World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week

Forgot to mention this earlier in the week, as I only remembered while wondering why I needed my access card to get through one of the buildings on campus yesterday.

Apparantly this week is World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week. I am a scientist, and yes, I work with mice. There are many reasons for doing so. They are mammals, and thus their physiology resembles human physiology more closely than say, a fly or a zebrafish (both important models for other scientific studies). Also, they are genetically closer to humans than those other model organisms. And they are small, so they are more cost-effective to use for research than other mammals, such as rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, monkeys, etc.

Yes, I have to sacrifice mice on occasion for my developmental biology research. But everything is carried out according to strict regulations in order to ensure that the animals are treated as humanely as possible.

If you don't agree with animal research, that's fine with me. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. All I stipulate is that if you are one of those people that think all laboratory animals should be released from captivity (and I realize this is an extreme position), you better not ever be taking any drugs that are approved by the FDA. All those medications are tested extensively on animals before they start human clinical trials. And why? So that they know loads of information about side effects, toxicity, dosage, etc. So that when they start giving drugs to people they don't end up killing those people.

That's all I ask. Don't be a hypocrite. If you're going to have extreme views, at least be well-informed and committed to those views.

For an interesting look at a PETA campaign, click here and download the "Rat's Life" book. It's never too early to start lying to your children. Because rats are clean (nevermind that whole "spreading the Black Plague through Europe" thing) and scientists are evil. Duh.

Return of the Random Cookie Thief

With four shows coming up in just as many nights, and a slew of photos to edit and a website to revamp, not to mention my real job (science!), I shouldn't be wasting time writing this. But whatever, it's my lunch break.

When I was in Australia on a volunteer program in the summer of 2004 (immediately after graduating from Penn State), our group was working at Hanson Bay Sanctuary. It's located on Kangaroo Island, which is an 8 minute tiny plane flight from Adelaide. It's at the opposite end of the island from Kingscote, which is the closest thing to a town on the island. Basically, there was nothing south of us except Antarctica. The stars at night were amazing...the Milky Way was a bright band running across the entire sky. But all this is just backdrop.

Being as how we were an hour's drive from the town, and thus the grocery store, someone went into the town once a week to get supplies. This included all the food we had for the entire week. Which, of course, included cookies. And not just any cookies, but the best cookies ever - Tim Tams! A delicacy only found in Australia and, inexplicably, Fiji (probably other places as well, but none that I've been). Somehow, we all noticed that cookies were disappearing at night at an alarming rate. I'm not talking one or two cookies, but five or six. We had no clue as to who was the perpetrator, but one night my friend Tom left a note on the cookies that went something like this: "Dear Random Cookie Thief, Please stop stealing all the cookies. If you don't, I will break your knees. Sincerely, Random Knee Breaker Guy." Juvenile, perhaps. But funny.

Fast forward to San Diego, present time. Every two weeks we biomedical sciences graduate students have "lunch talks," which consist of research presentations by students. And free pizza. Some weeks there is an overabundance of pizza left over, so I take some back to lab with me and store it in the common fridge on our floor. You have to understand that, as a poor graduate student, this pizza is my lunch and sometimes dinner for two days.

So I don't really take it lightly when, after bringing back four pieces of pizza (two days' worth of lunch!), I go to heat some up the next day and there's ONE piece left. WTF, mate? I could understand it when I brought it back in the pizza box and stored it in the fridge as is. I mean, usually it's customary to leave a note on things when they're communal, but I can see how someone might have made that mistake. So I took to wrapping up the pizza in saran wrap, to make it look more like someone's lunch. And still someone was eating it. Double WTF, mate?

Maybe as one of four children I have a heightened sense of propriety. I don't like people messing with my stuff without asking. I'm not selfish though - if you ask, you'll usually get whatever you're asking for. But have the decency to ask! Don't just eat random people's food in the fridge! And I hate passive aggressive actions, so I didn't want to put a sign on the fridge regarding the eating of other people's food. I wish I knew who was doing it so I could confront them. But I don't have the time to stalk the kitchen. So I ended up moving my remaining pizza this week to the crisper and putting a note on it saying "Natalie's pizza - Please don't eat unless you have my permission!" I hate to think that that's necessary, in a work situation where I am probably one of the youngest people using that kitchen. But sadly, sometimes grown-ups need to be treated like children. Sigh.

Random Restoration of Faith In (Certain) People

It's really nice when someone you've completely written off comes through for you. It's kind of weird too, but definitely nice. A refresher in human kindness and sincerity. Something you don't get often out here in the land of real tans and fake people. So I just wanted to take this opportunity to say so, without going into personal details.

Virginia Tech tragedy

I remember when I heard about the shootings at Columbine High School. I was in high school myself at the time. I remember everyone being shell-shocked and talking about how our school, with its large dichotomy between rich kids and poor kids and its share of "weird" loners, might be next on "the list." I don't remember where the idea of this list came from though. All I know is that it caused this raised suspicion of anyone who wore a trenchcoat (several of my friends, who have never harbored murderous thoughts, for all I know) or tended to hang out by him/herself. And we had plenty of those kids in my school. But most of all, it caused a lot of us students to realize that we weren't safe in school. We weren't safe anywhere anymore. Anything could happen to anyone at any time.

The tragedy that happened yesterday at Virginia Tech brought all those paranoid feelings rushing back to me. Or maybe they're not so paranoid. After all, it makes as much sense to die in a random school shooting as it does to get run over by a drunk driver while crossing the street. You think, "Shouldn't someone have noticed that this guy was acting a little off? Shouldn't someone have done something about it?" Well, the answer to that is yes, if you notice you should try to do something about it. But the problem lies within the noticing. Sometimes you just can't.

When I was in college, a friend of a friend came to visit her for a weekend. He hung out with our group of friends, seemed to have a good time (although I do remember him being a little quiet), and then went home. A week later he committed suicide.

I didn't even know him, but this affected me deeply. I kept thinking, "Maybe if we had shown him a better time, maybe if we had paid more attention to him..." But I slowly came to realize that there was nothing I could have done. He was a deeply troubled individual who felt that this life no longer held anything for him. People who knew him much better than I didn't realize anything was wrong. He didn't reach out to anyone. It just happened.

It's terrible and sad that in the Virginia Tech case, the shooter felt the need to take out his rage on the innocent people around him. There hasn't been that much of a response out here in San Diego, and I feel kind of insulated from the events. But I grew up in Pennsylvania and knew people who went to Virginia Tech for undergrad. My little sister has friends who go there now. Fortunately, they're all physically fine. But how does one get over this? How does one deal with the fact that our nation seems to have it's unfair share of disgruntled youths that feel it necessary to release their anger on others? Other nations have even greater socio-economical gaps than we do, but you don't hear of school shootings there, do you?

Maybe part of the answer is better gun control. I saw several news programs this morning urging people not to use this issue as a platform for gun control. Why not, I ask? If this shooter had not had access to a gun, would he have been able to wreak so much havoc? I doubt it. And all the arguments for owning a gun (self-protection, to defend against people like this shooter, etc.) don't hold water here. But I don't doubt that Charleton Heston and the NRA will soon be staging a rally in Blacksburg, just like they did in Columbine too soon after the tragedy there. They'll argue that if someone did have a gun on them, less people would have been killed because the shooter would have been stopped earlier. They'll argue that every classroom should have at least one gun in it. Bullocks. If the world had less guns in it, more people would be alive today.