Letters

Christis,

In reply to your request for opinions about your publication, I would like to make a few observations:

1. First of all, it is a very valid effort to actually do something in the generally vacuous campus environment.
2. I don’t mean to be too rude, but your editorial has the verve of a lower high school fanzine.
3. The articles are generally very tedious to read, and unenlightening.
4. Surely you can find someone with at least a smattering of cartoon-drawing ability?
5. The “five square miles of rain forest” gag on page 2 of issue 31 was particularly comrnendable.
6. I don’t like the name at all — why not have an audience participation exercise and get someone to come up with something less offensive/abrasive?
7. You gave a reply to the letter from “a concerned member of the Christian Church” in issue 31 which neither dealt with the issues raised in the letter, nor discussed the possible motives for not doing so.
8. Quite liked the “Sting/Death” gag, but it was obviously quite offensive to more sensitive readers, and hence a good topic for a possibly interesting debate in a future issue.

Thank you,

D. D. McKelcall

Dear Christis,

I am writing in reply to the article by Joanna Chamberlayne against vivisection (Christis 31). Although I agree with the thread of the arguments that Joanna presents, I believe that there are deeper points to the argument against using animals for the purposes of furthering scientific knowledge.

Money that is used to fund the research using animals eould often be more productively used. Many of the diseases that have become far less common in the western world in the last century have been mainly due to the decrease in the level of poverty, particularly the increase in hygiene, and in the improvement in balanced diets. (And this explains why more people are contracting more diseases such as TB, as incomes in the last decade have become more polarised.) A small increase in health education campaigns can have a major impact on improving health in society (eg. the Have a Heart campaign, to reduce the number of deaths by heart attack).

On a similar note, the use of screening techniques in order to locate diseases at their earliest stages can also have a major affect on the health of the nation, at a fraction of the cost of developing new drugs or knowledge gained from the use of vivisection.

The use of animals for finding out how different diseases are contracted, or spread through the body is not onIy inaccurate, as Joanna rightly points out, but is also tremendously expensive. There are alternatives that have been developed using human cells nurtured in the laboratory that would make much more sense to use.

However there is no arguing the fact that there have been some major improvements in scientific (paxticularly medical) knowledge through vivisection. Probably one of the main benefactors have been those operations involving organ transplants. Therefore the crux of the matter for me is whether humanity, as one particular species, has a God-given right to deliberately harm other animals for its own gain. In the first chapter of Genesis it talks about humanity having God-given dominion over other living creatures, who have an equal right to be here with us (indeed, in the first account of creation, the creatures appear on the earth before God created humanity). At the heart of the matter is whether using vivisection is an abuse of the relationship that the God of the Old Testament provided us with. I feel that it is. And I think that this must be the reason that we oppose the use of animals in experiments designed to damage or give pain to them. Maybe we should take the first few arguments of my letter, and from Jo’s article, about the benefit to humanity, as proof that what we are doing is wrong.

Christopher Smith

Dear Christis,

In response to Joanne Chamberlayne’s article on vivisection (Issue 31) I feel it necessary to present a less extreme view on the subject. Whilst not condoning needless hurt to animals, there is a place for utilising them in tests, particularly in the context of medical research. Joanna Chamberlayne feels that, “Even if vivisection had an obvious and profound effect on our society, it would still be hard to defend.” I believe that it can have a beneficial role and can be defended on these grounds.

The quality of human life is to be valued. Therefore, if breakthroughs in treatment for diseases such as cancer or muscular dystrophy can be made by such tests this should be applauded not condemned. Tests can give vital clues aiding medical research, even if a full cure has not yet been discovered. This will continue to be the case until human tissue cultures prove a consistently viable alternative. Within the pharmaceutical industry many potential medicines never reach the shelves because tests on animals show them to be dangerous and unworkable. Cutting out such experimentation would simultaneously ban new medicines from coming onto the market, because no guarantee could be given that the product had been rigorously tested and found to be safe. It may sound harsh to animal lovers, but I feel that it is ethically preferable to test medicines on animals before humans. Having seen someone I love suffer only strengthens my view that such testing is right.

In the words of the psalmist:

You made him [man] ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the sea.

(Psalm 8 v.6–8)

Janet Creegan

Dear Christis,

I was both confused and dismayed by Magnus Smyly’s article What’s going on? in issue 31.

I admit that because I found it hard to follow Magnus Smyly’s argument, I may have misunderstood in part, but the article seemed to me to be a cynical and derisive attack on the sanctity and infallibility of the Bible.

Does Magnus Smyly really imagine that God (who I presume is supposed to be the narrator) thinks of the people who He loved so greatly as to send His Son to die for them as “the populace”?

