“Eric Sandgren: Cat research, after all the drama” / “USDA finds animal treatment violation in UW-Madison lab”

Just like last week’s articles on the orangutan, this week’s articles on cat research are each from a different perspective.  The first article by Eric Sandgren, the UW-Madison director of the Research Animal Resource Center.  After reading the article, it is clear that Sandgren is trying to persuade the readers in his favor through his word choice.  The words make it clear that the perspective is at least slightly biased as he says things like “[the pictures] now grace the posters…” and “cynically smear researchers” to convince the readers that his team of researchers are falsely accused.  Through this use of rhetoric, Sandgren uses positive words when talking about his research and negative words when referring to the accusations as opposed to being neutral and simply informative.

Initially, after reading Sandgren’s article, which was from the perspective of the director of the research lab at UW-Madison, I thought the second article would be from PETA’s perspective or someone similar.  However, the second one turned out to be a more of an outside viewer’s perspective.  Sam Cusick takes a much more neutral stance in this debate and, as opposed to Sandgren’s persuasive yet bias words, uses an impartial style.  Cusick does not state her opinion and instead simply reports that facts of the investigation by USDA, Sandgren’s response, and PETA’s accusations.

It seems to me that the accusations made by PETA are a little extreme.  It was stated that the cat was burned ‘unintentionally’ and Sandgren even took responsibility for it in her response to the USDA investigation.  Many things can happen in any form of research and Sandgren seems pretty responsible to actually own up to the mistake and do something about it.  Personally, I don’t have much of an opinion on animal testing because both sides make sense to me and I am having a hard time getting a definitive answer for myself on this particular subject.  However, I would say, at least at this point, that as long as there are precautions, they are using certain procedures such as using anesthetics, and they are limiting things so that they aren’t being cruel, then I think at least some animal testing is fine.