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发帖数: 10345 | 1 别忘记，希特勒也是素食主义者：
Animal-Rights Activists Bully Dying Italian Girl
When 25-year-old veterinary student Caterina Simonsen posted an update on a
Facebook page supporting the use of animals in medical research before
Christmas, she was trying to say how lucky she felt to be alive. The Padua
native suffers from four rare genetic pulmonary diseases that require her to
use breathing tubes and experimental medication to thin the mucus in her
lungs in order to breathe. Her extreme illness makes her quickly immune to
treatments, and, as a result, she has been a human guinea pig in a host of
medical trials as doctors search for ways to help her live longer. At 18,
her doctors told her she couldn’t be cured, but this year, she had survived
another birthday and simply wanted to say thanks. “I am 25 thanks to
genuine research that includes experiments on animals. Without research, I
would have been dead at nine. You have gifted me a future.”
Simonsen’s comments, on the heels of a hotly contested national telethon in
Italy soliciting money for medical research, triggered a flurry of hate
comments from animal-rights extremists. “You could die tomorrow, I wouldn
’t sacrifice my goldfish for you,” a poster named Giovanna wrote on the
Facebook page “A Favore Della Sperimentazione Animale” (In Favor of Animal
Experimentation). Another wrote, “If you had died as a child, no one would
have given a damn.” In all, Simonsen received 30 death threats and 500
cruel insults, which are being investigated by local police.
After the barrage of insults, Simonsen went on the offensive to defend the
use of animals in research to help people like her, launching a national
debate on the hot-button topic. Italy’s top politicians, including new
center left leader Matteo Renzi, tweeted his support for Simonsen: “I am
with Caterina.” A survey by Sky Italia spurred by the controversy showed
that 76 percent of Italians agree with animal testing for pharmaceutical (
not cosmetic) purposes. Italy already has some of the strictest laws in
Europe when it comes to using animals in clinical tests, pushed forward by a
strong animal-rights lobby in the country. In April, a small group of
animal-rights activists broke into a lab in Milan and chained themselves to
the doors while others changed the labels on some 800 cages of lab mice
undergoing research procedures. The protesters released scores more. Many of
the animals ended up dead on the streets of Milan, unable to survive
outside the lab. In June, counter-protesters supporting the use of animals
in laboratory testing clashed with animal-rights activists in front of the
same Milanese lab. Police had to use tear gas to break up the scuffle.
Simonsen, who has a tattoo on her left ankle that says “breath by breath”
in English, has become the new face of the ongoing battle. She has given
countless print and broadcast interviews since her Facebook post, trying to
put a human face on the practice of animal research in pharmaceutical
development. But her strategy has only garnered more hate, prompting her to
publicly state that she is not being employed by a pharmaceutical lobby or
political group. Still, she vows to persist. “Nazi animalists won’t stop
me,” she told La Repubblica newspaper on Sunday. “I am fighting for my
life.”
Simonsen, who hopes to become a veterinarian one day, points to the fact
that even the animals that activists defend often depend on medicine to
survive. “I am getting a degree to save animals, but until there is a
valid alternative, medical experimentation on animals is necessary,” she
told Sky Italia.
Over the weekend, Simonsen also published a home video in an attempt to
explain in human terms what her daily life was like with her rare disease.
She showed her sterile bedroom, complete with home respirators that bubbled
in the background. She pointed out the difference between various plastic
tubes that allowed her to sleep, eat and take a shower, and the pile of
medicines she must take to survive. “My therapy takes several hours a day,
” she says, clearly unable to take a deep breath to finish even a short
sentence as she speaks through a plastic mask she wears to breathe. The
video received another round of nasty comments, asking her if she really
thought her life was more valuable than the lives of animals: “Is that the
best you’ve got, Caterina? Have a good life then. I would prefer not to
live if my life depended on the suffering of others or taking millions of
lives, because their life is worth less than mine. Shame!”
Simonsen’s battle won’t be easy. The 25-year-old was admitted to
intensive care on Sunday after contracting a serious lung infection, which
her doctors believe is stress-induced. She spent 12 weeks of the last year
in the hospital and 24 weeks in intensive therapy, which she says was far
less than previous years. “My best friends are those I met in the hospital,
” she said in the days before her rehospitalization. “I am alive because
of medicine. I get up in the morning because of medicine. Thanks to the
medicine, and thanks to the animals that were sacrificed to develop it, I am
sitting here.” |
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