Tooned these baboons with Toon-FX. I’d like to think the JoyTech animals are somewhere like this now, but maybe it’s all a cartoon fantasy…?

Monday came and went with no word from JoyTech. In fact, it wasn’t until Wednesday that our rep from the Conurban Council was contacted by a JoyTech lawyer who told him very politely that Dr. John Barr (I guess he was a scientist, too), along with his entire team, had been fired for carrying out animal testing that had never been approved by the JoyTech Board of Directors.

The good news is that the facility is being shut down, and our Council rep was asked to oversee the transfer of the surviving animals to proper care homes.

The bad news is that JoyTech wins again. They used the same ‘hands-off’ strategy they used with the recycling scam to absolve themselves of all responsibility.

THEY didn’t know what was going on. Of course they didn’t. THEY can’t be blamed for the work of one maverick scientist with a sinister personal agenda.

A tiny piece ran in the Daily Ringer yesterday about Dr. John Barr – the mad scientist working ALONE on his evil schemes in a remote basement on the edge of the JoyTech plant.

HA!

I was there. I saw different. I’m glad the animals are safe, but if JoyTech thinks this is over, they’re wrong.

I could tell Aurora was seriously curious about the origins of the photos from inside the plant, but I tried to divert her attention from the sneaky, sneaky truth of my nighttime adventures by focusing on the problem at hand.

Lucky for me, she’s easy to focus when she gets mad.

Aurora’s been working with grassroots activist communities since she was old enough to carry a protest sign, so she called every single person she knew who has any sway in politics or business in Ring City.

Eventually, she got a group together of about six people that could make serious trouble for JoyTech, including a member of the Conurban Council, and a reporter for the Daily Ringer who doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the editor where her cozy relationship with the JoyTech CEOs is concerned.

The group set up a meeting with this guy, John Barr – none other than the pencil-pusher I overheard arguing with the scientist guy the other night!

Basically, they laid all their cards on the table for him: they had pictures of JoyTech’s animal testing facility – never mind where these pictures came from – they were pictures that made the animals’ living conditions seem cruel and unusual, at best. They would go public with the photos unless JoyTech offered full disclosure on what was happening in the facility.

If you remember the conversation between John and the scientist, then you know he already knew that sh*t was about to hit the proverbial fan. He asked for the weekend to speak with the JGIC lawyers and make a decision on how to proceed.

This was on Saturday. At the time, me and Aurora were stoked. We figured there was no way JoyTech could get away with this one.

Once the public saw and heard about what was being done to those animals, the insane experiments would stop, and the plant itself would be run out of town on a rail! Right? Right?

Wrong.

At some points in life, you really need a friend. Even if all they do is get you out of your own toonified head. Now I’ve got a new friend. And I’ll be the first to admit that I was feeling pretty sorry for myself in the friend department when she came along.

I think I’m going to call her Mrs. Brisby, like the mouse from The Secret of NIMH. She seems to think it’s funny. Seriously.

Mrs. Brisby is the coolest little creature ever. She’s super smart, really friendly, and, like I said, she takes pictures and send them to my cell phone.

I’m guessing that she must have been part of an experiment involving putting little cameras in rats’ brains? I didn’t know that was possible, but she is definitely, definitely the one sending the pictures. When she wants to eat something, she sends me a picture of it. When she wants to take a closer look at something she can’t get at, she does the same thing.

She took a picture of me laughing at Flight of the Conchords, and now she sends me that pic whenever she thinks something’s funny. For example – me trying to look tough. That got a big laugh.

The messed-up thing I can’t get over is the reasoning behind turning her into a super-rat. I’m guessing it was not to make her into a cool pet. I’ve found so far that when I try to talk to her, she tries to find ways to respond. But when I ask her about the lab, she turns her back on me.

The only time she’s responded so far is when I asked her about the other rats at JoyTech. Then she sent me an image of a tray full of dead rats. Then she acted really busy shredding some newspaper I put in a box for her.

Poor Mrs. Brisby.

One thing’s for sure. I can’t let the rest of those animals stay caged up at JoyTech. But I can’t just set them free, either. It’s not going to be easy for them to start new lives.

So I’ve made a decision. I’m going to tell Aurora what I’ve seen. And I’m going to ask for her help. We don’t have to be friends, but she’s got all these connections in activism communities, and I need her help. Maybe there’s some way this thing can be resolved safely, without the influence of a ‘masked adventurer.’

All photos tooned using Toon-Photo!

Photo tooning courtesy of the increasingly awesome Toon-FX.

Well, I didn’t get a lot of feedback from you guys on the whole animal testing thing, other than the criticism that my arguments were biased and poorly researched. But my teachers tell me that all the time, so that wasn’t very constructive.

Last night, I got to the animal storage facility a bit later than I did last time, hoping I’d miss whoever was working the late shift. My way in is a grate in the ceiling that I can crack just enough to wiggle through.

I have to roll over a bank of cages to get to the floor. Predictably, I bail out and land on my back, and suddenly I’m feeling all these tugs on my clothes.

I rolled away from the row of cages, and when I fixed my mask and got a look, I see the whole row is all these little monkeys, and they’ve all got their arms sticking out of their cages and they’re reaching towards me.

Oh, and did I mention? They’ve got no eyes and no mouths.

I guess I should have been worried about them being infected with unimaginably disgusting diseases, but I couldn’t help going back to the cages and letting them grab at my clothes again for a minute.

