Don't they feel guilt?

This morning, I had breakfast with the Jamaicans. There was a cornmeal porridge, some black currant juice, dumplings (more like what we'd call biscuits than like what we'd call dumplings), and the national meal, Akee and Saltfish (forgive my spelling). It was good. Not quite like anything I've had before, and I'll admit that my taste buds didn't know what to make of the meal at first. Once they'd dealt with the confusion, though, they agreed that the meal was tasty.

AMS, the cook, has told me about the akee before, and I finally decided to look it up online. This is where I discovered the following little nugget:

"In feeding experiments at the University of Miami, Dr. Edward Larson found that the membrane of open fruits was harmless; rabbits were readily killed by the unripe arils; rats were resistant and had to be force fed to be fatally poisoned."

Now I happen to like animals. I doubt I'd run around with a picket sign demanding that scientists stop animal testing and the like, but I *do* like animals. Here we have some scientists who have decided to find out just how poisonous various parts of the akee are. It's already been discovered that you can only eat the brainy-looking bit around the seeds, but these guys have to check it out anyway. To the point of force feeding hapless rodents who obviously know better than to consume the unripe stuff. My question: doesn't he feel a bit guilty about this? He makes his living killing animals; he's not just testing on them to see what happens--he knows he's feeding them poison. I mean, "rabbits were readily killed" isn't the kind of thing I'd want advertised along with my name. Nor is the part about force feeding the rats. Come on now.

Love and Peace