HBM050: The Scientist is not the Angel of Death

Here Be Monsters

Here Be Monsters Podcast

Documentary, Social Sciences, Personal Journals, Science, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2015

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What's a life worth? About $25, before shipping. At least, that's the case if you want a high-quality inbred lab mouse, like the C57BL/6J (in the biz, they just call them "black mice").

In this episode of Here Be Monsters, Jeff Emtman joins "The Scientist," an unnamed cancer researcher, for an after-hours trip to his lab, where they visit the hundreds of lab mice that he tends to. The Scientist's job is to inject his mice with cancer cells, then attempt to cure them using experimental treatments. After the cancers become too large, he kills the mice.

The Scientist says that he is not a satanist, despite the satanic art that covers much of his body. Instead, he considers himself a utilitarian, someone who believes that sacrifices must be made to promote the most good for the most beings (human or otherwise). And "sacrifice" is actually the technical term he and others use for killing the mice. The Scientist admits that it is a euphemistic word, but defends it because "from their sacrifice, you gain knowledge."

In his lab, the death comes via carbon dioxide, which is often thought to be the most painless option (though it has critics). Other labs use cervical dislocation--though generally there's a requirement that the animal must be unconscious first.

After the lab, Jeff and The Scientist sit out on a porch drinking beer, discussing the path to becoming a scientist, The Scientist's admiration of Neil Degrasse Tyson, and the beautiful French animated film, Fantastic Planet.

Music: Lucky Dragons, The Black Spot, Flowers

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the independent producer project of KCRW, this is Here Be Monsters. How many mice do you think you've killed?
0:19.6	From my work I've probably had to kill a few thousand mice at least I mean quite a lot
0:27.5	quite a lot quite a lot. How many have you killed this week? A A couple of years ago I hopped in a car with someone I know. I'm not going to name him here, but for the purposes of this episode I'm going to call him the scientist. The scientist
0:56.4	and I drove south in a city which will also remain nameless. We drove to a vivarium, which is Latin for a place of life.
1:05.0	The vivarium was where the scientist worked at the time and I asked him to show me what he does for a living.
1:12.0	But labs like this aren't open to the public, which is why we went there, just as the sun was setting, after his coworkers had gone home for the day. The life that lived in his vivarium were mice, hundreds of them, maybe even
1:26.7	thousands. Of course, cancer research is really big in the US right now and at this vibarium there are so there's what
1:36.0	there's like multiple rooms and it's all key card access to get into these things
1:40.5	so it's yeah no there's definitely there's definitely risk for me with
1:44.9	bringing bringing you in it's I would say it's probably it's probably
1:51.7	decent grounds for being fired.
1:54.0	Is that why you asked me to have everything be able to fit in my pocket though?
1:58.0	Yeah, definitely.
1:59.0	I mean it would have been really, it would have been very conspicuous if it's like coming in with a big or microphone
2:04.0	or like a big camera yeah we talked about this before but I just want to make sure
2:08.0	that I'm or that we have everything right yeah we aren't using your name is that right correct I think by default
2:15.6	associated that we probably shouldn't say where we are right right I'm more than
2:21.6	happy to obscure your voice I don't know if my voice would be really that recognizable.
2:27.0	Okay, but I mean, I don't know I don't think that'll really be necessary.
2:31.2	Yeah, well, that's a little bit.
2:33.0	Yeah, definitely.
2:34.0	Yeah, cool.
	...

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