Evaluation of News Magazine Stories

Delving deeper into my specific major, Veterinary Science, we will now look at articles that bring up debatable points in the field and events that have caused some inquiries.

For the first article, we will be looking at an event that happened in 1999, but spurred ideas in recent times about the connection between human science and veterinary science. This article also comments on the controversial and new idea that veterinary science can be used to predict human viruses and infections.

• In the article the main topic for debate is if veterinary science can really be related to public-health issues. What started off as "The West Nile story" in which a veterinary found out the disease that caused many birds to die first in the same way humans did, became a much bigger debate on if the two healths can be connected. In the original event the connection between human and animal health was happening in New York City where birds would die in staggering amounts and the chief vet, Tracey McNamara thought there was a connection, often being told she was wrong.
• The most sympathetic character in the article was Tracey McNamara. She worked so hard to prove that her original thought was right, showing her hard work and dedication that gave me feelings of sympathy towards her. The organization that is researching this connection, called One Health Initiative is also a sympathetic organization because it doesn't have a lot of funding and is working for a cause they believe in
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as some others who refuted Tracey McNamara were the least sympathetic because they "brushed her off". The tone the author used to describe these people was often harsher and a little biased against them.

For the next article, taken from The New Yorker, it speaks about the Santa Cruz Biotechnology and the unethical and high cost of the antibodies that they get from goats.

• On May 2, 2012 the 11765th goat from Santa Cruz Biotechnology to die brought about a large debate on the morality of what the company was doing. The company is the second-largest vendor in the antibody market, 33% of labs get their antibodies from them, but their process of getting these antibodies involved the inhumane death of many goats. The U.S.D.A had to file an enforcement action accusing the industry of violation of the Animal Welfare Act. The company claimed that death can occur in many different ways and that their industry was not the direct cause of it.
• The most sympathetic character was the goats, obviously, but mostly the people against the Santa Cruz Biotechnology because the article often quoted them saying uncaring things about the goats that they were treating and the author put up a very good argument for their mistreatment of animals, which is something I assume everyone is unsympathetic toward.
• The Santa Cruz Biotechnology owners, John and Brenda Stephenson, are the least sympathetic in the article because of their mistreatment of the animals. They are also depicted very terrible in the article and are made out to be these people with a bunch of money that they got from putting around 12,000 goats in pain.

Here are some goats screaming.

"Baby Goats". January 2007 via Wikimedia Commons. Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.