I have just finished writing a combined review of Nick Abadzis's Laika and James Vining's First in Space and I am sorely conflicted about what I am feeling about these books. There is no mistaking their emotional impact - particularly Laika - and you would have to have a hard heart indeed not to feel something for the dogs and chimps who fell victim to experiments in early space exploration. But I know that experimenting on animals has been critical to so many advancements in medicine in particular - which directly have affected the life of my son - and so I am not so easy to dismiss the use of animals for research. In a perfect world we would not - we could not - but this world is not perfect; it is complicated. And there are no easy answers to anything.

And yet I don't think that you can compare medical research to space exploration. The questions are so different and the reasons so diametrically opposite. On the one hand, we found a cure for polio through research to help save mankind, on the other, we went to space for - well, when we are honest we know we went to space to be first. First in space, first to orbit, first manned mission, first moon mission, longest man in space, biggest payload, on and on and on. Even the animals were not free from such competition. Laika was the first animal in space, but Ham was designated the "first free animal in space". As if either of them cared about communism vs democracy or even more importantly, as if either of them was free.

And that is where I get really frustrated and conflicted all over again about using animals in research. Because shouldn't anyone, animal or human, get a choice to be part of that exploration? Should they have been strapped down and forced inside little containers for a greater good that was purely national and political? Whose good did those missions serve, really? Whose freedom were we celebrating?

These books are good - really good. The illustrations are poignant and emotional, the history is solid and both authors show how the humans who were entrusted with the care of the animals slowly began to question what they were trying to do and why. The irony that books about the first animals in space from the USSR and the USA would come out within months of each other is not lost on me. Ham and Laika, are competing again it seems - this time though it is not about who has the greater duty to their country, but only whose story will make you cry the most; whose life was tormented more.

These are just heartbreakers from beginning to end.

I don't know when space stopped being about the simple idea of space travel - of seeing what is out there and became instead another infamous conquest story. How could we read all those Flash Gordon comic strips and Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury and still think it was all about planting a metaphorical flag - about strapping our animal onto a rocket with the flag painted biggest and brightest before the other guys did? Why must we alway be so small even when our ideas are so big?

What does it mean to be human at all, if some other creature must suffer and die for our glory?

The worst part for Ham is what came after his successful mission. He ended up spending 17 sad isolated years at the National Zoo, in a cage alone and on display. Under pressure from activists he was sent to a zoo park in North Carolina but died very young, at the age of 27. His fellow chimps didn't fare any better. They were all (the surviving original chimps and their offspring) sold to a biomedical research firm in 1997 - although a group did band together, sue the USAF (who had custody of the chimps) and win them. They now live in a sanctuary in Florida.

And here comes my conflict again - the chimps were going to be used for biomedical research.

Understand that I am glad they are in a sanctuary - they deserved to be in a sanctuary. (And Ham deserved way better than he got too.) But without biomedical research juvenile diabetes would not be a controllable chronic disease; it would still be a killer. And I do not know if that is because we have not let technology carry us beyond the need for animal research; if we have gotten too dependent upon using animals as a crutch in research, or if they really are necessary. I don't know what to think. I wish Laika had been able to come home - I wish happily ever after stories for all of these animals and maybe the fact that this bothers me so much is a sign that I really don't want to support any research on animals.

But then again, my son has already benefited from it, so it's easy for me to get high and mighty now. It's the easiest thing in the world.

These two books are amazing and highly recommended. First in Space is shorter and can be given to a younger crowd (over age 7); Laika is more for over age 10. But adults should read them too and think about what it really means to be a free and caring society; about what it means to ask an animal to trust you with its life and then live with the enormity of that lie.

[Post pictures are of Laika and Ham; the title is from Nick Abadzis's gn, Laika. Do see the First Second page for the book where you can read an excerpt.]