Resident sounds off on Vet School issue

Imagine that six healthy children were selected as experimental subjects to have their leg bones broken and then allowed to heal using different treatments. Afterward, they were euthanized because non-lethal alternatives would not have provided results that would pass scutiny in the academic community. Their sacrifice contributed to potentially helping other children with broken bones in the future.

Of course such an experiment would be considered scandalously unethical. But is there such a gap between humans and animals -- especially with "man's best friend" -- that we can not question the ethics of the Tufts researchers? I find it downright Orwellian for second-year class co-president Alisha Weissman to assert that Tufts is "a place so ethical that is so concerned about animal welfare and animals not being put in harm's way," ("Grafton campus community deals with aftermath of controversial animal deaths" Feb. 9) when it is patently clear those six dogs were indeed put in harm's way, whether for the greater good, as they would have us believe, or for prestige or for profit. How many people would have donated their own beloved pets for such a project? But it seems to be ethically O.K. to use the hapless dogs bred for this purpose and doomed from birth. There is a great disconnect here, and I am astounded that most of the vet students do not see it, to judge from their letter to the Boston Herald.



Diana Cartier

Chestnut Hill, MA