me, as I’ve received a few E-mails from them titled “HORSE VIDEO.” I’ve never watched it, but it has something to do with using equine biological research to cure some minor ailment. It takes a good few paragraphs to get to that description though, which led me to believe for quite some time that, not only had I gotten bestiality porn, but that whoever made it was really excited about it.

Finally, in closing: no, the place I work doesn’t have any sort of established official opinion as far as I know about this whole thing. I say this because plenty of jerkoffs, jackasses, and shitheads like to politicize science and use any excuse to choke off funding to work that can actually save lives. They get understandably very antsy about it at work so, suffice it to say, I don’t speak for them.

There seems to be a movement afoot to promote animal research; I saw this the other day, and now get to see a copy of that billboard every day on my way to work.  The thing I don’t understand is: are these people high?

I don’t particularly like animal research.  It’s not that I don’t understand that it advances medical technologies that help human beings.  It’s not that I want more people to die horribly from cancer.  But you’re still breeding animals specifically for the purpose of injecting them with or otherwise inducing horrible afflictions (or doing various other experiments to make their lives awful).  Does this mean we should stop doing it?  Well, I don’t know what alternatives there are that people will be satisfied with, and thus there’s no response I could give that is even remotely close to “yes” which won’t get me labeled as a monster; and that’s weird, cause I’d be advocating not torturing animals for our personal gain.

So, we’ll accept animal testing as a given, if only for the impossibility of stopping it.  However, I do think we can agree that it’s not something we should all be happy about.  If we suffered some horrible nuclear winter down the road, you’d probably eat your dog.  It’s unlikely you’d be overjoyed at the prospect.  As such, I don’t think it’s a good idea to make a whole god damn ad campaign extolling the virtues of dog meat.  Guess what?  You’re still eating Rex, you jackasses, and he was a part of the family.

My point is this: you shouldn’t spend time advocating a “necessary evil.”  It really makes you look like you enjoy the suffering. Ultimately, that just makes me wish you would wander in front of the nearest mass-transit bus.  Meanwhile, I’ll still think animal testing is something we put up with as a society because we don’t have better choices.  If only someone with an interest in saving more human lives had some spare money to throw at such an issue…