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Actor James Cromwell pleads no contest in Wis.
http://news.yahoo.com/actor-james-cromwell-pleads-no-contest-wis-202252097.html (http://news.yahoo.com/actor-james-cromwell-pleads-no-contest-wis-202252097.html)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Actor James Cromwell has pleaded no contest to disrupting a University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents meeting last month while protesting cat experiments at the school.

The 73-year-old Cromwell and another activist, 27-year-old Jeremy Beckham, were charged with disorderly conduct following the meeting on the UW-Madison campus Feb. 7.

Both men held large signs showing a cat with metal implanted in its head at a campus lab while shouting about the treatment of cats.

Cromwell's attorney, Marcus Jens Berghahn, entered no contest pleas on both men's behalf Monday. A court commissioner ordered each to pay $263 in forfeitures and costs.

Cromwell was nominated for an Academy Award for the 1995 film "Babe." His film credits also include "L.A. Confidential" and "The Green Mile..."

http://news.yahoo.com/actor-james-cromwell-pleads-no-contest-wis-202252097.html (http://news.yahoo.com/actor-james-cromwell-pleads-no-contest-wis-202252097.html)

This seems like a weird story, but I understand its basis.

It's standard process in college classes to teach physiology by experimenting and dissecting animals. Cats are a favorite.

Now I agree with this practice. Sadly, the best practice in learning physiological processes is to do them yourself. It's mostly pre-med students who do this, but your future doctors have to learn at some point that the map is not the territory.

So here's a story.

I was in an Animal Physiology lab wherein I had to vivisect a live lab bunny. What that meant is that we had a bunch of lab rabbits, who were sedated beyond the point of ever waking up.

So I had to cut open a live rabbit's throat. And then I had to slowly tear that rabbit's throat apart with a pear of rough pincers. You can't just cut the open with a scalpel, because they bleed too much. So there I was slowly ripping apart a cute lab bunny's throat with pincers, so I could then isolate several arteries and tie off a major nerve ending.

Or that was the idea. The rabbit should have been sedated beyond belief, but still alive. I was halfway through tearing this bunny's throat apart, which is not that much fun. So I was in the midst of doing that when the entire rabbit kicks and lets out the most horrific mewl.

It was a sound that crawled up inside my soul and died. Moreso because I was in the midst of causing it egregious damage.

And thus began your tradition of making zombie chocolate Easter bunnies...

Seriously, though, that would be awful. When I was a lowly graduate teaching assistant, teaching Freshman English classes, one of my discussion topics was on the controversy of using animals in (mostly corporate) experimentation. Since the students would almost inevitably start arguing against it, I would have to play devil's advocate and argue in favor of using animals in all manner of awful experiments: Spraying hair spray in the eyes of rabbits to measure irritation was one such "experiment" we discussed. One day I went home for lunch and turned on the TV only to find that there was a documentary on about animals being used in the cosmetics industry to test for various effects. I decided to watch it, thinking I might gain some more insight for my class. Big mistake to watch something like that while eating. Animals were being strapped down and their backs flayed open, all so the testers could spray various cosmetics into the open wounds to see what happened. Terrible stuff to watch. I'm glad things have changed/are changing now.