Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Scientific Research Targeted by Anti-Animal Testing Activists, 10/04/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec06/animal_10-04.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is animal testing?

2. Why might animal testing be necessary?

3. Who might be against animal testing?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. Why do animal activists want to stop all animal testing?

The activists are part of an animal liberation movement aimed at stopping animal testing, with the belief that it is cruel and that animals should have the same rights as humans.

2. What is being done by the government to combat animal terrorists?

Legislation under review in Congress -- the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act -- would strengthen the law used to prosecute these activists and provide more protection for individuals with any ties to institutions that conduct animal testing.

3. Why did Dario Ringach stop his research?

In August, Dario Ringach, a neurobiology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, decided to stop his research on primates because he feared for his family's safety.

Ringach was using monkeys in vision experiments for information processing research.

He received threats and pressure from a group called the Animal Liberation Front. After the ALF targeted another UCLA researcher's home with a homemade bomb, Ringach sent the group an e-mail saying, "You win."

4. What are some of the ways peaceful animal rights groups try to reach their goals?

Animal rights groups try to educate the public about conditions and procedures animals are exposed to during testing. Some lobby the government to strengthen regulation of animal testing and work with scientists to develop alternatives.

Undercover investigations done by groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, have exposed animal abuse and torture in some laboratories.

5. Why are animals used in medical testing?

Animals are used in medical testing because they have biological similarities with humans and are a way to gauge a living being's reaction to a treatment or process.

6. What are the three R's of alternatives to animal testing?

Scientists working on finding alternatives to animals operate on the three R's: replacement, reduction and refinement. Replacement is the ultimate end goal. Reduction is finding ways to reduce the number of animals used and refinement is finding ways to reduce pain for the animals.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. How do you feel about animals being used in scientific testing? Do you think it is right to kill animals to make medical developments that could save human lives?

2. What are some of the pros and cons of using animals in testing?

3. If you could propose a compromise to scientists and animal activists, what would you suggest to make both groups happy?

4. How are alternatives to animal testing being used already, especially in the cosmetic industry?

Send your completed essay to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.