Editor,
Max Ashbrook Fitzpatrick's call for continued animal suffering at UNM "because it serves as a reminder that our government tortures humans" is as perverse as it is nonsensical.
To his credit, Fitzpatrick does correctly parallel the physical and mental wartime trauma suffered by humans with the pains endured by mice at UNM's laboratories. Mice were hung by their tails with adhesive tape, forced to swim until nearly drowning and subjected to electric shocks to the point of suffering "spontaneous abortion" brought about by intense stress as part of a high school science fair project. Mice are inquisitive and loving animals, and such "torture of the most extreme pain and distress category" - as UNM's former head veterinarian Daniel Theele labeled this experiment - is inexcusable.
However, Fitzpatrick irrationally argues that since human torture techniques are allegedly "part of the UNM community and the leaders it chooses," the torture of mice in labs is justified if we are to "be consistent with our moralizing." Kindness is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Instead of arguing against "selective ethical concern" to justify continued animal suffering, Fitzpatrick's time might be better spent applying his argument to combat needless and cruel experiments on animals.
The crude experiments on mice under fire at UNM were entered in the International Science and Engineering Fair, which is run by Science Service. Some of the cruel experiments on animals that made it to the finals of the 2007 science fair, which was held at UNM, include inflicting brain injury in rats by blocking the main artery and depriving the organ of blood, repeatedly injecting mice with a common toxic chemical pollutant to determine the damage done to cells and inducing a stroke in mice and then cutting them open to examine new nerve endings that formed.
These invasive and deadly projects would not have been allowed in the Science Service's competing fair, the Science Talent Search, since that fair's policy states: "No projects involving live nonhuman vertebrate animal experimentation will be eligible."
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
On the contrary, the ISEF's animal research policy allows high school students to conduct experiments on animals, including those that fall under USDA pain category level D, which involves procedures that cause animals to "develop discernible clinical signs indicating pain, distress or significant physiological changes . ." Such "selective ethical concern" for animals depending on what competition the science fair project is entered in is ridiculous and should be stopped.
To learn how you can help animals tortured for high school science fair projects, please visit Peta2.com.
Shalin G. Gala
Research associate, PETA
