Memorial walk for animal victims set for April 24
Editor: I come from a generation who, lacking information technology, had to read books, newspapers and do research on a subject in a library.
Although I still enjoy a quiet place with a book or the morning newspaper spread out on the kitchen table before one of my cats does his yoga stretch on it, I do, more and more, rely on the internet for information and on social media to share news.
But there are still people whose only news comes from a radio, television or newspapers.
For those people, I sometimes pen a letter to the editor. The subject has to be local and safely mundane to be published, but occasionally one of my thought-provoking (I hope) letters gets by the editor for my friends and acquaintances to read in print.
Such lax oversight in editors is rare, but I’m submitting this letter in the hope he or she did not sleep well and will accept my letter for publication while bleary eyed.
Today, my letter asks why, in spite of information freely available on the internet, people remain ignorant about subjects that require critical thinking. Indeed, if the information is troubling, many willfully turn away to cocoon themselves in blissful ignorance.
I would sleep so much better were I able to do the same. I would not be writing this letter. However, I am what I am.
Today (with apologies to the gentle, but illused milk cow), I write to kick the sacred cow which is medical experimentation on ani- mals in laboratories. It is a huge cruel industry, which has failed to produce cures of major human diseases. How huge? An estimated 115-127 million animals are sacrificed each year.
Mice and rats are the predominant lab animals, but there are also primates, beagles (12,500 beagles a year in one Canadian laboratory alone), and at Texas A&M University golden retrievers have suffered disgusting experimentation for 30 years without producing a cure for humans. But that study continues.
I hesitate to write anything unkind about the learned researchers who lead animal vivisection and other lethal experiments. I will only say that I have no respect for them.
On a positive note, younger, more enlightened medical men and women, educated in modern technology, have turned away from using animal models to non-animal alternatives with successful results.
Anyone wishing to pick up educational literature, with lists of medical successes resulting from non-medical research, is invited to participate in a memorial walk to be held in Kelowna on Monday, April 24, at 11:30 a.m., starting at The Sails monument. See the Facebook page World Day for Animals in Laboratories for more details.
Helen Schiele, Kelowna