In Class: Freewrite 3 Sources

How do my sources tie into one another? There's the image posted online and in neuroscience books that says "thanks to animal research, they'll be able to protest 20.8 years longer" referring to sign-wielding anti animal testing groups. The next one is a video on stopanimaltesting.com that goes behind the scenes through research labs to show the maltreatment and neglect going on with the defenseless animals. The last one i found is an article on PETA's website that explains how we should approach the issue of considering animal rights as a matter of whether or not they can suffer. Each of these sources all relate to animal testing on different sides of the fence. the first one appeals to logical senses that animal research has, in fact, greatly increased the medical field's abilities for helping humans and other animals. the second two sources appeal to our emotional and ethical senses. the video of abused animals shivering in the corners of their cages or bleeding, vomiting, or screaming without necessary help is appalling to most every normal human being. nobody likes to see, or wishes to know, that animals are being hurt and are in pain, especially for our own purposes. the article on PETA's website explains that we should not be considering animal's inability to perform higher functions as grounds for using them as experimental specimen but we should be considering the fact that they can suffer and feel emotions like joy, happiness, sadness, pain, and pleasure.

what are the unstated assumptions and values that are informing these arguments and allowing them to succeed or fail? the warranted underlying assumptions in each of my texts are that we do not like unjustified dying and certainly suffering to helpless creatures. the first text, for animal testing, asserts that we need it to live the lives that we know, animal research is necessary for us to thrive. without testing on animals, humans would have to undergo these experiments or we would simply not have any of the many outcomes that have resulted from animal research. it would, at a deeper level, end up scaring the audience into agreeing with the claim that animal testing is necessary. the second two texts, against animal testing, assume that we do not like suffering, pain, and unjustified death so we will agree with their claim taht we should not use helpless animals for our own purposes.

what conclusions can you draw about the state of argument in the U.S? the culture of having the ability to achieve anything you want ifyou work hard for it uses their underlying assumptions to say more than the actual words and content can. otherwise, we would see billboards saying 'animal testing is bad' or 'animal testing is good.' we need to have reasons in the fields of logic, emotion, and ethics to successfully convince others/ourselves to agree. people, for the most part, do not go around stating their opinions without inhibition because, without supporting evidence or purpose, it is useless or even harmful.

Unit 2 Proposal

I am going to analyze the Animal Welfare Act (passed in 1966 and many times since revived). There are multiple aspects surrounding the act that provide grounds for support and opposition. There are the ethics involved for the human treatment of living creatures, there is a social agenda involved, there is a priority factor (humans over animals), there is an endless list of possible viewpoints to describe. I have all kinds of Neuroscience books that have sections about animal testing. Through these texts, I will find sources to use for my research. I can also, obviously, just use the internet and google away but I've found my Neuroscience texts to have very appealing arguments so I would like to use those as guides to finding primary sources that are most likely going to be Pro-Animal Research. I will have to use the internet to find sources for the other side of the arguments (Anti-Animal Research). I am very interested in animal research because I am a Neuroscience major and it is the field I hope to work in after medical school. I am not biased so I will not favor a side more strongly going into the research. I imagine we all will choose a side, even if subconsciously, to our arguments after the amount of deep research we will be putting into the controversies but I will most definitely keep my influences out of my assignment as it carries on.

In Class: Undirected FreeWrite

so i'm getting pretty burnt out on school these days. good thing i only have like 12 more years til i can be done.... i think everyday about what medical field i want to go into. i wanted to do psychiatry initially, and i already have 3 years of psychology under my belt so i figured i would be good at that. but the more i think about it, i wonder what it would be like? i feel like it'll be people telling me their problems which i am always happy to help with! but the frustrating part will be that they will, half of the time, not listen to my advice and keep doing what they're doing and wonder why they're still getting treated horribly by their emotionally abusive husband.. i understand that it's hard to just get out of something like that ... but theres a limit to anyones patience. i really want to do some kind of neuroscience research. i think it would be amazing to find some new receptor pathway or some cause to specific cell death, as is the case for alzheimer's and parkinsons. i know there's tons of scientists much more capable than i am already doing this so who knows... we'll see what happens