Observe the following RPSE pieces that actually got handed in, as opposed to the greatness, but un-handed-in-ness of Dead Magazine. They are in almost exactly the same style and layout as when they were handed in. Spot the comedy of the fake diseases in the first one, and spot the general all round amusifying joy of the second.
"What rights?" some may say.
Should animals be treated as we please, exploiting them for our own selfish ends? Or do two thousand years of technological advancement and biological evolution simply not get counted, as we treat animals as our equals. Each end of the argument seems ridiculous at first: animals are living, breathing, aware beings so we cannot subject them to the cruelty that supposedly goes on. However, humans are obviously higher life forms than animals (even the most intelligent chimp cannot rival the intelligence and learning potential of a child), so we should get some credit.
I am completely against the use of animals in circuses. I am also completely against the idea of circuses. I would not want to see an elephant marched around a brightly lit ring of sand with some fool sat on his back getting pied. Circuses are relics of the Victorian age of cretinous behaviour on the human"s part. Anybody that tries to defend the entertainment value of circuses has either fewer brain cells than heads, or a flower that squirts water.
Many people support the use of animals in scientific testing. Doctors have a list of twenty major breakthroughs which couldn"t have been made without the use of animal research:
All of these would still affect humans if animals had never been used in testing. Scientists hope to solve the following diseases and ailments over the next few decades:
Who can argue with a record like that? The animal rights activists can, and there are certainly plenty of them as well. A quick tour of the Internet reveals several groups of people who seem intent on doing everything from marching up and down outside Laboratories, to freely providing explosives schematics for the general public to aid in their destruction of all testing facilities. Activist groups rarely get the message across, though. There are hundreds of organisations that constantly petition for varying levels of abolishment of animal testing.
Those who would seek to abolish animal research often claim that the use of animals in biomedical research is unnecessary because information can be obtained by alternative methods, such as test tubes and computers.
What is often not realised is that scientists have strong ethical, economic and legal obligations to use animals in research only when absolutely necessary.
A lot of effort goes into trying to reduce the numbers of animals used, and trying to develop new methods to replace animals. As a result, the number of Laboratory animals used annually in this country has almost halved in the last 20 years.
Non-animal methods - tissue culture, computer modelling, studies of patients and populations - are very widely used. In fact, only about five pence in every pound spent on medical research goes on animal studies. The word alternatives, often used to describe these non-animal methods, can lead to confusion because these methods are generally used alongside animal studies, not instead of them. All these techniques have their place, and it is rarely possible to substitute one for another.
There are stages in any research programme when it is not enough to know how individual molecules, cells or tissues behave. The living body is much more than just a collection of these parts, and we need to understand how they interact, how they are controlled. There are ethical limits to the experiments that we can do using people, so the only alternative is to use the most suitable animal to study a particular disease or biological function.
As science progresses, it may be possible to reduce the numbers of animals used in some areas. In other areas, the numbers of animals may increase. For instance, new and better animal models may be developed. It is now possible to breed animals with exactly the same genetic faults that cause some human diseases. So mice with cystic fibrosis, for example, have the main symptoms as children with cystic fibrosis. These mice are the ideal way to test gene therapy, which may offer a medical breakthrough for the disease.
Just as it is necessary to use animals in the study of normal body functions or the study of disease mechanisms, it is also necessary at the later stage of developing and testing treatments. It is unethical and illegal to expose patients to new medicines without being confident that they are likely to benefit and not be seriously harmed. Treatments must, therefore, be tested first in animals to establish their probable effectiveness and safety. They are then tested on human volunteers. The process is not perfect but testing in whole animals is by far the best way to protect people. Animal tests ensure that obviously toxic substances are not given to human beings and that doctors in charge of the human volunteer studies are made aware of possible serious side effects.
For example, it is difficult to even imagine what range of test tube techniques or the complexity of computer systems would be necessary to mimic the amazing events that occur during the development and birth of a new baby. With present day technology, this is simply not possible. By contrast, appropriate whole animal tests can detect potentially harmful effects of new treatments on fetal development and other events during pregnancy. Thus another thalidomide disaster is unlikely.
