Unbelievable! In a recent story out of Auburn University, a vet student takes on a role better suited to a Tom Clancy novel than to an ivory tower academic setting.
Employing hidden cameras and defying confidentiality agreements...
I wish PETA would crawl under a rock and stay there...
I don't think this student should get any money back. Unless he was a total idoit or lives under a rock himself, he must have some clue was the what PETA is really about. I'm sure there was nobody holding a gun to his head making him to this although if it came out that somebody did, it wouldn't surprise me. PETA is like a dog or child that is allowed to do whatever they want..any attention is good attention.
You know, I don't think the PETA spy is an Auburn vet student. Look where the commas were in that story. I'd bet you he was a senior lab medicine extern. Betcha he's now dr. and working for PETA or something like it by now. Bleh.
I am 100% AGAINST animal testing for any reason and I think PETA is doing a pretty good job of raising our awareness of the atrocities that are being perpetrated on helpless animals.
Well, Margie has a right to her opinion, as does we alls.
On the other hand PETA kills animals, both in their high-kill shelters and on rural roadsides. After well more than a year of waiting, the trial of PETA employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook, who crossed state lines to slaughter adoptable and rescued animals in 2005, then discarded the bodies in hefty bags in a restaurant dumpster, is finally under way.
So, sure, let's have an end to "attrocities". Maybe as the next order of business PETA can cut back on their own.
As to Margie's comment: I'd love PETA to do its job to raise awareness. I have plenty of issues with animal testing as well. While I don't agree with some of PETA's tenets, I hold that they have every right to pursue changes accross the board. But I cannot abide PETA's tactics. I don't believe in violence, threats of violence or any other essentially destructive ways of achieving change in our society. I believe they actually do the cause a great disservice by equating animal activism to radical fundamentalism. Until it changes its ways I'll keep on criticizing them.
Well, off the subject of PETA for a minute, I'm puzzled. Is there no exchange of information between medical doctors who do research and doctors of veterinary medicine who do the same? I am positive that heart transplants were done on animals before they were ever done on humans...apes, chimpanzees, one or the other. A touchy subject with me. But if the knowledge is there, why hasn't it been passed on to small animal vets?
Sure, we share. But once it's done on humans we take that info and have to extrapolate a lot. not all species are created equal. Transplants are especialy touchy in dogs. With 13 blood types I'm sure you can begin to guess why.
I should have been clearer. I didn't mean the info on human transplants should be shared, I meant the info on the animal experimentation that led to human transplants if those experiments were successful. You wouldn't need to extrapolate. (Granted, they may not have experimented on dogs in the case of kidney transplants.)
At least 13...that's why crossmatching dogs before transfusions is so critical and possibly why rejection rates in dogs are so high. Cats are another story. Kidney transplants are certainly not routine but they do work. BTW, kidney transplants in dogs can be effective. the University of california at Davis has one case that I believe is already 8 yrs post-surgery and doing fine.
I sometimes wish kidney transplant had been an option when I lost my 16-year-old cockatiel to kidney failure this summer. I'm not sure if I would have gone for it though, due to the issues of the surgery, anesthesia, and rejection drugs, but if we feel those things are acceptable for humans, it's definitely worth considering for our lifelong animal companions.
Thank you for mentioning your cockatiel. I grew up with one and bonded as well with him as with my dogs. Because I don't treat them I sometimes forget how attached we can get to our avian pets.
My pleasure for mentioning it. Most of my friends were entirely sympathetic - with some I'd been trading stories about how Peeper was similar to their 3-year old human child. One person asked me what the big deal was. It's true that lots of people keep their birds cage bound, where they're no more interactive than fish, but I cried in 9th grade when my *plenaria* died, so yeah, of course a bird is going to be a Big Deal.
At one point the vet told me I should consider at what point I would want to "put her to sleep," and all I could think of then was "we wouldn't put a human to sleep for kidney failure, so I won't do it for my bird." Though she sadly did suffer some, in the end she passed away without ever suffering enough to make me reconsider that choice.
The vets and vet students who treated her for the kidney failure were absolutely wonderful. They kept telling me how friendly Peeper was - she was apparently a total attention whore her whole time at the animal hospital, and kept begging everyone for scratches. :)
Answer: Because they're more interested in getting people to do what they want, as opposed to doing what's right for the animals.
I don't think this student should get any money back. Unless he was a total idoit or lives under a rock himself, he must have some clue was the what PETA is really about. I'm sure there was nobody holding a gun to his head making him to this although if it came out that somebody did, it wouldn't surprise me. PETA is like a dog or child that is allowed to do whatever they want..any attention is good attention.
On the other hand PETA kills animals, both in their high-kill shelters and on rural roadsides.
After well more than a year of waiting, the trial of PETA employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook, who crossed state lines to slaughter adoptable and rescued animals in 2005, then discarded the bodies in hefty bags in a restaurant dumpster, is finally under way.
So, sure, let's have an end to "attrocities". Maybe as the next order of business PETA can cut back on their own.
Dogs have 13 blood types?
At one point the vet told me I should consider at what point I would want to "put her to sleep," and all I could think of then was "we wouldn't put a human to sleep for kidney failure, so I won't do it for my bird." Though she sadly did suffer some, in the end she passed away without ever suffering enough to make me reconsider that choice.
The vets and vet students who treated her for the kidney failure were absolutely wonderful. They kept telling me how friendly Peeper was - she was apparently a total attention whore her whole time at the animal hospital, and kept begging everyone for scratches. :)