In response to Trent Knuckles' column in the Feb. 22 Kentucky Kernel:
One's choices do not merely reflect one's attitudes, as you profess. They also foreshadow one's future.
Frogs do not choose to end up on the tables of high school biology classes. Humans have made that choice for them. What is unfortunate is not the lack of morality or ethics involved, but the lack of foresight and awareness.
What I speak of is nothing new. Man has manipulated his world to his liking for as long as he has existed. Now, in the culmination of this insistent selfish behavior, some of us see the imminent danger in these actions and the resulting likelihood of man's extinction.
What is important to note is that what I am speaking of is not one specific cure, as those you slander would attest. Rather, these individuals are acting out of a broader intuition, a much wider motivation than saving frogs.
You have chosen to attack this one particular action, one out of so many more these individuals engage in. What you are so blind to see is the larger scope, the big picture.
Words limit me to explain just what I speak of. But if you would for a moment, try and see this planet, this earth, this world in which we all live. All of us, not just people, not just frogs and not just people who love frogs.
We all play a part, a role unlike any other. You may put a large significance on some roles, but each of us is, by and large, an integral part of a much greater scheme.
Frogs see their role. They hop from land to lily pad and into the water. Occasionally, they eat flies or some other unsuspecting creature. They mate and breed, then new frogs enter this world as tadpoles. It's so simple, isn't it?
And somehow, somewhere along the line, man has either forgotten his role or has yet to find it. Unlike frogs, man has to complicate everything. Oddly enough, this usually comes about when he is in the act of simplifying his life.
He dissects frogs to better understand their anatomy, which in turn better acquaints him with his own anatomy, in the hope of saving himself from a premature death. When it is his needless killing and consumption of other animals that leads to the cancer and heart disease you mention, and ultimately to his untimely death.
This essential need for the flesh of animals results in the need for grazing land. Forests are removed, and with them all of their former inhabitants. Once again, this delicate balance is so rudely interrupted by man and his need to proclaim his supremacy over his environment.
Of course, disasters such as the Kobe earthquake quickly remind man of just how dominant he really is. Yes, thousands of people died and many more will do the same. Because earthquakes can't be prevented, not by the almighty man. He can, however, stop dissecting frogs. Or he can continue to wonder, after all of the time and effort put into them, why his cities collapse in a matter of seconds.
G. Preston Bishop
Undeclared sophomore
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