No one wants to use animals unnecessarily or to cause them unnecessary suffering. The guiding principles in animal research today are called the three R"s:
Groups protesting against the use of animals in cosmetics and the vivisection of animals are the only ones who have a valid point, in my opinion. Vivisection seems extremely wrong (although if absolutely necessary, the animal can be well sedated) and should be stopped soon. The advancement of computer aided medicine is very fast. In five or ten years time, we will probably have the ability to simulate the entire human body on a computer, dispensing with the need to test on animals.
Using animals in cosmetics is also a completely pointless thing to do. I am especially against it, not only because of the cruelty to the animals being used in the process, but because of the kind of emotionally insecure, tarted up females who spend their time plastering their faces, desperately copying americanisms and facial condescendence off the television and drowning in perfume in an attempt to hide the stench of deceit and to instill some vague meaning into their shallow little lives.
Using animals as a source of fur is rapidly becoming obsolete as modern fabrics can easily imitate the look and feel of real fur. People who buy real fur coats just to say they are wearing real fur are not worth the ink it would take to write about them.
"Consider how the species we call whales have dwelt on this planet 56 million years longer than we have and yet have never found it necessary to invent Trident submarines and other fanciful ways of destroying life" - Matthew Fox, Theologian
The necessity for Trident submarines is not the only thing that whales haven"t found. A way out of the ocean, for example. I can see the point of this quote (that weapons of war shouldn"t be necessary), but there are some odd aspects. By Trident submarines, I assume he means nu weapons, since a Trident submarine itself is no more dangerous than your average 27,000 tonnes of steel. Since he generalises weapons by referring to a specific type of weapon (much as we generalise the vacuum cleaner in the form of a "Hoover"), perhaps the antithesis of this argument should involve a generalisation about whales.
Whales do not need fanciful ways of destroying life, as the simple ones are often the best. As a whale sucks in hundreds of gallons of water, it filters out the algae and consumes them. In other words, kills them. Although this may be thought of as part of the food chain, perhaps humans are also part of the food chain, and Trident submarines are our way of surviving.
By suggesting that whales have been around for 56 million years, he somehow implies that they are superior. Since they cannot have learned to be "peaceful" (since evolution doesn't happen, remember?), they must have always had this attribute. So the 56 million years is completely irrelevant, and perhaps shows how easily people are impressed/scared by big numbers.
"In the midst of all other creatures, humanity is the most significant yet the most dependent upon the others." Hildegard of Bingen, mystic
A mystic? What"s that supposed to be? Every creature is dependent on every other creature. Without food chains, carbon cycles and ecosystems, no creature would be around. So this quote is reduced to “Humanity is the most significant creature.” Hardly original, eh? That"s what being a mystic does to you, probably.
"If as small an increase as ten percent in the meat eating population of the earth were to occur, the planet would undergo tremendous food shortages as it is stripped of its remaining green mantle. As well as famine decimating the population, the increased risk of heart attacks and cancer would reduce life spans worldwide."
If even 10 percent more people turned to a meat eating diet, the universe would explode in an irrational paradox. Since (around about) 95% of the world"s population already have a meat eating diet, this 10% rise would mean that 105% of the population would become meat eaters. So not only would the earth be "stripped of its remaining green mantle", it would probably be stripped of everything else, since there would effectively be a 5%+ demand for meat over and above what anybody wants. This is ly impossible, unless you"re the kind of person who would, for example, want to burn somebody at the stake for not agreeing with your beliefs. However, both statistics may be wrong, as there are different methods of measuring everything. Not to mention that statistics can prove anything.
There is not even a tenuous link between meat eating, heart attacks and cancer. This quote is blatant propaganda trying to show up the "evil ways of the meat eating population". Another statement made here is that meat eating causes world hunger. Not strictly true. It would also be possible for me to suggest that vegetarianism causes world hunger, since the problem lies not in the land required, but in the misallocation of these resources.