Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Bill Maher's New Rules

If you’re playing a sport where most of the speed comes from gravity, you’re not an athlete, you’re a weight!

Get ready TO, I'm comming again!

It’s been three years, well exactly three years and a month, that I’ve been living in Montreal and I never forget the first day and the first glance. I cannot describe how discouraged I got when I saw the city for the first time. I mean, when you hear all those raving about how beautiful “Paris of the North America” is, discouragement is almost guaranteed! I don’t blame anybody. In fact, I should have guessed my self that a city which has been built by some fur merchants and has never had any form of aristocracy, let alone monarchy, can’t be as beautiful as Paris, Vienna or any other European city but one always tends to believe what he likes to believe. Even the first pictures that I took from Montreal were horrendous, reflecting my feeling toward the city. Some rusty air-conditioning fans, on top of an ugly ugly rooftop!

But like not-a-conventional-beautiful girl, who doesn’t catch your eyes at the first sight but the way she moves, talks and behaves will eventually makes you fall in love with her, I got soon hunted by the sexy and somewhat attractive character of this charming lady. An affair, which has been lasted till today.

This weekend, I’m going to Toronto again. She has also managed to change my view somehow drastically in the past visits and something’s telling me that she can do more.

But honestly, with this appearance, she got to have quite a personality :)

Stop testing on Animals...what does it really mean?

I like to call them insiders who sabotage every group from within by neutralizing all the efforts of sane and moderate activists, fighting for the same cause but in a much civilized manner. I’m talking about extremists. Those who give the people in charge, the luxury of diverting public’s opinions from the real problem by magnifying the act of bunch of anarchists, stereotyping anybody who talks about the same issue.

And this time, the case is the same old “fighting against testing drugs on animals”. A precious cause and some genuinely valuable efforts that have been tarnished by some who vandalizing properties, beating researchers and black mailing their families.

Just in England, they’ve gone so far that the government now has got enough support to publicly back up pro-testing movement to the point that Tony Blair himself signed a petition, supporting the continuation of the testing, something unheard of so far.
Well, that was exactly what we need. Some people marching in the streets, shouting “performing tests on animals are necessary for human’s sake” as if all those activists are some lunatics who want to save rats and guinea pigs at the cost of people’s lives!

So let’s make some points clear so you don’t think all those against testing are crazy, irrational or idealist. What they say (those with at least 80% of their brain cells still functioning!) simply are,

1. Test on animals should only be performed when it’s absolutely necessary to save lives. So it’s ok if you want to test anti-Cancer or anti-Aids drugs, but it’s not Ok when you torture and kill animals for heart burn medications or much worse, cosmetic products!

2. A huge amount of test being performed on poor animals is downright redundant. (they say 70%. I think it has been exaggerated but even 25% is already too much!). This is not hard to comprehend since anybody who has worked in an office has an idea about how much resources (paper for instance) is being wasted every day and there is no reason we assume the same pattern is not followed in labs! There’s only a small and minor difference and that is, those animals can feel the pain and they can’t be recycled!

3. Testing on animals is not a reliable way of insuring new drugs are safe since even those small genetic differences make some successfully tested drugs on rats, dogs and even monkeys, almost lethal when tested on human beings (they are hundreds of documented examples, all over the world). So it’s rational if one expect drug companies to invest on developing alternative ways and to support those methods that exist, not only to reduce the number of animals being subjected to tests, but also to secure the health of those volunteers in final stages of testing.

In other words, they are alternative ways, not for all procedures but for lots of them and also there are ways to maximize the efficiency of the methods, when performing a test on animals is essential.

The medical and pharmaceutical industry should realize that every life of every animal is precious and if it’s not absolutely necessary to take it, it’s absolutely unnecessary to do so. It may cost a bit more, but it worth it to the last penny! That’s all. Is it so much to ask?


Comment to my self: In fact, in the world that we can’t convince people not to buy fur coats, or SUV’s or at least not to vote for an anti-environmentalist stupid ass like Bush, maybe it is too much to ask. Sometimes I think if the slavery has not been abolished so far, there were certainly no way in this age that anybody could even propose that, considering its devastating effect on businesses and the economical growth and other craps! Think about it!