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What is your immediate reaction to this picture?

"Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An' fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't.

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld.

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!"

--Robert Burns
 
ksinger said:
It amazes me how freaked out people get at the mere THOUGHT of a mousetrap.(Remember, no mouse was harmed here, so this whole thing really IS a mental tempest in a teacup) There is that other thread on death right now. How much more squeamish can we prove ourselves to be about it than this thread?

Rodents have done us great harm AND great good. Both instances involved death. Our deaths (and their own) by the millions from and because of, the diseases they bear, and their deaths in labs on our behalf.

Remember, most of the last hundred year's medical advances, have been done using MICE studies - using mice specifically bred for the purpose. One site put it more eloquently than I could, and gets the point across:

"Animal research is the foundation for virtually every medical breakthrough over the past century. From antibiotics to blood transfusions, from dialysis to organ transplantation, from vaccinations to chemotherapy, bypass surgery and joint replacement, practically every present-day protocol for the prevention, treatment, cure and control of disease, pain and suffering is based on knowledge attained through research with laboratory animals."

I seriously doubt ANYONE here has eschewed medical care on moral grounds because mice were used to develop their treatment. Please do pipe up if you have, but I'm not holding my breath.

So, are they cute? Depends on the person, but yeah, I guess. Are they disease vectors? Yes, definitely. Are they animals we have and continue to use to our benefit - that DIE on our behalf? Yes. Do we let them live or not depending on the situation? Yes. All of those. Morally ambiguous perhaps, but there it is. Deal with it.

It's time this thread got a bit of perspective.
Click to expand...
Perspective.... Huh....
I wrote a long and heated argument about this but decided to erase it. You are entitled to your opinion and I mine. Diversity is what makes the world go round and I'm not going to make this topic into some argument about animal abuse. Bottom line, I want to say is that yes, we needed mice in the past to help us with medical advances but technology has progressed so much, we DO have other means of testing now that doesn't have to do with testing on animals. It just costs more. But for me, I am willing to pay that extra premium to know that even one rabbit or mouse or pig or cow or any animal was saved.
 
I should probably leave this alone, but to imagine that we currently have viable alternatives to animal testing is an awfully convenient fiction.

I'm not talking about testing nailpolish, I'm talking about testing drug delivery vectors on lung tissue from cystic fibrosis patients, and testing polymers for permanent implants... when your PI tells you about scrubbing out and treating an implant to try and prevent further bacterial growth, and that it'll probably last another couple of months, the rats you just checked on don't even make the radar. If we could manufacture synthetic alternatives the pharmaceuticals wouldn't keep paying universities and medical schools to keep trying to use them for testing...

We could always start paying people to be test subjects - it would certainly be more efficient, and we could narrow the uncertainty considerably, but people would cry foul there too, so...
 
Eeep! Run! :errrr:
 
Spiders. We should test things out on spiders. :errrr:

I'd rather be glad someone could live b/c of something tested on 1000 mice than 1000 mice be alive while people died.

I don't like animal testing. But I see it as a necessary "evil" I guess to call it, until we can come up w/a better solution.

Prisoners? Oh I know, perfect-sex offenders. I'm for that.

ETA: I think mice are cute. If there was one in the house and I saw it I would baby talk it ooo lookit a wittle mousie whose a cute wittle mousie awww. And then have JD find the mouse traps if my cats aren't going to bother with it.
 
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