Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Tianjin, China, on Monday.Alexander Kazakov/Reuters
Pick your poison
Re “Friends like these” (Letters, Sept. 4): A letter-writer asks if we are okay trading with China when that country has a cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin.
It seems we have no trouble trading with the United States despite Donald Trump’s cozy relationship with Mr. Putin.
I guess it depends on which we think is the lesser of two evils.
Elizabeth Thompson Oakville, Ont.
Back to basics
Re “Canada making no promises on asylum for Russian dissidents being held in U.S. detention” (Sept. 4): How can the Canadian government expect Canadians, or others, to view it as credible when it claims to lead the opposition to Mr. Putin and his brutal regime, but dithers and equivocates in the face of such a basic and reasonable call to provide sanctuary for these threatened dissidents?
Paul Russell Vancouver
Safe space
Re “There is a growing list of unsafe places for the Jewish community in Canada” (Sept. 1): As a member of the Jewish community who has lost count of the messages I’ve sent our federal, provincial and municipal (the least responsive) leaders over the past months, and even years, about the horrific rise of antisemitism throughout my city, province and country, I am angry at the lack of co-ordinated strategy to eradicate this scourge.
Protection for the Jewish community should be ensured, laws should be enforced and stiff penalties should be imposed. If our leaders at all levels are not actively working to stamp out this threat, I find them complicit.
Empty statements of support without action are effectively meaningless.
Judy Slan Toronto
Advanced research
Re “Doug Ford is barking up the wrong tree with his ban on animal research” (Sept. 2): Doug Ford’s stance is dismissed as “populist pandering to emotion” and “anti-science rhetoric that serves no one.”
Well, let’s look at the science: Studies show that the majority of drugs which pass animal tests ultimately fail in human clinical trials. Why? Because human and non-human animals have very different physiologies. What may appear to “work” in mice, guinea pigs or dogs rarely translates to humans.
Is it worth inflicting pain and suffering on sentient animals when the odds of success are so dismally low, especially when more modern methods exist that can be more accurate and unquestionably more ethical?
This isn’t about valuing animal lives over human lives. It’s about valuing good science.
Erinn Steringa Centre Wellington, Ont.
Philosopher Charles Magel said: “Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: Because the animals are like us. Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: Because the animals are not like us.” They can’t have it both ways.
Breeding an animal for a purpose doesn’t make that purpose ethical. Throughout history, humans have also been bred: for slavery, even child marriage. We now recognize that intention doesn’t erase harm.
Beagles are not lab equipment, they are sentient, trusting animals who suffer as we do. Their suffering should not be seen as a “necessary evil.”
It’s a choice we no longer need to make.
Nives Ilic Ottawa
In Canada, the use of dogs for medical research has doubled since 2020.
The trend worldwide is to significantly reduce, and eventually eliminate, use of dogs and all animals. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration will phase out animal testing requirements, while some drug developers report that we are rapidly getting to the point where animal testing will be history.
In one example, an artificial-intelligence-based drug discovery took just 18 months to move into clinical testing versus an industry average of 42 months. AI modelling may be able to cut costs and drug timelines by more than half.
All good science is informed by ethics. And far from anti-science rhetoric, Doug Ford seems to demonstrate an understanding of new and evolving science, animal sentience – breeding dogs for research does not mean they suffer less – and public opinion.
Judy Malone Toronto
While Doug Ford is well intentioned in his desire to halt vivisection on cats and dogs in Ontario, it would be better policy to halt all animal research and use alternative methods for determining product safety that do not harm animals or ourselves.
Scientific consensus says that research on other species cannot readily be applied to humans, because they are different species with different biologies.
An excellent example in my own family occurred prior to my birth when pregnant Canadian women, including my mother, were given thalidomide, an anti-nausea drug said to be safe because no birth defects were noted in the animal research. Fortunately, our European relatives warned her of possible birth defects appearing in children there, and my spinal deformation is therefore minor. Many thalidomide children, however, have moderate to severe birth defects, often requiring wheelchairs and lifelong care.
Animal research, then, does not benefit humans or animals.
Roslyn Cassells Restigouche County, N.B.
Book smart
Re “There are many lessons in books – and in the attempts to ban them" (Sept. 4): In 1980, I managed to get smuggled into the premier confiscated book repository in the world, in a restricted area of the international airport in Johannesburg.
What a treat! I marvelled at the imaginative carnality of positioning James Fenimore Cooper’s multiracial frontier epics between the glam sleaziness of Penthouse magazines on one side and the dour utopianism of Karl Marx on the other.
I’d like to suggest a way out in Alberta. Back then, newspaper articles in South Africa were first sanitized by apartheid censors. The pugnacious Rand Daily Mail reacted by leaving blank spaces corresponding to the length of censored texts on published pages. The regime was furious and subsequently banned empty space.
Danielle Smith could allow special editions of books with blank spaces. But then, clever students could probably use artificial intelligence to find a way through that alluring emptiness.
Greg Michalenko Waterloo, Ont.
Lights out
Re “For overhead projectors, the lights have dimmed” (Opinion, Aug. 30): On one occasion in my career teaching at a university, a colleague was presenting a talk about his research in the North.
To illustrate the location where the research was being carried out, he placed a transparency with an outlined map of the study area on the overhead projector. Initially he was unaware that the transparency was upside down, resulting in a backward image on the screen.
He quickly realized this was the case and, without batting an eyelash, said to the audience, “Imagine you are inside the Earth looking out.” Humanity and technology were more closely connected in the past.
Rest in peace to the overhead projector.
Walter Peace Burlington, Ont.
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