one down...five to go

as of 1:45 today, i am completely done with biology lab...until next semester. but unless i'm missing some aspect of the grading system for lab, i should have 100% for it, which will hopefully bring up my bio grade as a whole since i haven't done so hot on those exams. we shall see.

my physical that was supposed to be yesterday afternoon didn't happen, so now it is scheduled for 4:30 today. hopefully something else doesn't prevent me from getting it again.


ever since class on tuesday, i've been thinking about something dr. white said in ethics. we were talking about coetzee's book, the lives of animals, and he said something (i wish i could remember exactly what he said) about the rightness of eating animals, or using their products.

aren't we appaled and disgusted by just the thought of eating the flesh of another person? wouldn't we be equally distraught if we saw someone walking down the street wearing a jacket made of human hair, or perhaps carrying a bag that was made of human skin?

so what's the difference between humans and animals? most answers are that humans have this thing we call 'reason,' claiming that justifies the murder of innocent and helpless animals. i still can't even understand the rationale in that. apparently our 'reason' isn't working out too well for us. does that mean i can go eat a baby or a mentally ill person whose reason isn't fully developed for one reason or another? no, of course not. i would undeniably be branded an evil and disturbed person and would be punished in various ways. (i have just remembered what dr. white said, so i will leave my arguments here for another day.)

we are bringing countless numbers of animals into the world for the sole purpose of eating them. they have become mere objects to us. just a means to an end. i believe it was kant who said that we must treat people as ends in themselves. i will go so far (or not so far) as to suggest that we must treat all creatures as ends in themselves.

and thus comes my hypocrisy. i work in a biomedical lab which does research on mice. we have mice...probably around two hundred. they are bred and those which do not have the genes we are looking for are sacrificed. i never liked calling it "sacrifice" though. don't try and make it sound pretty or meaningful. they're being murdered. that is all there is to it. i have murdered mice on three occasions. they are placed in a small plastic box that has a tube from the tank of carbon monoxide running into it. the mice are placed in the box and the lid is clasped shut. once the tank is turned on, the mice begin to jump around trying to get oxygen. eventually they stop jumping around. their eyes, which were once red and bright, are now black because the blood is gone. unable to control their bladders, almost all of them at least urinate sometime during the ordeal. it is horrible to watch. and it is even worse to know that i am one of the killers, just like everyone else.

i will not sit here and say that they're just mice so they don't matter, because that is the same justification used by those who eat animals. i will not say that their deaths are enhancing the lives of humans through the research that is being done, because that too can be used to justify eating animals. no matter how you look at it, we use animals in horrid ways. i cannot justify what i do. it is a job i took as a freshman. i was told i wouldn't have to go up to the animal room, but that was soon untrue.

i am in the midst of a moral dilemma. i know that if i truly believe what i said that i shouldn't work in the lab. i do believe what i said, but it is more complicated than that. or is it? can it be? is it more complicated for the animals that die every day because of people like me? no. they don't have a choice. so what is mine?