Rats Make the Front Page of the Wall Street Journal

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-05-16 07:31:00 UTC
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A couple weeks ago, a Wall Street Journal reporter interviewed me for an article she was writing on rats, on advocacy for rats, that is. Her article is in today's paper--on the front page. That's right: our much-maligned furry friends have made the front page of the WSJ. If after reading the article, you're wondering what video the reporter is talking about, that was a reference to the uber-sweet video in this post: The Love of a Rat (this post is also the reason I ended up being interviewed for the piece). I'm going to hold off for now on giving my detailed thoughts on the article, but I imagine I'll do that in the next couple days.

In the meantime, if you want to know how life (and death) go for most rats used in labs (they don't get gentle care and loving adoption) and how unnecessary and pointless research on them is, see, for example, these two recent posts telling a couple firsthand stories: Former Vivisector Speaks Out about Cruelty and Bad Science and Your Turn: Why Unnecessary, Cruel Research Happens. And an update on those rats mentioned in the second post: despite Jen's pleas to save and adopt them, they were still cruelly killed--via having their heads cut off. I hope to be able to later direct you to more of the story regarding what happened there [edit: that post now appears here].

Finally, the few comments on the article as of this writing are leaning more toward anti-rat (and anti-rights) than pro-rat, and I expect that snarky or anti-rat remarks in the thread probably won't be rare. Feel free to rectify that (respectfully--I know that can be difficult when other commenters are being offensive jerks, but even if the thread ends up going that way, try your best to keep your cool) and to thank the WSJ and Ms. Searcey for giving the rats some rare positive mainstream attention.

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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