In an attempt to have a better appreciation for my job, I have been thinking about some of my less fondly remembered situations of employment.A few years back, I was out of work, and so a friend lined me up with a couple weeks of work at the university where she was doing her PhD. It was in a laboratory where they experimented on animals, for medical research. My job was just data entry of the results of these experiments.
Being pretty fond of animals, I was quite nervous of the experience, but was pretty desperate for work. I found it pretty disturbing, and saw some stuff I wish that I hadn't. The place was dark and cold, and reminded me of an evil scientists lab from a movie. It smelt of mice and chemicals, and was very quiet. The mice and frog stuff was confronting, but for me the worst bit was seeing this cat that was being experimented on.
My friend warned me about it, but I still wasn't prepared for what I saw. Just thinking about it now sends a shiver down my spine. I won't go in to too much detail, but basically it was in a sitting position, very much alive, but the top of it's head was removed, and his eyes pinned open. It was truly horrible.
Moral of the story-- Your job might get annoying, but at least you're not seeing animals getting tortured.
2 comments:
no Ben, I can hardly live with that. How can that be happening in Australia? What can we do to stop this? I just this week found out about rodeo's and how they rev the bulls and horses up and how its torture for them, so I'm very against that now.I can't believe there is animal torture all over the world, and it just got closer. I hate it, i hate it, i hate it.
Well, Jen I do defuinately agree with you to a point. I think the torture of animals is a horrible thing, and well, an evil thing. God made us sort of the custodians of animals- we are in charge of them, but are also to take care of them.
But there definately are some grey areas in my oppinion. I think there is a pretty big difference between medical research and rodeos. One has a real point, and the other is just for fun.
The cat that I was talking about, if memory serves me correctly, was having experiments on it's eyesight, in the aim of treating cataracts or blindness in humans. To be honest, I am not sure whether this is right or wrong. If no experiments are done, then medicine would still be in the dark ages, with no advancements to help treat diseases etc. At the same time, it does seem horrific at first sight. Some care is taken, if that makes any difference -- there are anesthetics so the animal doesn't feel pain, and then it is put down painlesslessly. But yeah, I still find it hard to justify to myself that the animal is being 'taken care of'.
To me, the more worrying areas are things like torture for sport (rodeos, some circus' etc), or animal testing for cosmetics, and the way a lot of animals bred for our food (especially chickens) are treated.
It is something that interests me too. I might try and look in to it more and post about it. Thanks for yr thoughts Jen.
Post a Comment