Too much of a softy
One thing I could never bring myself to do impassively is to kill animals. I always feel horrible every time I have to deal with a live animal for some lab experiment. I thought it would pass after the first time I had to dispatch a live toad in college (never did dissection in high school). Back then, I chalked it up to being an inexperienced, squeamish teenager.
Today, as a med student, I find that my threshold for these things has gone down even further. I tried to get out of injecting and killing the mice we had to use in a recent experiment. It was bad enough we were going to make the poor things have some blood cell abnormalities (thanks to a drug we used), but to kill them too? In the end, I agreed to take part in another portion of the experiment, but I really had to turn away while my friends killed the mice. I didn't even want to listen---I told everyone that since I'd kept hamsters as a kid, I couldn't imagine killing rodents. Ever.
I find I'd rather find a way to safely shoo an earthworm out of my house instead of squishing it. Tonight, a mouse got in and my folks put out the fly paper. I wanted to find a way to save the furry thing when it got stuck on the fly paper, but it was a bit too late---it got stuck face first.
I have no idea how I'm going to survive pharmacology class next year. We have a tradition of running herbal drug tests on rats in the uni.
My take on these things is that even in the quest of knowledge, we do not have the right to hurt creatures that cannot voice out their consent or refusal to take part in our activities. It is one thing to give an experimental drug to a patient who has been told about the risks and benefits of the treatment. It's another thing to do it to a creature who will not benefit from this treatment, and may even suffer because of it.
If this med thing doesn't work out, I'm going to switch to ecology. I can't help but feel this odd connection to living things nowadays.
Today, as a med student, I find that my threshold for these things has gone down even further. I tried to get out of injecting and killing the mice we had to use in a recent experiment. It was bad enough we were going to make the poor things have some blood cell abnormalities (thanks to a drug we used), but to kill them too? In the end, I agreed to take part in another portion of the experiment, but I really had to turn away while my friends killed the mice. I didn't even want to listen---I told everyone that since I'd kept hamsters as a kid, I couldn't imagine killing rodents. Ever.
I find I'd rather find a way to safely shoo an earthworm out of my house instead of squishing it. Tonight, a mouse got in and my folks put out the fly paper. I wanted to find a way to save the furry thing when it got stuck on the fly paper, but it was a bit too late---it got stuck face first.
I have no idea how I'm going to survive pharmacology class next year. We have a tradition of running herbal drug tests on rats in the uni.
My take on these things is that even in the quest of knowledge, we do not have the right to hurt creatures that cannot voice out their consent or refusal to take part in our activities. It is one thing to give an experimental drug to a patient who has been told about the risks and benefits of the treatment. It's another thing to do it to a creature who will not benefit from this treatment, and may even suffer because of it.
If this med thing doesn't work out, I'm going to switch to ecology. I can't help but feel this odd connection to living things nowadays.