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Thursday, November 2, 2006

On the Use and Abuse of Animals

posted by on November 2 at 11:52 AM

I’ve spent a little time killing animals and writing about killing animals. I wrung the head off a pigeon. I shot a rabbit and a squirrel. I sautéed slugs. But even I was a little shocked to read this in today’s lead story in the New York Times:

“My pig?” he said. “They shot him twice in the face with a 9-millimeter pistol, and then six times with an AK-47 and then twice with a 12-gauge shotgun. And then he was set on fire.

“I kept him alive for 15 hours,” he said. “That was my pig.”

The human “he” in this story is Petty Officer Third Class Dustin E. Kirby, a marine medic in Iraq describing part of his training. Each corpsman gets an anesthetized pig to work with—learning about live tissue and major trauma just isn’t the same from a textbook. Or even an emergency room. Wartime medicine is a thing apart (here’s a photo of Petty Officer Kirby, holding a bullet that wound up in the head of one of his platoon members):

02medic600.1.jpg

He put the bullet in his breast pocket, to give to an intelligence team later. Sweat kept rolling off his face, mixed with tears. His voice was almost cracking, but he managed to control it and keep it deep. “When I got there, there wasn’t much I could do,” he said. Then he nodded. He seemed to be talking to himself. “I kept him breathing,” he said.

The pig exercise is torture—keeping an animal alive for hours and hours in serious pain for edification or pleasure. It’s repulsive, but it (ostensibly) saves lives. Unlike veal. Or foie gras. So it’s hard for me to get worked up about these pigs if only because, compared to other animals we use and abuse, they have it pretty easy.

They might even have it easier than Petty Officer Kirby. I just stumbled across this passage by Nietzsche (sorry Mudede—and everyone else), lifted and pared down from the opening to The Use and Abuse of History:

Observe the herd which is grazing beside you. It does not know what yesterday or today is. To witness this is hard for man, because he boasts to himself that his human race is better than the beast and yet looks with jealousy at its happiness. One day the man demands of the beast: “Why do you not talk to me about your happiness and only gaze at me?” The beast wants to answer, too, and say: “That comes about because I always immediately forget what I wanted to say.” But by then the beast has already forgotten this reply and remains silent, so that the man wonders on once more.

But he also wonders about himself, that he is not able to learn to forget and that he always hangs onto past things. No matter how far or how fast he runs, this chain runs with him. For the man says, “I remember,” and envies the beast, which immediately forgets and sees each moment really perish, sink back in cloud and night, and vanish forever.

RSS icon Comments

1

what a beautiful and insightful post.

Posted by well said | November 2, 2006 11:57 AM
2

Yes, very well said. And as hard as it is to imagine, working on those pigs does save lives. Many lives. Just like most all animal testing for medicine (not cosmetics). We get all the benefit of medicine, but we hate to think of how we got the technology. And PETA be damned, if their loved ones were dying and only an animal tested drug would cure them, I can guarentee they would use it.

Posted by Monique | November 2, 2006 12:03 PM
3

Have to agree, doing that to a pig is just wrong. I know it saves lives, but they do have brains and use them.

Posted by Will in Seattle | November 2, 2006 12:41 PM
4

Thanks for this post. That article disturbed me too. Surely it's possible to train trauma personnel w/o inflicting torture on a living creature. What do they do at Harborview?

Posted by Susan | November 2, 2006 12:49 PM
5

Horrific.

So much for the Culture of Life®.

We're all just meat in the end, aren't we?

Posted by Andrew | November 2, 2006 1:14 PM
6

Yes, thank you for a post that does not proclaim a universal truth based on opinion or ideology, but points something about what makes it hard to be human. Life is complicated and confusing, and we do what we can just to get by without going insane.

Posted by Jude Fawley | November 2, 2006 2:25 PM
7

At least thats how it is for me, I should say.

Posted by Jude Fawley | November 2, 2006 2:26 PM
8

I hope anyone who is expressing concern for the pigs didn't read the linked article about the Navy corpsman and (probably dead) Marine.

Because if you did read the article, and you're still more concerned for the pigs than for the men, seek therapy. Now.

Posted by k | November 2, 2006 3:21 PM
9

At Harborview (at least in the ER) they have resident doctors practice on people. This is possible because it is a controlled environment and an actual DR is at the resident's elbow (or at least somewhere on the floor).

Military medics also train at Harborview - assisting in surguries and such. But there is obviously no way to present enough actual wounded humans.

A final complication to making a direct comparison is the large "scope of practice" that a military medic has. As a result of all of their patients having previously signed away all rights to sue - they are allowed to do far more than a state-side medic.

And seriously - I doubt you could come up with a better example of how killing an animal will directly serve to protect human life. It's a much better use for them than food.

I'll start worrying about pigs when we don't have a war in Iraq distracting us from the war in Afganistan distracting us from the violence in Darfur, ect.

Posted by John Galt | November 2, 2006 4:05 PM
10

There are some emergency rooms in gang terrorized neighborhoods where they send army surgeons to learn how to deal with gunshot wounds. I guess they must move up from pigs to innocenty bystanders and gang members.

Posted by Gitai | November 2, 2006 8:17 PM
11

No one is disputing that setting an animal on fire and keeping it alive is wrong ... but it had a real purpose. The balance is between a pig or an unknown number of men. I echo the sentiment: if you know this and still feel sorrier for the pig, you need help.

Posted by Gloria | November 3, 2006 5:52 AM
12

Well being the corpsman's sister I should let you know that with the practice on the pig he was able to SAVE his friend's life. Smith is currently in a drug induced coma but is very responsive. Without the training with the pig Smith would have been dead!

Posted by Destiny | November 16, 2006 1:05 PM

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