UW Ethics: Blowing in the Wind

Section 951.025, Wis. Stats. reads in its entirety:

Decompression prohibited. No person may kill an animal by means of decompression.

I recently wrote about the lock-step positions taken by University of Wisconsin-Madison spokespersons regarding their appeals to the authority of government as a substitute for their personal responsibility or even the university’s responsibility for the decision to hurt monkeys.

Research Animal Resource Center Director Eric Sandgren argued at the January 8, 2010All-Campus Animal Care and Use Committee meeting that animal research ethics is dictated by government regulations. That is, he should have added, until government’s dictates interfere with the university’s desire to engaged in research that is harmful to animals.

This contradictory position is a clear unambiguous illustration of the hidden motivations behind the rhetoric produced by the university and its spokespersons. (The University of Wisconsin-Madison is unlikely to be unique in this regard, and can be considered an exemplar for university-based animal experimentation programs.)

On the one hand, regulations are good and appropriate if they serve the university’s interests. (The opinions of the local citizens should be dismissed.) On the other hand, when regulations threaten the flow of money into the university or the open-ended ability to hurt animals in any way whatsoever, then the regulations should be changed (and local opinion should still be dismissed, of course); apparently, the ethical guidelines in the regulations vary in value and meaning depending on whether or not the university likes them.

It is likely that the university will seek to win an exception to Wisconsin’s state law banning the killing of animals by means of decompression. These two-faced self-serving tax-sucking soft-handed ass-wipes will probably go to the Legislature and demand that they be allowed to simply ignore the state’s Crimes Against Animals statutes altogether. Can you say dick-heads?