Wednesday, March 4, 2015

"Cat research, after all the drama" and "USDA finds animal treatment violation in UW-Madison lab"


Sam Cusick’s article does an efficient job of reporting the facts in a neutral style even without comments from the USDA. The furthest from objectivity Cusick ventures is when he reports “… a cat was ‘unintentionally’ burned…” The impartial article provides us with an opportunity to form our own opinions without the often over-powering influence of pathos. However, the lack of potential pathos also leaves important information left unexplained. Which is why Eric Sandgren’s previously written article complements Cusick’s so well.

Sandgren makes it apparent he’s not writing to advocate for animal testing, but rather to explain the “whole story” with the help of logos, ethos, and pathos. He gains logos when he compares the cats undergoing cochlear transplant surgeries to a human procedure making us believe it to be a humane operation. There’s also identification in this for those who have gone through an operation feeling as though they were taken care of.  

He provides all the ethos and pathos necessary for a successful article in two back-to-back sentences. In the first he states that their laboratory is “world-renowned” and “significantly advanced the field of hearing research” convincing us that they are more than just a lab with an animal treatment violation. He then continues to say that their studies “provide and refine technology to help deaf children hear.” His subtle approach makes it more than effective because he doesn’t overuse this easy in to win us over, he only briefly mentions the children. This also raises a question that only pathos can provoke. If Sandgren’s statement is true that research on cats is the best method to answer their questions, which do we sacrifice, the children or the cats?

Although I don’t have an obvious answer to Kim’s question, this leads me to wonder if certain circumstances might deserve the help of animal testing.

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