another look at UW monkey testing

local activist, rick marolt, has an op-ed piece in the isthmus today calling for more scrutiny of the university's animal research agenda.

he makes some good points, like this:

"damaging a monkey's brain outside a laboratory would be criminal cruelty."

no matter what side of the issue you may fall on it's worth a read.

primate research debate

last night's debate on the ethics of non-human primate research at the uw was interesting but went nowhere. kinda like congress and health care reform, only more civil.

some highlights:
rick bogle of alliance for animals - "we are going to die. we can't fool ourselves into thinking that by experimenting on animals that we are going to find some magic bullet to make us immortal."

paul kaufman, uw chair of ophthalmics dept. - "if you're going to argue we're all equal, then this discussion is over. There's no reason to go on. but in fact there are differences. ... if you say an animal shares some characteristics with humans, that doesn't make them human beings."

in the end, we are monkeys, too. monkeys testing on monkeys. dance monkey dance.