Some employees in slaughterhouses, she notes, rapidly develop a protective hardness and start killing animals in a purely mechanical way: “The person doing the killing approaches his job as if he was stapling boxes moving along a conveyor belt. He has no emotions about his act.†Others, she reveals, “start to enjoy killing and . . . torment the animals on purpose.†Speaking of these attitudes turned Temple’s mind to a parallel: “I find a very high correlation,†she said, “between the way animals are treated and the handicapped. . . . Georgia is a snake pit—they treat [handicapped people] worse than animals. . . . Capital-punishment states are the worst animal states and the worst for the handicapped.†All this makes Temple passionately angry, and passionately concerned for humane reform: she wants to reform the treatment of the handicapped, especially the autistic, as she wants to reform the treatment of cattle in the meat industry.
Oliver Sacks