• copied the Soviet anti-tank dog programme[0];
• glued bags filled with napalm to bats bodies and caged the live bats inside a bomb casing[1];
• used foxes caught in China and Australia whose fur was painted with a radioactive radium paint[2] to have them released on Japanese shores to unleash rampant fear onto the superstitious Japanese;
– the US did it in the name of democracy and freedom of humanity. And when the British procured and euthanasied hundred of rats to fill their bodies with explosives[3], they did it in the name of His Majesty the King and to defend and to save the British Empire.
Granted, the Soviets were the preantepenultimate evil with their anti-tank dogs, and nothing else counts.
[0] «In 1943, U.S. forces considered using armed dogs against fortifications. The aim was for a dog to run into a bunker carrying a bomb, which would then be detonated by a timer. Dogs in this secret program were trained at Fort Belvoir. The dogs, called "demolition wolves", were taught to run to a bunker, enter it, and sit while waiting for a simulated explosion. Each dog carried a bomb strapped to its body in canvas pouches, as with the Russian method» – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog#Use_by_other_cou...
[1] «The bat bomb was conceived by Lytle S. Adams (1881-1970), a dental surgeon from Irwin, Pennsylvania who was an acquaintance of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt […] In his letter, Adams stated that the bat was the "lowest form of animal life", and that, until now, "reasons for its creation have remained unexplained". He went on to espouse that bats were created "by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence, and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare desecrate our way of life." Of Adams, Roosevelt remarked, "This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into» – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb#cite_note-Couffer-4
[2] «The United States Radium Corporation provided an answer in the form of its glow-in-the-dark paint, which contained radium. The health risks associated with the paint weren’t unknown. As early as 1917, women detailing watch dials with the luminous paint suffered from anemia, bone fractures, and necrosis of the jaw, a result of them using their pursed lips to shape the contaminated brush tips into a fine point. Despite that danger, the OSS continued with Operation Fantasia» – https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/unsuccessful-wwii-plo...
[3] «But the most exotic device was the "explosive rat". A hundred of the rodents were procured by an SOE officer posing as a student needing them for laboratory experiments. The rats were skinned, filled with plastic explosive, and sewn up. The idea was to place a rat among coal beside a boiler. When they were spotted, they would immediately be thrown on to the fire, causing a huge explosion» – https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/oct/27/richardnortontayl...
This tone is really harsh, animals dying to push science forward is still common today and acting like they were "heartless" for it is disingenuous.
Laika got to be remembered, which his already much more than can be said of most test subjects.
Laika was an important stepping stone towards humans in space. It's sad a dog died, but some people are a bit melodramatic.
And yet, given the power to make such a decision I'd ban all animal experimentation without question (and I'd include Laika's situation in that).
If it is so vital that an experiment be performed, then a willing human volunteer should be found. If no human is willing to undergo these tortures in the name of science and for the sake of humanity, then the experiment in question is apparently not that vital after all.
In these situations, humans have the choice and humans have the benefit. We should leave other species out of it.
After all, the goal was to have humans go into space and survive the trip back.
That doesn't really change anything.
> Laika got to be remembered, which his already much more than can be said of most test subjects
I doubt that was much comfort to her.
She wouldn't understand what it means to live or die for something.
Still being the first mammal in Earth orbit is wild. Man's best friend indeed!
For instance, read the first sentence from Harlow's Wikipedia page:
> Harry Frederick Harlow (October 31, 1905 – December 6, 1981) was an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which manifested the importance of caregiving and companionship to social and cognitive development.
Did we really need to torture these creatures for decades to understand the importance of care giving? The experiments seem like a flimsy pretext for torture.
>In 1971, Harlow's wife died of cancer and he began to suffer from depression. He was treated and returned to work but, as Lauren Slater writes, his colleagues noticed a difference in his demeanor.[6] He abandoned his research into maternal attachment and developed an interest in isolation and depression.
From the wikipedia page.
Going back to poor Laika for a moment, you could adapt an old, morbid joke: "we're going to murder all the kulaks and one dog." "Why the dog?" "Why the kulaks?"
Yes, we did. Look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospitalism people didn't even understand how much humans need care, never mind animals. The people placing these babies into care did so with the best intentions, but insufficient knowledge.
Your knowledge comes from these experiments.
Edit: watch Red Dawn, read the article, and comment back with your comparison of treatment of Soviet Russia.
