I wrote this one week ago, but wanted to post it here too.

Today was the start of the Laboratory Animal Course that I am taking.

I do not want to perform animal experiments, neither now nor in the future, but it is an obligatory course for my master, as it educates students to become researchers in the field of medicine.

It has only been one day of lectures, but there were sooo many impressions already. During the day, I’ve felt like crying a few times (but didn’t of course, it’s still a classroom), I’ve felt like engaging in discussion, I’ve felt like writing about what I learnt every other minute.

But I’m not in the mood anymore. Hopefully I manage to get my thoughts together to write a proper piece about this some time during the course, because it’s quite important to me to think about the animals, in these surroundings that think of animal experiments as something that can be postponed by using alternatives, but is eventually unavoidable.

I understand this, but I am also not ready to take a definitive stance as to whether I am for or against animal testing for medical purposes. An ethical expert talked about moral status, and those in favour of animal testing usually regard humans as having a higher moral status than animals. I disagree and think their moral status is equal, but then maybe an analogy could be drawn between humans using animals for testing and carnivores using animals for food? It’s just the way nature works?

I don’t know.

And I feel like I am the only one in my class who has this problem with the basics of Yes or No, instead of just with the details of how and what.

The prevailing emotion that I am feeling at the moment is pity that my room is too small to house a pet; I would love to secretly rescue one of the animals.



I would love for people to reply to this post, because this really keeps lingering in my mind at the moment. What are your feelings on animal testing??