Stuff The Rats
First off an explanation of the title. I have a radio show (go to strathclydefusion.com on thu 2-3 for a listen!) and a segment of which is named Stuff the rants in which whatever is bugging me that week.
It all started when in a biology practical we were told that instead of actually disecting a rat we had to watch this rather long and useless video instead because the british government, who not content from saving the poor little foxes felt the need to step in and save the rat (which was responisble for wipping out half of europe at one point) from the evils of students learning biology at apparently the top university for my particular course in the United Kingdom. I benfited nothing from the experience and neither did the rat all because some tree-hugging, bearded, jeremy-clarkson-hating, veegans didn't agree.
I'm sorry but why is there point more important than ours? By ours I mean the majority of people in that lab who one day are going to go on to work in the NHS who would have acquired a great deal of anatomical knowledge since the rat is as close to disecting a human as possible with disecting a human, which we also know are in short supply and thus stricly for the medical students only.
What has the rat ever done for humanity except spread the plague across Europe?Overpopulate then ravish our cities and leave their droppings all over the place is the answer. It's also not as if before we cut it open we wrang its neck after torturing it for hours!
Which brings me to my point (I'm sure you'll be pleased) Don't interfer with things that you don't understand. There are countless numbers of organisations out there full of members who bring it upon themselves to regulate us scientists, who would like nothing more than practical work, research and learning to come to a complete halt just in case there is a possibitly than some little e-coli may be hurt in the process. There were plenty of protesters out on the streets, none of whom with anything even remotely resembling a science honours degree, when the first cloning experiments took place.
What if it releases some scary mutant e-coli into the environment that will go round eating your children? Well, I'm going to let you into a secret here, this is a list of everything that has gone wrong when tampering with bacterial gentics, the process by which we now make insulin, are you ready?
Well, here it is:
It all started when in a biology practical we were told that instead of actually disecting a rat we had to watch this rather long and useless video instead because the british government, who not content from saving the poor little foxes felt the need to step in and save the rat (which was responisble for wipping out half of europe at one point) from the evils of students learning biology at apparently the top university for my particular course in the United Kingdom. I benfited nothing from the experience and neither did the rat all because some tree-hugging, bearded, jeremy-clarkson-hating, veegans didn't agree.
I'm sorry but why is there point more important than ours? By ours I mean the majority of people in that lab who one day are going to go on to work in the NHS who would have acquired a great deal of anatomical knowledge since the rat is as close to disecting a human as possible with disecting a human, which we also know are in short supply and thus stricly for the medical students only.
What has the rat ever done for humanity except spread the plague across Europe?Overpopulate then ravish our cities and leave their droppings all over the place is the answer. It's also not as if before we cut it open we wrang its neck after torturing it for hours!
Which brings me to my point (I'm sure you'll be pleased) Don't interfer with things that you don't understand. There are countless numbers of organisations out there full of members who bring it upon themselves to regulate us scientists, who would like nothing more than practical work, research and learning to come to a complete halt just in case there is a possibitly than some little e-coli may be hurt in the process. There were plenty of protesters out on the streets, none of whom with anything even remotely resembling a science honours degree, when the first cloning experiments took place.
What if it releases some scary mutant e-coli into the environment that will go round eating your children? Well, I'm going to let you into a secret here, this is a list of everything that has gone wrong when tampering with bacterial gentics, the process by which we now make insulin, are you ready?
Well, here it is:
