2
Opinion
Monday, February 11,1991
The Battalion
Opinion Page Editor
Jennifer Jeffus
845-3314
Students should volunteer to help community
W,
ith the war has
come a renewed feeling of patriotism in
many Americans. It's time to turn that
patriotism into action to improve our
little comer of America.
You can take a step toward helping
our community on Saturday during the
Give Five Telethon, hosted by Post Oak
Mall and KAMU-TV. The telethon isn't
an attempt to raise money but to raise
volunteerism in the Brazos Valley.
Each individual is asked to give
merely five hours a week working for a
charitable organization. That's less
time than soap opera fans spend
watching "Days of Our Lives."
The goal of this year's telethon is to
get 2,500 individuals to pledge 450,000
hours of volunteer time to Brazos
Valley non-profit organizations. Last
year, at the first Give Five Telethon,
almost 2,000 community members
pledged more than 100,000 hours over
the goal of 220,000 hours.
This is a super opportunity for Texas
A&M students to give a little
something back to the community.
However, students seem to have some
pretty good arguments against doing
Ellen
Hobbs
Columnist
Services Reserves. Some of them were
quite active in other student
organizations. And they even had time
to go out and have a beer on the
weekends.
volunteer work in the Brazos Valley.
One is that as students, we're not
really members of this community.
Well, that's silly. We live here for four
or more years, we rent here, we vote
here, we pay the sales tax. We're
members of the community.
But the biggest and most pervasive
excuse students use to avoid
volunteering is that they just don't
have enough time.
I know what you mean. I used to feel
that way too. But the more I looked
around, I noticed that I knew a lot of
students who were doing volunteer
work of all kinds, from working with
Boy Scouts to delivering meals on
wheels to answering hotlines to
working for church groups.
These weren't students who were
doing poorly in school, either. Some of
them were holding down jobs, too.
Some of them were are in the Armed
It's possible for students to be active
community volunteers. And
volunteering does make a difference, to
other people's lives and to your own.
It's well worth the time and effort.
This year the telethon is featuring 20
different local organizations; however,
your pledge to any civic or charitable
group, whether or not they are
featured, will be recorded to help reach
this year's goal.
Out of the featured charities, at least
one will probably sound interesting to
you. There are also many other
organizations looking for volunteers in
the Brazos Valley, and you should feel
free to check into those.
Local churches and campus
organizations often know of charities
looking for volunteers. And often,
finding a charity that suits you means
looking no farther than your phone
book.
Make a commitment to help your
Groups featured in telethon
This year the telethon is featuring
20 different local organizations;
however, your pledge to any civic or
charitable group, whether or not they
are featured, will be recorded to help
reach this year's goal.
The 20 featured organizations are:
★ the American Heart Association;
★ the Arthritis Foundation —
Brazos Valley Committee;
★ the Boy Scouts, Arrowhead
District;
★ Brazos Beautiful;
★ the Brazos County Sheriff's
Department Jr. Deputy Program;
★ the Brazos Maternal & Child
Health Clinic;
★ B VC AS A — Youth Council;
★ the Brazos Valley Head Start
Program;
★ the Brazos Valley Museum;
★ the Bryan-College Station
Chamber of Commerce Convention
and Visitor's Bureau;
★ the Bryan-College Station
Library System;
★ the College Station I.S.D. Head
Start Program;
★ the Girl Scouts, Bluebonnet
Council;
★ Humana Hospital Auxiliary;
★ the March of Dimes;
★ the Mental Health Mental
Retardation Authority of Brazos
Valley;
★ Mothers Against Drunk Driving;
★ the Spina Bifida Association of
Bryan;
★ St. Joseph Hospital & Health
ixili
Center Auxiliary;
★ and Twin City Mission Inc.
Information about individual
organizations and the Give Five
Telethon can be picked up at the Give
Five display at Post Oak Mall.
community. Improve your little corner
of the United States. Let your
patriotism run wild!
Give five hours. As the billboards
say, "What you get back is
immeasurable."
Ellen Hobbs is a senior journalism
major.
The Battalion la Interested In
ber on ail letters.
There Is, however.
address and phone num-
le tiers have a better chance of appealing.
Campus Mall Stop 1111.
All life is sacred
A&M should study non-violence
EDITOR:
Although most of the animal-rights protesters are off
somewhere busily protesting the Persian Gulf Conflict, those
of us who look out for the interests of the truly helpless see a
new and looming threat to our smaller friends.
I cannot help but protest the vile and heartless position
espoused by Tim Truesdale in the Jan. 31 issue of The Battal
ion in regard to the use of animals for drug research.
His position on the use of alternate forms of research
would let the burden of sacrifice to science fall on the most
helpless of the passengers of Spaceship Earth: the Bacteria,
For humans to use them to test our piolsprts, our rhtita-
gens and our toxins is equally as "inhumane^ as using ani
mals.
Bacteria are, first of all, a much older form of life than
ours, and therefore, possibly wiser. Their "lack" of commu
nication with us is our fault, not theirs, just as we at present
cannot communicate with dolphins.
Bacteria do everything animals do, and more. They live in
large familial groups (called colonies).
When the local population is too high, they stop repro
ducing, something the People's Republic of China had to leg
islate to achieve.
They adapt to new and challenging environments, much
as the wild-dog ancestors adapted to living with humans.
They are natural-born chemists and remarkable genetic
engineers. They communicate everything from where the
best food is to how to resist our best antibiotics.
