30 Days, Soapbox, Pu-239, Ira & Abby

Last night I watched this week's episode of the TV series 30 Days. The show is about taking someone out of their element, and putting them in someone else's, for you guessed it 30 days. Last week they took an NFL player, and he spent a month in a wheelchair. They mix in some very interesting information during the show along with daily activities. So this week, I was eager to watch, because they took a 42 year old hunter, who believes animals are here to either serve or be eaten, and they stuck him in a Vegan family home, gave him a job at a factory animal rescue farm, and made him participate in PETA demonstrations. The one redeeming quality he had going in, was he claimed he just wanted to hear from 'animal rights people' rational reasons why they believe what they do. I admit it was a hard episode to watch. The gave a warning before the show started, because they had footage of animals being harmed, and mistreated. It wasn't easy to watch. The hunter started off on the defense, and said every animal person gives the same schpeel (no idea how to spell that). His eyes finally opened, when he is called out at 3am one morning to help rescue a factory farm calf. When they get there they find a calf that is starving, and can barely breathe, left for dead by the business outside of the fence. I admit again, this was an emotional episode. If you ever have a chance to watch the rerun of it, I think you should.

I use this quote every once in awhile, and here it is again.

"I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't.... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. ~Mark Twain"

If you don't know, vivisection is testing drugs on live animals. I think Mr Twain summed it up perfectly.

Here are 33 facts about vivisection.

(1) Less than 2% of human illnesses (1.16%) are ever seen in animals.
(2) According to the former scientific executive of Huntington Life Sciences, animal tests and human results agree only '5%-25% of the time'.
(3) 95% of drugs passed by animal tests are immediately discarded as useless or dangerous to humans.
(4) At least 50 drugs on the market cause cancer in laboratory animals. They are allowed because it is admitted the animal tests are not relevant.
(5) Procter & Gamble used an artificial musk despite it failing the animal tests, i.e., causing tumours in mice. They said the animal test results were 'of little relevance for humans'.
(6) When asked if they agreed that animal experiments can be misleading 'because of anatomical and physiological differences between animals and humans', 88% of doctors agreed.
(7) Rats are only 37% effective in identifying what causes cancer to humans. Flipping a coin would be more accurate.
The pharmaceutical industry funds many groups and organisations, so...
(8) Rodents are the animals almost always used in cancer research. They never get carcinomas, the human form of cancer, which affects membranes (e.g lung cancer). Their sarcomas affect bone and connecting tissue: the two cannot be compared.
(9) Up to 90% of animal test results are discarded as they are inapplicable to man.
(10) The results from animal experiments can be altered by factors such as diet and bedding. Bedding has been identified as giving cancer rates of over 90% and almost nil in the same strain of mice at different locations.
(11) Sex differences among laboratory animals can cause contradictory results. This does not correspond with humans.
(12) 9% of anaesthetised animals, intended to recover, die.
(13) An estimated 83% of substances are metabolised by rats in a different way to humans.
(14) Attempts to sue the manufacturers of the drug Surgam failed due to the testimony of medical experts that: 'data from animals could not be extrapolated safely to patients'.
(15) Lemon juice is a deadly poison, but arsenic, hemlock and botulin are safe according to animal tests.
(16) Genetically modified animals are not models for human illness. The mdx mouse is supposed to represent muscular dystrophy, but the muscles regenerate without treatment.
(17) 88% of stillbirths are caused by drugs which are passed as being safe in animal tests, according to a study in Germany.
(18) 61% of birth defects are caused by drugs passed safe in animal tests, according to the same study. Defect rates are 200 times post war levels.
(19) One in six patients in hospital are there because of a treatment they have taken.
(20) In America, 100,000 deaths a year are attributed to medical treatment. In one year 1.5 million people were hospitalised by medical treatment.
(21) A World Health Organisation study showed children were 14 times more likely to develop measles if they had been vaccinated.
(22) 40% of patients suffer side effects as a result of prescription treatment.
(23) Over 200,000 medicines have been released, most of which are now withdrawn. According to the World Health Organisation, only 240 are 'essential'.
(24) A German doctors' congress concluded that 6% of fatal illnesses and 25% of organic illness are caused by medicines. All have been animal tested.
(25) The lifesaving operation for ectopic pregnancies was delayed 40 years due to vivisection.
(26) According to the Royal Commission into vivisection (1912), 'The discovery of anaesthetics owes nothing to experiments on animals'. The great Dr Hadwen noted that 'had animal experiments been relied upon...humanity would have been robbed of this great blessing of anaesthesia'. The vivisector Halsey described the discovery of Fluroxene as 'one of the most dramatic examples of misleading evidence from animal data'.
(27) Aspirin fails animal tests, as does digitalis (a heart drug), cancer treatments, insulin (causes animal birth defects), penicillin and other safe medicines. They would have been banned if vivisection were heeded.
(28) In the court case when the manufacturers of Thalidomide were being tried, they were acquitted after numerous experts agreed that animal tests could not be relied on for human medicine.
(29) Blood transfusions were delayed 200 years by animal studies, corneal transplants were delayed 90 years.
(30) Despite many Nobel prizes being awarded to vivisectors, only 45% agree that animal experiments are crucial.
(31) At least 450 methods exist with which we can replace animal experiments.
(32) At least thirty-three animals die in laboratories each second worldwide; in the UK, one every four seconds.
(33) The Director of Research Defence Society, (which exists to defend vivisection) was asked if medical progress could have been achieved without animal use. His written reply was 'I am sure it could be'.

