Give me a moment…..*Recovering from chills created by the woman in the photo*…..okay. This pleasant looking person was recently bitten by a monkey in a University of Pittsburgh lab. First of all, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me a normally very docile kitten attacked this woman simply because she gives off evil vibes. Second of all, the articles speaking of the “attack” are focusing on the lack of safety measures of course, rather than hitting the real issue on the head: monkeys and all other creatures should NOT be in a lab being tortured. Can anyone blame the monkey for lashing out? Would you not do the same if you were constantly poked and prodded meanwhile being forced to stay confined to a small space for the entirety of your life? I think anyone, any creature would.
The poor macaque that lashed out on this woman was named “Grabby” because he apparently was always grabbing anything within reach. Clearly “Grabby” was suffering mentally. “Grabby” along with his fellow imprisoned primates (at least 30 macaques) are being injected and tortured for the purpose of studying tuberculosis, dengue, influenza and avian flu. The macaques appear to be used mostly for the tuberculosis studies, so Boyle (the lab tech) was concerned about TB. Poor woman was concerned about contracting TB even though she readily supports the injecting of helpless creatures with that very ailment. I have absolutely no compassion for those contributing to the torture of these amazing creatures, whether they be what are considered lowly rabbits or human-like primates.
Apparently the University of Pittsburgh was given a $11.4 million to study tuberculosis by the Gates Foundation. Yes, Bill Gates. All the more reason for me to hate him, and I already did since Windows Vista is absolute crap! So contact the Gates Foundation and vent your frustrations! Be sure to let him know how crappy Vista is while you are at it too! (And to stop those piece of crap Mojave commercials, clearly tricking people into liking Vista is the only way they WILL like Vista!) You can also contact University of Pittsburgh by going to their contact page.
And before I go, here is a lovely tidbit by a U of Pitt professor:
“Why do we have to give drugs for six months to cure TB?” said JoAnne Flynn, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Pitt. “Why aren’t the drugs capable of killing TB in two weeks? That was Bill Gates’ question. It’s a great question and seems like such a basic question, but we don’t yet have an answer.”
Hmm, sounds to me like the reason these monkeys are being tortured are for impatience, not for more effective drugs. The current drugs (and I am no expert in TB) appear to work, just not in a time frame deemed proper by people. Clearly, the drugs on the market DO work, therefore implying that these drugs can be manipulated to make them more effective….a task that could be done in a petri dish, not in a defenseless monkey. Although I suppose some would argue the monkey is not defenseless due to the “damage” Grabby was able to do to that woman up there, but if any one of us were in his situation we all would have done the same or worse. I don’t know about you, but after reading that woman’s sob story about her inability to possibly work in her field anymore brings a tear to my eye….now there is one less person unable to torture lab animals! Good job Grabby! Bravo! Now we just need all the monkeys, rabbits, rats, mice, cats, dogs etc. to rebel and give their lab techs what is coming to them!