They live, they reproduce, they communicate.
How can we destroy such a culture as this? How can we
sacrifice BILLIONS upon TRILLIONS of microbes to the
cause of human lives free of debilitating disease and crip
pling illnesses? Such arrogance of man!
The truth is that the "computer" (that Truesdale has evi
dently been told about in his urban planning classes) that can
faithfully reproduce the entire range of physiological interac
tions of the human body (as we in the College of Medicine
understand them) will not be built before Truesdale has chil
dren, and possibly not even in our lifetime.
So then, in at least partial agreement with Truesdale, we
truly must send an ultimatum to drug companies.
Stop the manufacture of all vaccines, antibiotics, antide
pressants, painkillers and the like.
As a truly HUMANE human race, we must simply accept
the increased number of preventable deaths and birth de
fects in humans as a sacrifice to the rights of animals and bac
teria. v
To do otherwise is to be less than human.
After all, ALL life is sacred, and (to paraphrase animal-
rights groups) "a boy is a dog is an E. coli."
EDITOR:
While no one would deny the importance of respecting
the people who have volunteered to fight and die for their
country, the question of "support for our troops" has
shrouded some of the other important considerations of this
war.
One is the question of support/respect for the people who
have NOT chosen to fight and die for their countries — civil
ians, for example.
Recent research reminds us that war does not often fol
low the rules set for it. William Eckhardt of the Lentz Peace
Research Laboratory has compiled statistics on the 42 wars
which occurred throughout the world during the 1980s.
He defined "war" as "an armed conflict involving at least
one government and causing at least 1,000 deaths per year."
The total number of deaths caused by these 42 wars, in
cluding deaths from famine and disease where these seemed
to be war related, was 5,058,000.
Each war — on the average — caused 120,000 deaths. The
majority of those killed (62 percent) was civilians.
Because casualty reports have been censored, exact body
counts in the Persian Gulf are unknown. But we have heard
of the civilian target bombings in Israel, Iraq and Saudi Ara
bia.
And we can expect, according to Eckhardt's study, that
the number of civilian deaths in the Persian Gulf will far out
number those of soldiers.
Unless we consider, as our government apparently does,
the lives of the people of that region to dispensable, these
facts, should, I think, disturb us.
One way to alter this trend of slaughtering innocents
would be to encourage Texas A&M to devote research
money and time to studies in peace and non-violent conflict
resolution.
Would that the people so well trained in methods of war
were equally well-trained in practical peacemaking. For the
most successful transfers of power in our time — in the Phil-
lipines, Poland, Czechoslovakia and eastern Europe, for in
stance — have relied largely on non-violent tactics.
Violence in the Persian Gulf will bring only more violence
— for soldiers and civilians. History and the prophets of our
time have proven there to be more effective ways of solving
problems.
A&M should demonstrate the leadership needed to study
the ways of non-violence.
Fall Prey to Drug Testing," in the Jan. 31 issue of The Battal
ion.
In his article, Mr. Truesdale relates the use of animals in
scientific research to the custom of sacrificing animals to the
gods in ancient times to ward off disease.
He says the only thing that has changes from then is the
name of the god, which he has so adamantly named GREED.
How greed and the sacrifice of animals for research re
late, I am not sure. First, researchers work mainly from
grants and fellowships that they receive from colleges, non
profit organizations and hospitals.
The funds go to improve equipment, facilities and tech
niques. The laboratories that produce the vaccines have to
make a profit so they can continue to imprqyq their facilities
for production.
They also have to compete in the market area. His col
umn was not actually focused on the money aspect of animal
research, therefore, making the first paragraph irrelevant to
the rest of the column.
His column did, however, deal with research testing on
animals. The article did a good job of bringing out everything
that has been said against using animals in research.
In his column, he posed the question, "How do scientists
who kill animals for a living get sleep at night?"
I would like to turn this around because everyone at
sometime or another has put someone or something in jeop
ardy.
How do you in your respective fields sleep at night know
ing that the results of your jobs can harm animals and even
people?
As specialists in our own fields, it is natural to think our
professions do more good than harm, or do not directly
harm anything.
This letter might sound very biased in favor of using ani
mals in research. But all that I am trying to do is show that
there is another side to every story. That other side is very
important in deciding how to react to the situation.
Mr. Truesdale mentioned in his article that there are alter
natives to using animals.
Yes, there are, but do people know how long it would
take for scientists to perfect these alternatives enough to cure
a virus, such as AIDS, if they were suddenly restricted from
using animals for research?
Catherine Schultz
graduate student
Alternatives take years of testing
Darren Duvall
first year medical student
EDITOR:
I'm writing in response to the column entitled "Animals
Alternatives take years of improvement and testing be
fore they can be effectively used in an experiment. There are
scientists out there who are perfecting these new tests and it
will be wonderful when they are ready to be used effectively.
But in the meantime, the other tests cannot be tossed out be
cause some people do not agree with the methods.
There has to be a medium somewhere; so research can
continue; so animals can be treated in a humane way.
Tammy Shahan '94
The Battalion
(USPS 045 360)
Member of
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
The Battalion Editorial Board
Lisa Ann Robertson,
Editor
Kathy Cox, Managing Editor
J ennifer J effus,
Opinion Page Editor
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Keith Sartin,
Richard Tijerina,
News Editors
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Fredrick D. Joe, Art Director
Kristin North,
Life Style Editor
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