God is not a dictator seeking to raise our moral standards; His intention never was to “say that if you do not follow our set of rules in this life then you will not have an enjoyable afterlife”. Jesus’ coming ended the need for rules; He came “that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

The words of Magnus Smyly’s narrator devalue both God and the men He created in His image. We do not live in the type of society presented in Orwell’s 1984, in which people do not think for themselves but follow blindly, an image the article conjured up for me. Christians are certainly not, as Magnus Smyly suggests, “misguided”. We do not follow Jesus for ease or convenience, but because we know He is the way, the truth and the life.

If Magnus Smyly really wants to know “What’s going on?”, I suggest he turn to the book he is so sarcastically deriding.

Yours,

Kristin Malet

Dear Christis,

I most enjoyed reading the letter in issue 31 that you recently received 1900 years late. I didn’t realise Christis was so ancient! Just how far do you go back? Could it be possible that a large number of the Dead Sea scrolls are actually early editions of Christis? I suppose there must have been a re-numbering of the issues somewhere along the line. Perhaps you could enlighten us.

Yours in Christ,

Polly Carp

Challenging Christian Debate in Post-Christis Graduation

In a few months time, many of you who read Christis will be out there in the cold world of the post-graduate, and those months certainly will go by quicker than you will realise, though you soon forget all the worrying that you did over the final exams and the eternal waiting for the results to come out.

Much more of a problem when you leave University is trying to put all the pieces together in the new jigsaw puzzle of life that awaits you, and in particular, to try and find somewhere where it is possible to have the type of lively Christian debate that occurs within Christis and other groups on campus, with other young people in the area that you live. I would put particular emphasis on meeting with people of a similar age, as finding a church that one is able to feel at home with is difficult enough. Trying to find a group of young people to have a serious level of Christian debate has been totally impossible. In the true Christis way, instead of sitting around and not doing anything about it, myself and a group of other people (including another old Christis member) have got together in order to fill this void in our lives.

We would like to invite other Christis members who wish to continue challenging their faith, and are likely to be living in London after graduation (quite a number of you if the University’s official statistics are to be believed) to join us at our informal meetings. These are held in Central London, on the first and third Thursdays of every month. I would also like to emphasize the social nature of the group — we’re not all budding Bishops who love nothing better than discussing how many angels there are on a pin head — but the nature of the group is highly informal and ards there is usually an excursion to somewhere for a coffee (or something stronger) when one can get to know the other people who are part of the group. In a strange city, especially one the size of London, where one can feel very insignificant and lonely, this is a real blessing.

If anyone would like to receive further information regarding the group, feel free to either contact me, Christopher Smith Tel. 081 993 1056, or Martin Webber Tel. 081 399 3566.

Dear Christis,

Thank you for printing Nick Macdonald’s response to my article on vivisection, and thank you Nick for finding a more positive light to shed on the results of our treatment of animals.

Intellectually I felt it was right to bring my moral argument to it s inevitable conclusion, especially since I have heard people claim that they prefer Christis articles to make a clear point with which they can agree or disagree rather than simply wandering around the subject and not focusing the readers mind on the principal contention.

I hoped that subsequent issues of Christis would provide arguments to balance those I put forward in my article and this has proved to be the case: great, let’s have more debating in the pages of Christis please. I am wholly opposed to experimentation on animals for cosmetics, cleaning products, “defence” etc. but just for the record, when it comes to medical questions, even as I feel ashamed of our human arrogance/selfishness, I am never the less entirely in agreement with Nick. As is the case with most moral stances, taken to it’s logical conclusion the picture is suddenly no longer black and white, and I am no fundamentalist: were I Prime Minister I would try to shift the emphasis of medical experimentation on to alternative methods, but I could not try to abolish the use of animals to heal humans. Perhaps it is just my animal instinct to preserve my own kind; after all, only if we really were superior to animals could we be expected to be capable of that sort of sacrifice.

Yours,

Joanna Chamberlayne

Dear Christis,

I write concerning an article in issue 32 of your wonderful magazine which I have just received. I address it, if I may, to the author of that article, Tim Ockenden.

Firstly I’d like to stress that I respect you, Tim, as a friend and a fellow Christian and trust that you will take this in the way in which it was intended.

With regard to your article on Job, I have two comments:

1. How dare you, how DARE you refer to a part of the Bible as “garbage”??? I understand that you probably didn’t mean that phrase literally, but still …
2. On a lighter note, I loved the rest of the article and stuck out here in the wilds of Holland, missing the fellowship of my Christian friends, it hit home, so thanks for writing it.

Also thanks to the mystery member of Christis who faithfully sends my copies out — much appreciated.

Rosemary Barret