Yes, all those monkeys are going to die. Every single one of them. I never suggested otherwise.

Your slyly changing Rhesus monkey to “lab animal” is recognizable status naming, a type of negro-type word usage so that you can do with them as you will just get the lower label on them so that they are no longer 26,000 Rhesus monkeys.

You talk as if the fifty Rhesus monkeys will be all that die, but I’m inclined to believe that all 26 thousand will die in a few years, in ways you do not specify but call appropriate. According to you it would be better if there were fifty thousand so the per centage for fifty would be even smaller.

So, I know you broke your patela and went to hospital, but that is of no significance, by your own logic, since a very small percentage of persons break their patela and it’s the per centage that matters according to you. And an even smaller per centage of bloggers break their patela, so by your reasoning it is as nothing, patela breaking.

And last but not least you have added insult to injurious reasoning and word sophistry by out of nowhere implicating the Bush administration in the monkey deaths. As much as I revile Bush and Cheney, think they are war criminals, I’m not sucker enough to think you have any evidence whatsoever much less proof for your implication against them. Your head was traveling light with air and you threw it in hoping to hoodwink some Bush haters.

We will decide for ourselves what is a small per centage of anything, we don’t need you to furnish a conclusion.

I waited but I believe the readers who can catch your double talk have previously left.

I know from your approach that you are never going to discuss the money involved (26,000 monkeys) but are going to wax sentimental like the Walrus and the Carpenter. So cabbages and kings to you Greg.

Anyway, that is generally descriptive of animal research too. One doesn’t cause suffering unless it is for a good reason.

Also on the animal research front… That consideration is actually explicitly stated in the UC system guidelines. The proposal review is focused (supposedly at least) on colleagues and experts looking at the project and seeing if they can come up with any better (less suffering or preferably no animals at all) way of getting at the research question.

Interesting topic… and I look forward to your followup posts.

On the other hand, as the article cites, a current average of 50 inappropriate deaths per year, while sad, is actually a tiny percentage. If you take that as the death rate for the “job” of being a lab animal, that would not be the most dangerous job in the US.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100317/ap_on_sc/us_monkey_deaths;_ylt=AhM.eFSW0eWqtBhzJ7PiRWSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNrZmhlaW5pBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMzE3L3VzX21vbmtleV9kZWF0aHMEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM3BHBvcwM0BHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5faGVhZGxpbmVfbGlzdARzbGsDZG96ZW5zb2ZsYWJt

The whole thing of animal research must be quite profitable. I would be curious as to how much a rat costs to buy and then to keep, and how much a Rhesus monkey costs to buy and then to keep.

The link mentions a lawsuit, by a former employee, alleging falsification and fraud by the animal suppliers, which would be curious to follow.

The look in the eyes you mention deserves a comment, as in the minds of humans all is prey. As you know, it’s the eye positions that indicate prey or predator, and the best guess we have for some dinosaur fossils. We look at predators, we look at us, even if they are fruit eaters for now.

You’ve got this mixed in with hunting, an interesting connection, probably among the few available. I refer you to a book about Gabon, La mémoire du fleuve by Christian Dedet, in which the native hunter purposely leaves with an erection to go hunting, and then to the pre-historic cave paintings where all the hunters have an erection. You can include that connection.

The guy in the basement at Yale who stuffed the woman’s body in the wall– was an animal carekeeper, was sensitive about his animals, was crazy. I suspect there is a connection. I wonder about Amy Bishop and her neuro studies.

The abbatoirs go crazy.

But, a little gratuitous and unwanted advice, as possibly this whole comment, I wouldn’t get too ambitious on this if I were you. It’s dangerous territory. Also, most science bloggers are naive about the nature of man. Plainly stated, they do not speak true to experience, and perhaps it’s better that they are thus, for their children, for awhile, in the present glowing world.