Promoted :-
Come and protest, but don't expect much support
17.11.2009 03:30
You can come and protest all you like, free speech and all that. But the university is not going to give up vivisection research and the students will not be intimidated by you. The vast majority of us simply think you're wasting your time, you'll have no luck getting much support from the students. You'd have a ruddy impossible time trying to get the students on campus to not wear leather or eat chicken, let alone convincing them not to support animal testing.
You can complain all you like about animal testing but how many of you actually have an undergraduate degree in biology or chemistry let alone a masters or PhD? If you are so anti-testing why don't you actually contribute towards finding alternative methods as opposed to simply blandly condemning? Forgive the phrase, but back seat driver springs to mind? It's all well and good trying to shout that alternatives exist but anyone with even the most basic university biology or chemistry background knows that this is NOT true in the vast majority of cases. Yes in some cases alternatives have been found for instance with specific skin irritation testing for cosmetics, but at the end of the day with current technology in vitro techniques cannot yet model a full scale living organism. There are no two ways about that... we do not have the technology to be able to fully replace living animal models yet. It'd be great if we did because at the end of the day contrary to what you try to tell the public the vast majority of scientists do not enjoy having to routinely kill animals, yes there are a minority who over step the line (I have seen the video of a man punching the beagle at HLS on youtube) however they should simply be sacked. It's no good condemning the majority of hard working scientists for the actions of a very tiny minority, the vast majority would never punch a dog for simply struggling or barking. In the same way I'm going to give your local group (WYARG?) the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are not responsible for the minority of activists who think it's acceptable to intimidate people by smashing their windows, painting lewd messages, and burning property. I simply ask that you do not tar all scientists with the same brush.
One day in the future I'm sure with further advances we will eventually be able to replace animals, but until then animal testing is what we are stuck with. Incidentally many of the in vitro techniques used for alternative testing actually use cells harvested from animals, so whilst you try to promote the alternatives is it not hypocritical that you are still promoting a method that involves an animal at some point in the line?
Bradford student
5 comments:
Well I never knew Bradford students could be so pompous. WHo uses th word 'ruddy' these days? It's not 1953!
We really dont need pompous articles like this to defend the right to animal testing. It's legal, simple fact. These protestors should protest illegal stuff.
Intrestingly the tactic at one time used by SHAC with students was to get them to investigate the issue of animal testing presumably on the theory that once they saw a couple of pictures of fluffy bunnies they would all become supporters however the idea backfired when students at Oxford did exactly that and then produced a paper that illustrated the BENEFITS of animal testing.
SHAC no longer uses this tactic prefering instead to use the 20 year old pictures of testing methods that are no longer used in the UK. It looks as though Bradford students are also not fooled by SHAC lies.
In reply to 'anonymous', I agree it's a little pompous but it's interesting to see how the tide is turning against groups like SHAC because younger people are no longer just accepting what they are told but are investigating the sort of evidence presented by groups like SHAC and are reaching their own conclusions based on facts rather than emotive and unscientific melodrama.
In the end this demo despite a massive effort fielded about 10 rather sad, lonely looking individuals who hung around for a while outside the IPI building where medical research takes place before presumably boredom took over and they shuffled off to the main Richmond Building which is the admin part of the campus. Mark Cleary, the vice chancellor went and had a chat with them for a couple of minutes out of curiosity and after that the group drifted off.
Most students were somewhat bewildered by the display with the majority thinking it was a CND demo that had been advertised for the same day.
I assume they will be posting a report to the usual AR sites as well as Indymedia claiming success, hundreds in attendance, people inspired, blah blah blah in the standard SHAC manner.
you should probably re check the educational histiories of the members of SHAC and maybe look in to the studies they are conducting while in prison.
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