Creepy Dreams

This may be a one-off, or maybe not. Don't know, just wanted to share this short bit.

I’ve been having a series of disconcerting dreams over the past few weeks. Each is different in the details but on the same topic. I am back at my work with the lab animals. And it has that very creepy dream-feeling. And it’s intensely gross. And deeply disturbing.

            The notable thing about this is that the actual experience should have been all those things. It should have been disturbing and creepy and gross, and yet at the time it was not. It was my job, and I did it very matter-of-factly. Going into a room where living beings, sentient individuals, who had been created – bred - for the specific purpose of being experimented on by humans, were manipulated. At AstraZeneca, they were better off. Group housed in large containers with bedding. At ITR they were worse off. Lived their entire short lives each one alone in a tiny metal box barely big enough for their own bodies. Poked, prodded, injected or fed or forced-to-breathe various things, restrained, manipulated, observed, and finally killed.

            In scope, animals bred for food outweigh animals used in science by orders of magnitude. (When I say “in science” I’m including basic science like at universities, even for psychology, plus for pharmaceutical or toxicology purposes). For an animal rights activist, strategically the place to focus is food animals, especially since from a human health point of view the entire thing is a fucking disaster, plus the negative consequences to the environment. In contrast, most people would prefer their drugs to be well-tested on animals before being deployed on the human population, and telling people who have loved ones suffering from cancer or other diseases that animals are more important than breakthroughs that could help is a no-win. And the numbers are not even on the same scale, animals-in-science numbers are minuscule. However… putting those practical points aside, the concept of animals in labs, the concept of breeding sentient beings for the specific purpose of experimenting on them… it’s an offensive idea.

            Think of the difference between killing people in a war  (even civilians, not just soldiers), or people being murdered in violent attacks, or terrorist attacks, versus people being experimented on. Think of how the thought of the Nazi doctors experimenting on people makes you feel, or Tuskegee. And even worse if the women were forcefully impregnated and the children actually created in order to do this. [I realize this is getting into sci-fi territory vis a vis human clones and what might be done there, but thankfully we’re not there yet.]

There’s something about the deliberateness of it that is different and worse. Way worse.

            I worked at AstraZeneca between 2002-2008, and at ITR mid-2014 to mid-2015. Until the past month or so I never had these kinds of dreams. Never. Even after going vegan in 2016. I never experienced that guilt that I have heard many people go through after the paradigm shift of becoming vegan. So why now??

I have an idea.

            The other day I watched an interview on CHD-TV with Christof Plothe. Mostly he was discussing Apeel, this new chemical that is being applied to fruit and vegetables. By all accounts (Brett and Heather also talked about it on DarkHorse), it’s not something any sane person would want on their food. It can’t be washed off, and whether the food that has it will be labelled or not is questionable. Maybe, but maybe not-always. At the very end Dr Plothe also made brief mention of weaponized mosquitoes, with the potential to ‘inject’ mRNA into people they bite. Not necessarily mRNA for spike protein but that’s not the point. So it’s not that surprising I am suddenly, after all this time, having really disturbing dreams about animals being experimented on. I am now one of them.

The feeling that there is no getting away from it, the powerlessness, that something or someone is going to force something to be done to me, to my body, that I have no way of avoiding, is terrifying. As bad as the whole Covid-jabs-madness was – the being taunted by our political leaders, placed essentially under house arrest, etc etc etc – at least I could actually avoid the jab. But if something that is going to harm me is in my food, and I can’t even know which food items it’s in, if it’s the mosquitos in my yard, I can’t get away from it. No strength of will can make any difference.

            Of course, it could be pointed out that things that could (and maybe were intended to) harm or damage me have been saturating the environment for a long time. Glyphosate, Round-up, who knows what else, have been around for a while. But I guess I didn’t know about those things before, and being ignorant and oblivious necessarily meant I was unbothered.

The Matrix analogy has been used a lot these past few years. I feel like I was kicked out of the matrix and all I want is to get back in. People who are oblivious seem so much happier. I would be happier if I were oblivious. But I’m not, and I am certain that I will keep having these creepy dreams for a good long time into the future.