From All-Creatures.org

Animal Rights Poetry By Noël Sweeney

Baby Fae and the Baboon

The baboon did not have a name
Her only claim to fame
Was as part of an end game
Scientists grabbed her from the cage
Then set the instruments as a gauge
When her body was breaking
Then her heart was taken
When everyone except the baboon
Was engaged at each bloody stage
For an experiment of a high order
As they broke into a new border
A frontier with no veneer of a tear
One that had never been tried before
Then again remember it was in 1984

In time it was the saddest of sad days
When Baby Fae finally lost her fight
Even the vivisectors were in a daze
When they tried in vain to analyse
Why the experiment did not go right
Especially when all of it was in sight
As they dwelt upon her sorry plight
The baboon's body shunted out the door
As with the last one and the one before
But we should remember that was 1984

Baby Fae is remembered as one
Who was at the frontier of science
Something failed in an appliance
A baboon’s heart as a misalliance
Alas no success to serenade
Even now the sadness still pervades
The minds of those on parade
Used a baboon in a masquerade
Scientists tried against the odds
To save a child survive life's rod
As it should be her name is known
By the scientists and the world
For we need to know the child
Did not die in vain
By recalling her name
Each time a scientist fights for a life
Each baby's survival on another day
Will follow a lodestar set by Baby Fae
So we can remember it was in 1984

The baboon never left the room
She was scientifically groomed
As a neo-child in a cage to perform
Her last act on an experimental stage
No one at all could recall her name
No one could remember her number
Then again why should they anyway
There was no reason before or now
When following science's holy cow
All that matters is what happens
Behind each secret locked door
The supposed prescience of science
As a talismanic manifest alliance
Slavery is freedom and peace is war
An idea borrowed straight out of Orwell
So we can dwell on our truth pell-mell
When our key opens their cell
Strikes each hour as their death-bell
Time immemorial until the next knell

For animals in 2022 at death's door
A science score of a science whore
The sound of statistics drowned
A science score for a science whore
Animal experiments as more encores
Heroes and victims of our man-of-war
In 2022 it was is and will be a turnstile 1984

© Noel Sweeney, 2023

 

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