In my reading of the article the only negative statement about the Soviet society was the statement that they lied about the time of death and fictionalized the science for propaganda. The rest of it reads as a humanizing story of the dog and it’s experience without a specific political agenda. I could very well have imagined any other society as the context. I feel you must be overly sensitized to have read this as anti Soviet.
Russia != Soviet
Russians != Soviet
This story != anti soviet
https://dynamic-media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/08/b...
The Monument to the Conquerors of Space in Moscow, constructed in 1964, also includes Laika!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_the_Conquerors_of_...
[1] https://c7.alamy.com/comp/D0GC31/postage-stamp-from-mongolia...
[2] https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~KgAAOSwySVaHdDz/s-l1600.jpg
https://www.bigplanetcomics.com/category/comics/the-alternat...
[1] https://www.amusingplanet.com/2021/12/belka-and-strelka-sovi...
EDIT: Nice YT vid with footage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCBWIi2vQ4k Looks like they took it in their stride!
https://flickr.com/photos/incanus/10332309885/in/album-72157...
And while Earth was trowing a giant party
where happiness mixes tears in the champagne
Laika just was looking out the window
What could be that giant colored ball?
And why do I keep spinning it around?Translation:
With enough air and water for seven days
And someone's uncompromising wishes
The laika dog on Sputnik
Doors which will never again open now close
To think that I must go on living
In some distant place unfamiliar to you
That we can never feel the same things Sovětští mužici Those Soviet chaps
vypustili družici Let out a satellite
Lajku do ní nacpali They stuffed Laika into it
a nažrat jí nedali. Not giving her anything to eat
Na kytaru trsaj rock'n'roll. Strum rock'n'roll on your guitar
Lajka letí k Měsíci Lajka's flying to the Moon
hlady žere družici Eating the satellite out of hunger
Lajka volá SOS Lajka's calling "SOS"
ať tu chcípne jinej pes! "Let another dog croak here!"
Na kytaru trsaj rock'n'roll. Strum ...
If we pay attention to the legend then we'll have to accept that in Earth is one less dog and in heavens one more star
https://history.nasa.gov/animals.html is a more straightforward recounting of the various tests and animals involved, including the V-2 tests.
She also survived.
it was so wholesome up until that point
"3" like letter in Cyrillic alphabet is "z" in Latin. You can hear it when pressing the sound button in here:
https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=%D0%9B%D0%B...
they'd squeeze anything to make russia/ussr look bad, however little.
You don’t need to squeeze anything to make Russia/USSR look bad.
- That established the 8 hour work day in 1917,
- legalized abortion in 1920,
- erradicated illiteracy and achieved a literacy rate of 75% starting from 25%,
- Was the first country to build satellites and men to space?
- Provided a decent standard of living to all their citizens while also suffering inmense pression from the First World?
You really have to grasp straws to criticize a country that made such enormous progress in such short time and that improved the lives of millions while also being attacked from left and right.
It sounds rather similar to how the Russians treat their mobilised soldiers to this day.
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/remember...
Look at that good girl :-( We really don't deserve dogs.
So after seven days, the oxygen level would instantly drop to zero? I would think the Oxygen supply would run out, leaving the dog to slowly suffocate as the O2 supply of the capsule space was consumed.
> One of the technicians preparing the capsule before final liftoff stated that "after placing Laika in the container and before closing the hatch, we kissed her nose and wished her bon voyage, knowing that she would not survive the flight."[16]
One of the lead scientists involved expressed regrets over Laika's sacrifice,
> Oleg Gazenko, one of the scientists responsible for sending Laika into space, expressed regret for allowing her to die:
> "Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We shouldn't have done it ... We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog."
"We treat them like babies who cannot speak."
The US Air Force's aeromedical research division, under the aegis of the Air Force Missile Development Center, became the first entity to send an animal (fruit flies) into space on a captured Nazi V2 rocket. They also became the first to send a mammal into space, Albert II. A rhesus monkey who suffered the ignoble fate of dying on impact after a parachute failure.
These experiments led to the development of the first aeromedical research studies that supported the eventual development of crewed capsules. NASA has a great series on the topic, https://history.nasa.gov/afspbio/part1.htm
You can also watch an early film made by the USAF describing their research, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSBO0haqAwc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljKPnQNp_kA
It is beautiful even if you choose any random moment in the middle.
[1]. https://www.nickabadzis.com/laika-graphic-novel
[2]. https://www.bigplanetcomics.com/category/comics/the-alternat...
Remembering Laika, Space Dog and Soviet Hero - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15620340 - Nov 2017 (51 comments)
(Same musician who wrote Still Alive and Want You Gone for Portal)