Animal experiments save people

I have always been very fond of animals. My family has had many pets over the years, furry, feathered, hairy, scaled — you name it. When I was young, my mother once showed me a newspaper photo of a dog with a tube placed in its abdomen; the photo illustrated an article against the use animals in experiments. I never forgot the picture and, like my mother, was always against those procedures.

Jump ahead 25 years and guess what? Our youngest son was born with kidney blockages and would have died except for the very same procedure that had been tried on the dog, placing tubes in him to drain fluids and keep him alive.

Life has a way of bonking us on the head to remind us that we aren’t as smart as we think.

This story was originally published April 3, 2017 at 6:47 PM with the headline "Animal experiments save people."