Trinity College, Dublin, Barbarism Of

A protest against vivisection in the Biology Department of Trinity College, Dublin, prompts a letter from John Banville in today’s Irish Times:

A senior member of the biology department at Trinity confirmed to me by telephone that vivisection is indeed carried on in the college. He said vivisection was a ‘very emotive term’ - it is not emotive, it is precise - and courteously offered to discuss the matter with me, or to have other people at the college speak to me about it.

I declined. My position on the matter is not open to discussion.

It is a disgrace that one of the country's leading educational institutions, a seat of learning and enlightenment, should be engaged in such brutal and unnecessary practices. A part of our responsibility as human beings is the protection of species at a lower evolutionary level than ourselves. To inflict unendurable agony upon conscious animals is barbaric.

{Ends}

Today, I am ashamed to be a graduate of TCD.