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

I generally find myself very torn by articles like this, because while I never want to see an animal hurt I also know that sometimes animal testing is warranted and necessary. Because of these tests deaf children can hear and the cochlear implants improve the ability to function and improve the quality of life. To say that these children should sacrifice their quality of life due to a cat is not right either.  While I don't think that its right to harm and test on animals I can acknowledge that it can be the best option.  As I was growing up I had teachers and peers that encouraged me to try to at lest be able to see both sides of an argument so thats what I'm trying to do here. I am a vegetarian because of environmental and ethical reasons, so I generally side with the animals, but these articles where particularly hard for me to dissect. I think this is due to not only my personal feelings on the topic but also the fact that the first article was written by someone that definitely had a vested interest in the case.

Its hard to find an article on a topic such as this that is not biased simply because as you do research to right the piece or even just read the case you automatically choose a side. Its almost too easy.  I just take one look at the picture that Kim attached to her blog and I think how can someone do something like that to the poor animal, but in the back of my head I think how can we not do something like that if it benefits someones child.

As you can probably tell I am very conflicted by the articles and I honestly cannot answer Kim's questions about if the testing should have continued, there are just too many variables and to many emotions running through this topic and these articles.  I think that PETA did the right thing by calling attention to this subject because I believe that more scrutiny usually leads to real results but I also wonder if they simply choose this incident because it was convenient and would lead to a lot of press. As I stated before there are tons of variables and opinions and this case is much more complex then two articles.