They were totally silent except these little snuffling noises. And they weren’t aggressive like other lab monkeys I’d been reading about. It was like they wanted to pat me all over and figure out what I was.

Meanwhile, the rest of the room behind me was weirdly quiet, also. I’d heard that labs often cut animal vocal cords to keep them quiet during testing, but the experience of it is seriously strange.

Besides the monkeys, most of the animals were sitting to the back of their cages. But even the animals that were moving forward aggressively didn’t seem to be trying to bark or make noise. Like they knew they couldn’t.

I wanted to have a good look at every animal, but I also wanted to see if I could get into the area below the cage storage. I was just looking for a button to open the panel in the floor, when it slid open on its own.

Again I heard voices coming up the stairs, but this time they were talking about knocking off for the day, and it was exactly 5 am. I scrambled out the window, but this time, I knew when to come back.

Tonight, I’ll go back to the JGIC plant and hopefully get a better look at their testing facility. First though, I did some research on the arguments AGAINST animal testing.

This was a lot harder than the ‘FOR’ stuff, because animal activists fill their websites with the most graphic images you’ve ever seen, and they make you feel insane with sadness, which is unproductive for someone who’s trying to be an objective researcher.

Animal rights activists have a bunch of different opinions on animal testing. The extreme view is that it is never justified, because the only difference between humans and animals is our giant egos and sense of self-importance.

One level down from that are those who say animal testing is justified when it saves human lives, but that animals should never be made to suffer unnecessarily. Which is really confusing, because that means some kinds of testing are okay, while others are not.

The other big part of the ‘Against’ argument is that there are lots of alternatives to testing on animals, and that often, animals are not similar enough to humans to make testing worthwhile. Hence, a lot of the experimentation done is pointless and often, useless.

According to the U.S. Animal Welfare Act, any procedure can be performed on an animal if it is scientifically justified. But what means ‘justified’? Who are we to say which animal’s life is forfeit for the greater good, and which isn’t? Who are we to say that species like dogs and chimps have rights, while rats, birds, and fish, have none?

Animal testing.
Hunting and fishing.
Deforestation and ecological damage leading to extinction of species.
Dog fighting.
Horse racing.
Factory farming.
Fur farming.
Animal entertainers.

In the future, they’ll look at how our so-called ‘enlightened society’ treated animals, and we’ll be seen as no better than the colonizers and slave-owners of the past.

I thought I’d start today by looking at pro-animal testing arguments, since those are the ones that I’m most naturally against. (Notice the unfairly cute rat toon.)

According to a lot of the scientific community, and lots of universities where testing goes on, animal experimentation is necessary to help human beings. Some of the greatest scientific advances of all time are thanks to animal experimentation.

Researchers argue that the things that humans and animals have in common make them invaluable test subjects. Untested products released on the market have led to the injury and death of humans in the past.

To make sure that animal testing is not done unnecessarily, or with unnecessary cruelty, various regulations are in place that apply to large animals, but not to rodents, fish, or birds…

It’s also long been debatable (and you’ll like this one) as to whether or not animals have feelings and experience pain the way that humans do. If they don’t, experiments that cause too much suffering and distress to be ethically performed on humans can be done on animals with clear conscience.

Finally, and this is a pretty dumb argument if you asks me, but the NCABR says that if you like having pets and eating meat, then you should shut up about animal testing, because way less animals get chemicals poured in their eyes than sleep at the foot of our beds at night…

Okay, that was over the line. Clearly, I am not an unbiased researcher here.

That being said, if I was dying of cancer, would I care about them growing tumors on rats if it meant saving MY life? Or Jerry’s life? Or Aurora’s?

I guess the question is: exactly what is JoyTech doing with these animals. Testing cosmetics and bathroom products? Or curing pediatric AIDS?

What do you think?

I wonder if I made my last post into a comic so it would seem less real and freaky. Like, if it’s just another crazy adventure of my superhero self, then it’s not a big deal, right?

I’m glad that so many people liked my comic on Friday. But I also feel like I have this huge problem, and I really want to know what you think I should do about it.

To get you up to date: I was snooping around JoyTech, and I overheard some scientists talking about these experiments they were doing on animals, and how all the animals were dying.

I snooped around a bit more, and I found this storage facility where they’re keeping all their “test subjects.” I didn’t have long to investigate, but what I saw was pretty horrible. All the animals looked rough, and some of them looked…deformed or something.

I don’t really know.

My very first instinct was to rip open all the cages, open the door and get those animals out of there, but I know it doesn’t work like that. I’ve seen 28 Days Later. I’ve seen Free Jimmy (which you should check out, if you haven’t).

Point being, I know it doesn’t work to just free animals from captivity.

According to Wikipedia, most of them are bred specially for testing, and euthanized once the experiments performed on them are over. The animals never know life outside of the lab, and would probably need special care, if they did.

That’s why there are now retirement facilities for chimps that have been used for entertainment or research purposes. They can’t go back to nature, we basically ruined their chance at a normal life, and now we are morally obligated to provide them with a decent home for the rest of their near-human lifespans.

The idea of chimp retirement communities is fine, but all of this seems like a nightmare to me.

I’m going to do some research, present for and against arguments, and you tell me what you think.

Is JoyTech perfectly within its rights here, or do these animals need to get out of that lab? I wish I could talk to Aurora about this…

On the night that I recorded the conversation in my last post, I had to get home before dawn, but I went back last night to have a look at that animal testing facility. I had to know what they were doing that so many animals were dying. And of course, I knew where to look, because I realized I had already heard the noises of crying animals…