AVIAN ETHICS: The cover of this week’s Newsweek, which is available at news stands throughout the length and breadth of this our Great Republic, presents the reader with the image of someone, presumably someone with an advanced medical degree in this sort of thing, looking down a chicken’s throat using a small tongue depressor (how do chickens say ahh, I wonder). While I am all for the proper care and treatment of animals, especially chickens; you will find no greater advocate of the idea that the vast majority of chickens deserve more stimulating career choices than original recipe and extra crispy than myself; this photograph, I think, raises disturbing questions about just what does one give a chicken with a bad cold. Plenty of rest, aspirin, and drinking lots of fluids are all well and good, as far as they go, but I cannot help but feel that offering a sick fowl a nice hot bowl of chicken soup goes well beyond the pale of medical ethics, even in this day and age.