NEITHER. I dislike both. Combine them into some sort of human-animal hybrid and let them fight it out on network television.

I VOTE RATS!!

Wait... maybe I should go back and read your post first.

WSH, one of you should, then you'd catch "this" instead of "these".

I vote for the rat.

Stupid Jonser and her stupid brilliant COTW. LET SOMEONE ELSE HAVE A CHANCE.

Is it just one kid and one rat? Are they competing with me for resources? This question hasn't been fleshed out enough.

Portlanders are too cool to like children. It is the ultimate in ungrateful hipster coolness to hate children.

I'm against testing cosmetics or whatever on rats AND children AND monkeys AND apes, etc.

this has been up for a couple weeks at 52nd and powell. A trip to the website takes you to a petition you can sign if you're against animal testing. The website calls it an "Advance Animal Directive" wherein you deny treatment for any ailments that have remedies derived from animal research (which the website claims just about everything under the sun) and cheerily says "Good Luck!"

Here's the text for that awesome 'against animal testing' identification card, copied here for Blogtown's amusement:

I,_____________________, being of sound mind and above the legal age
of 18, do herewith ask all healthcare providers (including pharmacists,
surgeons, physicians, paramedics, and all emergency room doctors) to
include in my permanent medical records and to make sure that I never
receive medications, surgical procedures, medical devices, treatments,
or disease therapies that have ever been tested on animals through
biomedical animal research. I intend for this to include (but should not
be limited to): cold medicines, decongestants, sinus medications,
Athlete’s Foot medications, anti-inflammatory medications, acetaminophens,
hemorrhoid creams, yeast infection treatments, antibiotic
creams, first aid creams, antacids, laxatives, allergy medications, contact
lenses; vaccines (such as diphtheria, typhoid, smallpox, whooping cough,
tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, chickenpox, Hepatitis B); anticoagulants,
anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, asthma inhalers, blood
pressure medicines, blood transfusions, breast cancer medicines, bubonic
plague vaccines, cataract surgery, cervical cancer vaccine, chemotherapy,
cholera vaccine, corneal transplants, coronary bypass operations, CT
scans, deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's, ectopic pregnancy
treatments, heart transplants, heart valve replacements, heart/lung
machines, hip replacement surgeries, HIV drugs, insulin for diabetes,
kidney dialysis, kidney transplants, leprosy treatments, anesthesia, malaria
treatments, meningitis vaccines, migraine medications, monoclonal
antibodies, MRIs, muscular dystrophy treatments, open heart surgeries,
pacemakers, penicillin, prostate cancer medicines, rabies vaccine, Rh
factor, rickets treatments, cholesterol medications, tuberculosis
medicines, transplant rejection medications, ulcer medicines, arthroscopic
surgeries, laparascopic surgeries and laparascopic digestive surgical
procedures, plus 6,582 other drugs and procedures.

I think the muppet on the right was in Dark Crystal. So I'm going with the muppet.

@rich bachelor, now you're just engaging in tit-for-tat stereotyping. I'm sure JustinPDX was innocently denouncing hipsters from his iPhone while biking hands-free to the Tube for vegan tacos.

The ad is misleading. Biomedical research has almost no effect on population health (ie; longevity and infant mortality). Instead, it mostly produces expensive, trendy, and unnecessary pharmaceutical drugs that are barely more affective than a placebo.

On the other hand, public health interventions have produced (and promise) the biggest health impacts. Reducing poverty, improving diet and exercise, and access to primary care are what really save lives, not drugs and medical devices.

"Gee, couldn’t [they] have hung out at the local McDonald’s and learned the same thing?"

NO! That is not how science works. Now a bunch of anti-intellectuals will go around saying THAT. I wish I knew why so many people disparage brains and their use..

I think the add or giant sticker or whatever it is that it is would have been more effective if it would have said "Whom would you rather eat?". There lies the real question. And then a smal box, reading thus: "if your a hipster, plz x this box"

As an animal rescue worker--not a hipster--I'm voting for the 'rat'. Not the least because when they say rat, what they really mean, is anything mammalian that they can get they're grubby little paws on.

This should be easy, but... on the one hand, the child's diabolical rictus, on the other the rodent's velvety-soft snow-white fur... OH, MUST I CHOOSE??!?

Wow this is fucked up.

@17, Fuck you, without animal tested medicines plenty of people like myself who have chronic illnesses for reasons completely unrelated to lifestyle or environment would be dead. Reducing poverty, increasing diet and exercise, and improving availability to primary care is a big part of increasing people's well-being; but guess what, some of us also need the animal tested drugs and medical devices that we can barely fucking afford so we can have something like normal lives too. Hopefully you stay able-bodied for a long long time, so you don't have to pay for any trendy, unnecessary animal-tested pharmaceuticals like interferon or insulin which do hardly anything more than placebos.

That is an awfully cute rat, and an awfully ugly child. False dichotomy indeed! Rat wins, hands down.

@samktg... while I agree the 'placebo' comment by wink0151 was absolutely ridiculous, I think there is something you are getting quite wrong, and that is thinking that most medicines are actually improved and/or invented thanks to animal testing. The majority of medicines have far different results/effects in humans as they do in animals and garner no useful results. Of course I don't deny there are certain exceptions to the rule, but there are so many ways nowadays with modern science to safely and humanely test the effects of drugs.

If I get sick, I'm willing to kill every motherfucking rat on the planet to stay alive. Survival, bitches!!!

Is that what medical testing has come to? They can get as many results killing a rat for science as they would a small child? Kudos to Big Pharma for such technological efficiency!

Disclaimer: I did not make this genius image, but:

http://i55.tinypic.com/2w4z7h2.jpg

@BruceWang, I could explain how you're wrong, but Jonathan Golob at The Stranger already has. Look, there are plenty of places where we bring unnecessary suffering to animals. We have an obligation to treat animals respectfully. Factory farming and cosmetics testing are egregious examples at how we fail at that. But really, you would ask humans to test drugs which act on the complexities of complete organisms in an unknown and possibly deadly fashion?

Also, that is an amazing picture.

And my html there didn't work, Golob's article is here: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/dear-sc…

If the Ratts want respect, they should apologize for Way Cool Jr.

@samktq - Why do we have an 'obligation' to treat animals respectfully? To whom are we obligated?

@Reymont, that is actually my personal opinion. It was imprecise of me to state that as is. I should have preceded that by saying "I think". That said, I think animals should be treated with respect as I feel it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering to other living beings. To whom are we obligated? I don't believe there's some bearded sky god staring down that requires we act a certain way. So who else but ourselves?

@36, I sincerely hope you do the ethical thing when MS progressively over years crumples you into a wheelchair and wears away at your ability to control your body, and turn down all those drugs tested on animals. You were born of your own free will, therefore you signed on to years of horrifying illness as your own body eats the myelin sheaths of your nerve cells and takes little nibbles of your brain, right?

@39, If you want to kill yourself, that's your prerogative. Of course, I've heard many talk your talk, but only ever known one to go through with it. Even then it was after a few decades of trying to live with the disease. But, no, I'm not against suicide, why should I be? Is it something to do with the "sugar coated world of Realness" I apparently believe I live in? I'm curious, if we don't live in a "world of Realness", why should you care that animals are used in medical testing, or for that matter, any capacity whatsoever? In fact, why does anything matter so much that you feel compelled to be a jerk on a comment thread?