I experienced very conflicting emotions last week. I was at work, perched on my little nerd stool, looking down at a heart-breakingly helpless baby mouse. Murine pups are so undeveloped, that if I didn’t know better I would have guessed it was an embryonic dog. It had almost translucent, hairless pink skin covering the areas where its eyes and ears were going to grow in. It kicked its diminutive legs in the air, unable to right itself, and opened its mouth repeatedly, most likely calling out ultrasonically for its mother. In contrast to its helplessness, I had to marvel at its “me-ness”. At some point in the womb, humans look similar to a newborn mouse, and the physiologic similarities between us were the very reason I was sitting there contemplating the little whelp. If I had felt only my instinct to help the pup and the small degree of fellowship I shared with it, what I was about to do would have seemed unthinkable. So it was with a heavy sigh that I scruffed the beast between two fingers and sliced its head off with a pair of stainless steel scissors, then cut out its eyeballs.

I realized in a college physiology course that if I supported animal research, it would be hypocritical of me to refuse to do the deed myself. However, being consistent doesn’t make you comfortable, and as I suspected, my rationalizations didn’t satisfy my subconscious moral qualms.

Case in point: Last night I had two dreams. In the first, I was dissecting a genetically modified frog in a crowded science class. When the frog was cut open a moist, grapefruit-sized, hideously malformed human eye oozed out and stared back at me. Call me squeamish, but I was a little disturbed. Next I dreamt that two close friends were becoming deformed in my room and approaching my bed to engulf me. I was shaken awake by Friend, who I had woken up with my terrified shouts.

Someday I’ll go blind and be thankful for this research, but till then I’m chomping the bullet like there’s no tomorrow.