There are more than 100,000 animals at UNC. They are not heard, they are not seen. For most of us, it will remain that way. This is why they are never talked about.
Animal experimentation is not uncommon at a research university. With UNC’s focus on biology, vivisection is standard. It is the belief among many researchers today that vivisection is a necessity, and it is quite easy for them to support this argument. However, this column is not meant to go against that argument per se. It is to state that there is an argument to begin with.
Vivisection is a controversial subject — that much we can be sure of. But while our University teaches institutionalized philosophy courses that bring it up as a subject point, and researchers even address it in bioethics courses, it is rarely talked about within the student body.
Our academic leaders either take it for granted that vivisection is right, or they simply do not care. When groups in the medical school stomach staple a group of pigs before euthanizing them, or cut open primates under anesthesia to research their nerve endings, it ought to be up for discussion. When researchers force feed ethanol to mice — whether it benefits humanity or is complete pseudoscience — there is a morality issue there.
All of the above experiments have taken place at UNC. So, why the silence?
There are several reasons, most importantly being that we never see it. And we never see it for the same reason we never see other forms of systematic animal abuse: If we saw it, we would not like it. For example, the largest slaughterhouse in the U.S. is located in a rural area, on the side of a highway.
And the relatively small number of people that do witness it on a daily basis — from lab workers to wage laborers — rely on animal testing to make a living.
However, if an average person saw a beagle getting its teeth removed and replaced with putty before being euthanized, he would probably think, “That’s kind of cruel.”
Another reason we never hear about the animals at our University is that UNC has $90 million tied up in research grants related to animal testing. If we did see them, then $90 million would be up for discussion. Why would UNC want that?
