Storyteller's World

How do you tell where legitimate protest, in a sensible cause, shades into madness? Today in town the animal rights protesters were demonstrating against the new animal research facility the University is building in South Parks Road. Surprisingly large numbers of these protesters look like people you wouldn't give a job to. Yet they are threatening major disruption to the building of the new centre, and violence against contractors and those who work in it. It's incredible the fear they instil. A research scientist - who did not wish to be named - said, "We face going back to medieval times where people die when they are 30 and children die at infancy - but if people want to go back it is a decision we have to take as a society. It would be disastrous for the UK and biomedical research if animal experiments were stopped - it would bring medical research to a halt."

There is something completely topsy-turvy about these people who get so passionate about animal rights that they are ready to murder scientists - like the anti-abortion campaigners who value life so much that they murder surgeons. It reminds me of the people who find fault with Jesus for sending the demons into the Gadarene swine - as if the life and health of one person made in the image of God were not two thousand times more important than the life of a pig. That's what Mark is saying.