Pretty strong stuff there. I made a couple lines bold, just to stand out. I hate here at work we have this huge march of crimes (dimes) fund raiser, when I tell whoever comes to my cube to ask if I want to donate, and I explain I will not support a group that tests on Animals, I get the same look, it is a look that implies I want babies to be sick. That's ridiculous, go back and read Mark Twain's quote above, and you will understand, the fact that they kill, torture and treat animals like they do not suffer just as much as we do.

I didn't have time to post yesterday, but Wednesday night I watched two movies.


PU-239 (DvD)
aka "The Half Life of Timofey Berezin"
Trailer
IMDB

Paddy Considine ... Timofey
Radha Mitchell ... Marina
Oscar Isaac ... Shiv

This was apparently an HBO movie, I don't recall seeing it ever advertised when it was on.

"Timofey: [voiceover] The hands on the clock are waving goodbye. It was my grandfather's watch. The dial was painted by hand in America during Word War I. The brides of soldiers seated at long tables dutifully making luminous little sixes and eights to help keep the world free. The eights were particularly hard to make; so the women sucked on the tips of the paintbrushes to bring them to a fine point. One by one, their mouths began to fill with cancer. The radium-based paint they had swallowed bombarded their brains and bones with alpha and beta particles. The women who painted the watch faces sued the US Radium Corporation of West Orange, New Jersey. Had the trial been at night, the breath they used to say goodbye to the world would have glowed like moonlit fog. They were given ten thousand dollars for their lives."

Besides a couple scenes, I enjoyed this movie. Don't expect action or comedy, this is a drama. Timofey has worked 12 years at a secret Russian nuclear facility, and when an accident occurs he receives a large dose of radiation. His superiors want him to sign a waiver saying he made the mistake, suspend him, and lie about the dosage he received. Once he finds out the truth, he hatches a plan, to steal a small amount of Plutonium, travel to Moscow and sell it to make sure his family is ok after his impending death. He meets up with some small time thugs, who already have their own problems, when are ordered to collect protection money from one of their bosses 'protected' businesses. They write down the address, but confuse the handwriting and think its a 1 instead of a 7. They end up blowing up the wrong business, one that is being protected by a different russian crime family.

We watch as Timofey gets sicker and sicker, in a race to sell the plutonium before his time is up.

I'd recommend watching this one. Not with the kiddies around, there is a fair amount of prostitution references during it.



Ira & Abby (dvd)
Trailer
IMBD

Chris Messina ... Ira Black
Jennifer Westfeldt ... Abby Willoughby

First off, Jennifer is hawt...

Ok, this was a pretty good movie. Ira is a little neurotic, and he meets Abby a free spirit. This is almost that old TV show, with Jenna Elfman, the name escapes me.

I won't write a huge review, but will recommend this one. It's a little slow, and most of the comedy comes from the supporting cast of therapists.

It's getting pretty busy this morning here at work, so have a great weekend, I gotta go.

ciao!