Project Almanac

I've found that as this quarter has passed by, i have began to notice that i am gradually noticing things that come up that correlate to the things we go over in class. Over this Memorial Day weekend, i watched the movie Project Almanac (which i recommend watching if you haven't yet). It's about a boy in high school who finds the blueprints to a time machine that is father left behind before he died when he was young. He's an intelligent guy who is hoping to attend MIT, so he ends up putting together the time machine. There is a scene in the movie where he and his friends have finally gotten the time machine to work for a short time span but only transporting a barbie doll in a toy car, however, they are curious to see if they can transition to a longer time span and whether they can begin to transport humans. His love interest is quick to want to make this transition to humans, but the rest of the characters are skeptical of doing so before they need to test it out first on other organisms such as puppies, claiming that they need to take things "step by step". This scene instantly made me think of our class and the issue of animal testing that we have been discussing.

The idea that we must test on animals comes from the fear of the unknown outcome and results. It is the fear that we will have an allergic reaction, long term effects, die, or in the case of the movie, disappear and never come back due to the mystery of time travel. It is this fear that causes us humans to put ourselves above animals and to put our lives above theirs. We are quick to think of animals as being easily attainable for our own use and pleasure because they have no say in what happens to them. There is no attachment to them or would there be a mourn over the loss of losing the animals to the possible effects that could occur from testing. It is this mentality that causes humans to refrain from thinking twice about testing on animals because it is not themselves who must endure the pain. I think it's interesting that the characters in the movie describe the process of testing on animals and humans as being a "step by step" process, as if there is an order set for testing procedures ranging from innocent animals and eventually leading to humans, if we are lucky enough to get to that point.

P.S. They never ended up testing on animals in the movie, so that's a plus!