Tragedy As Farce

The United States Department of Agriculture, recently exposed for nonenforcement of humane slaughter laws, has certified that cats being used in OSU's infamous "cats-on-meth" research are receiving proper care. When USDA representatives conducted their inspection on March 14, they found no cats in the cages, since all those allocated for the first phase of the research had been killed.

If you think that's ridiculous, check out the research itself. Actually, this cynical, money-grabbing scientific scam hardly qualifies as research at all. The man in charge, Michael Podell, doesn't promise a cure for AIDS or any other impressive outcome. He simply intends to create an animal model of a speed freak with AIDS. That's easy enough. But what is it worth?   
Not one cat. Podell's work does not stand the test of logic. If it were important to learn how shooting up "crank" harms people with AIDS, it would be similarly important to discover how using this virulent, illegal street drug damages users with diabetes, cancer, and other common diseases. One must assume that the drug is also detrimental to these individuals, but there is no clamor for similar research on their behalf. That is because the solution to their problems, and to the problems of the AIDS sufferers using methamphetamine, is not cruel research; it is simply to STOP USING THE ILLEGAL DRUG.

"Duh," you say? Indeed. So how did this white elephant of a research project come about, if not to satisfy an  obvious and pressing need? It is the product of both Podell's opportunism and common governmental bureaucratic incompetence. When grants became available through the National Institute on Drug Abuse for projects linking AIDS and drugs, Podell jumped at the chance for a sustained "pay day." Federal bureaucrats, apparently dazzled to find an Ohio State University research professor's proposal amidst all the mundane requests for clean-needle programs, forked over $1,680,000 to the cagey vivisectionist, making sure they noted Podell's oh-so-impressive credentials on reports to their superiors.

After taking a beating in the papers, Podell has clammed up and is not talking. But power is power, and the  powers that be continue to enrich Podell while he tortures typical, lovable felines, all with taxpayer money intended to help desperate people.

In all, 120 cats are scheduled to suffer and die in this charade. Podell's colleagues sometimes speak for him, performing such services as accusing us, the research opponents, of homophobia. That is the level of discourse that is coming from research supporters. They are the enemies of compassion, these purveyors of pain and dealers in death. They murder the innocent for money and feel no remorse. We ask not that they be punished for their unspeakable actions, but only that they cease and desist. They refuse, and accuse us of hating our fellow man.

They defy our sense of human decency. They remind us of the words to an old Hank Williams song:

You have no heart. You have no shame.