Today has had a few ups and downs, but none too extreme that will cause me stress. I've had an interesting day at college (from my eyes anyway) and went to the cinema.
My first period of study was Ecology, for this we got some background information on Red Kites, mainly conservation things and how they died down and such. We then had a practical side to this where the five people in my class (including the teacher), went outside onto the college fields and threw dead rats out for the Red Kites to get. Our hope was that we would at least see one Red Kite, watch it circle, swoop and be vocal. Our college is practically infested with Red Kites as it's basically surrounded by our fields, we saw many of them, saw one circle and swoop down (however it didn't get anything), and watched them interact with each other by 'fighting' in the sky and making calls to one another. It was really beautiful seeing them do this, especially as we had binoculars. It's sad that we didn't get to see the birds fly off with its feed, however it was really interesting for me to watch and it was a good experience overall.
My second period was also different from usual; we had a guest speaker from an animal testing research centre. My views on animal testing before the talk was that it is vile, disgusting and shouldn't still be happening, my views still have not changed from this. The reason for having a guest speaker in was because we have an assignment in that resolve around animal testing labs. Some of the things that we have to go in detail about in the coursework is as followed: 1. What is in place to ensure safe and effective handling and management? 2. How are assessments had on the animals heath? 3. How is the health monitored and how is it recorded? 4. What are some animal diagnosis techniques? and 5. What are the dietary formations and provisions of foodstuffs?
There was a lot of information that I wrote down that I found of interest, I'll share some with you. 1/9 animal medical procedures are carried out on rats and mice, this is because they're cheap to buy, easy to breed, and have small housing requirements so don't take up too much space in the lab, enabling them to house many in a small amount of space. They're also small in the evolutionary chain, which means the results will be more valuable. There are three levels of procedures mild, moderate and substantial. An example of a mild procedure would be taking a blood test, an example of a substantial procedure would be something making permanent damage to the animal, such as giving them Parkinsons disease. There are vets on call 24/7, there are many licences needed to be in the industry and there are many technicians involved. They say that the animal research costs a lot, so they wouldn't do any wasteful research which wouldn't bring them valuable results. For any brain research, they tend to use monkeys as their brain is the closest to a humans. There is a ratio of around 15 humans to every 1 animal used, however untrue this may seem. The process is researching > finding new treatments > narrowing the field > clinical trials (three phases) > approval > life of a medicine. No chemical can be used on humans until it has gone through at least two species of animals, as if it has only been tested on one species they may be able to hide symptoms and signs, where as if they test two species they get more reliable results. "The cost is justified by the potential benefits", words from the speaker himself. The animals that are in the testing labs will be bred specifically for that reason, they will train them and know as much of their blood line as physically possible. All animals are said to be put down before they experience any pain, (the pain which the research has caused).
Personally, I feel that all animal testing (which is not beneficial to the animals), is unnecessary. If it is only a human that is effected by whatever they are researching, it should only be researched through the use of humans. Humans should not rate animals higher in this world, personally I see it just as bad as white people getting treated better than black people. If the research was not being done on humans, then why should we allow it to be put on animals. The benefits to a selection of people is not worth the pain of one animal from my perspective.
My other two lessons were pretty irrelevant to anyone who is not taking the course, so I'll leave those two out. After college I went to go see Breaking Dawn: Part 2 (Twilight), with my best friend Lean. I hadn't seen Part 1, but still it can be appreciated without seeing any of the others. Most of it was really well done, apart from the story line which goes a little something like this: 'and then they woke up'. I feel the film was a little ruined by this, it felt a bit like something a terrible writer would do, or a child in year 6. Also the graphics of a child they had was pretty awful, very shocking for this day and age.
My friend told me today that him and his girlfriend broke up today / yesterday because of me. He started mentioning something about the photo I uploaded onto Facebook where the two of us were on skype. His at the time girlfriend had a problem with it and it somehow ended after then. His girlfriend asked him about the last girlfriend he had and the last girl that he liked, the girl that he liked was me. She asked him to stop talking to me a few months ago (which I found out about today), but he thankfully went against her wishes. She found out that we're still talking and they broke up. I would dig a little deeper into it, but his brother's in the room on skype with him now, hopefully I'll get more on this tomorrow.