From: w95_cook@wums.wustl.edu
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: RE: Animal Research
Date: 15 Sep 92 11:17:48 GMT
Organization: MIT PLASMA FUSION CENTER
NNTP-Posting-Host: msnews.wustl.edu

In a previous article, spp@zabriskie.berkeley.edu (Steve Pope) wrote:
>w95_cook@wums.wustl.edu writes:
> 
>> We aim to teach the public about the
>> true nature of animal research 
> 
>Nope.  You're just organizing another attempt at
>whitewashing.  The true facts would repulse the public.
>(And you knew that too.)
> 
Hardly.  The fact is that Animal Rightists like yourself have been distorting
the facts about how research is carried out.  The true facts are very well
documented, and all we do is present these facts to the public.

>> ....and why we feel animal research must be allowed to continue.  
> 
>Well, there's two possible reasons for that.
> 
>Is it simply the money, or are you actually brainwashed?
>Actually, brainwashed is a little strong, so I'll retract
>that.  Co-opted fits about right.


Now, this is really funny.  You think I'm involved in animal research because
of the MONEY!?!?!  I am a student in an M.D./Ph.D. program.  I receive
a stipend of $12,000 a year.  I will receive this sum for the next 5 to 6
years until I complete the program.  Then I will join a 3-6 year residency
making the enormous salary of 20-25,000 a year.  Trust me.  NO ONE gets
into medical research for the money - especially not in academics.


>> We have been quite successful over the last year, and we would be 
>> more than happy to speak to anyone interested in setting up a 
>> similar orginazation.
> 
>Of course you've been successful.  If there's one thing
>the animal testing community is good at it's closing 
>ranks.  Too bad they've forgotten how to be scientists.


How exactly have animal researchers forgotten how to be scientists.  And
please - we are an organization dedicated to protecting animal research -
we take absolutely no position on industrial animal testing.  I am not
involved in that type of practice, and am not qualified to judge it.


>If there's anything more reprehensible than wanton unnecessary
>animal testing, it's organizing to ramp it up to even
>more unnecessary levels.  And if there's anything more
>reprehensible than *that*, it's gloating over the "success" 
>of said activity.
> 
Unncessary??  I challenge you to walk into a Children's Hospital with me. 
Meet the kids we see every day here - infants dying of AIDS, children
with leukemia, or a myriad of genetic diseases whose pathology we can't
even understand much less treat.  Try telling these kids or their parents
that animal research is unnecessary.  It sounds to me like you, my friend,
are far more cruel than I.


>w95_cook, you and others like you simply don't have the guts to 
>admit that animal testing is, in fact, inhumanity on a gross scale.
>You know it.  But you won't say it. 

On a gross scale?  All the animals used in animal research make up less than
one half of one percent of the animals killed every year in this country.
And yet, animal rights orginazations are spending (on average) 50% of their
budgets fighting medical researchers.  If there is anyone responsible for
killing animals on a gross scale in this country it is the food industry - 
not animal researchers.

> 

JC



_______________________________________________________________

Jim Cook
W95_COOK@wums.wustl.edu

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Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals