Thursday extracts: Crackdown on Cruelty

I found this piece in a magazine I read at work. I'm employed as a communications officer for a charity devoted to finding humane alternatives to animal testing in laboratories. Most of the things I read are quite scientific. I thought this was a refreshing change.

(Note: I'm not having a go at farmers or anyone else whose work exploits animals in a humane way. If anyone wants to get into a discussion about the rights and wrongs of animal experimentation I'll happily direct you to my work persona, where we can have a full and frank discussion.)

Crackdown on Cruelty
While glancing through a newspaper
I paused to study there
A story of a youth
Who kicked a cat into the air.
His doing so was witnessed
By police, who chanced to be
Nearby and who were watching him
On closed-circuit TV.
The court did next to nothing with the thug.
What do I mean?
'You'll pay £60 and be supervised
By the Youth Offcending Team.'
A week before, a man who was
(In a sense) a 'pal'
Of the youth, was stopped when about to throw
Two cats in a canal.
(A passer-by said:'Give them me,'
And took them to the vet's,
And now they have been taken
Into someone's home as pets.)
I doubt that either of those culprits
Feels in any way abashed.
People who treat creatures cruelly
Really should be thrashed.
If being convicted does not bring
Real punishment, what then?
It would not be surprising
If they did the same again.
'Human rights law rules out thrashing,'
Say the liberals, 'and that's that.'
Protect the sadist, yes.
It's just a shame about the cat.

Anthony Hofler

FFF55: Animal testing

Ninety two per cent of medicines that enter human trials do not work or cause side effects. Animal tests suggested they would succeed. Aspirin kills cats, thalidomide was approved, and yet many scientists continue to promote the torture and poisoning of millions of rodents every year as the way forward.

Sadly, this is not fiction.

The original of this post had a political section here. This is the result of a lot of research I have been doing this week for my day job. 

As usual it's for Friday Flash Fiction 55. A weekly challenge hosted over on Mister Knowitall's Blog. Check it out.  Of course, he might not have had chance to put it back after the Blogger chaos!

THE ORIGINAL Paws for Thought. FFF55

My FFF55 from last week has miraculously reappeared.........

This time you have the politics too!  Feel free to ignore it all. I just thought I should let it out of cyber prison.

Ninety two per cent of medicines that enter human testing do not work, though animal tests were successful. Thalidomide was passed as safe. Aspirin kills cats (and would be banned if it was new today). Yet some scientists insist that poisoning millions of rodents each year is the way ahead. Sadly, this is not fiction.

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If you're not interested in the politics you can miss out this central bit

This has come out of something that I've been working on for my day job this week. Few people realise that the reason drugs cost so much to develop is because so much testing of potential treatments is carried out on animals, which do not have the same physiological reactions as humans.

In the past, animal tests were the best we had. These days there are so many other testing strategies based on human cells and tissues (often waste material from surgery) but the law makers and sponsors still support animal tests.

Some figures:  Of 10,000 substances that are potential drug candidates (which will undergo chemical tests and computer modelling as a first stage) around 250 will show enough promise to be tested on animals. Of those 250, only 10 will make it to human trials.  And, if we're lucky, just one will be successful.

*****

This Friday FlashFiction 55 is a response to the weekly challenge set by The G-Man at Mister Knowitall's Blog. Go see what other people have written this week.