s0meguy:
KarlGrenze and
Why? Because those humans experience high amounts of nonconsensual pain and that is wrong? Animals can feel, experience pain and suffering in a very similar way as humans. Our sensory systems are similar in many cases. So why aren’t we drawing a similar extreme “never okay” line for animals as we do for humans who experience suffering in a comparable way? Basically because they are not our species, so we don’t empathize with them as much. A lot of animals do have the capability to suffer in ways similar to us.
But we do care for animal suffering. Instutional animal care and use committees (IACUCs) oversee the experiments and approve or reject proposals based on what the animal treatments will be. And in most cases, like I said, they would not allow an animal to suffer. It will be euthanized if the benchmarks established are observed. Also, even in an experiment where the endpoint is euthanasia, they will try and use as few animals as possible to obtain some useful data.
When I think of what they do in vivisection, that is just terrible. Just imagine somebody doing that to you and opening up your entire torso while you are barely anesthetized. While in many western universities they might have ethics committees and at least anesthetize them, I doubt that they care as much around the world, and then there is animal experimentation done by western corporations who solely operate on a profit motive. In a lot of cases they probably won’t care enough to anesthetize them and will only do the bare minimum necessary so they don’t interfere like paralyzing them.
Again, I doubt this truly is as widespread as you think. First, the bulk of animal research and animal use does not require vivisection or anything approaching that. Second, the animal is likely sedated (it makes it easier to handle as well, after all). In at least some cases, sedated to the point that recovering from that deep anesthesia/analgesia (if they ever do) may be difficult. And I assume that most industries, even if they want to make a profit, want to have their research recognized, and to do that, they have to have an IACUC that will oversee the experiments and approve them.
Oukile
March 16, 2016, 2:20pm
22
s0meguy:
I’m uncomfortable with this line of reasoning. I’m sure that nazi doctors would’ve used a similar line of defense: experimentation on humans is justified because it could end up saving millions of other humans. So it boils down to simple math: do you save a lot of humans by making this human suffer? Then it is justified. I know that a lot of what they did was just sadistic, but I’m talking about the experiments that actually yielded useful medical information. Regardless of the motivations of nazi doctors, would you agree with me that inflicting such horrible suffering on people can’t be justified for any type of scientific research?
Why? Because those humans experience high amounts of nonconsensual pain and that is wrong? Animals can feel, experience pain and suffering in a very similar way as humans. Our sensory systems are similar in many cases. So why aren’t we drawing a similar extreme “never okay” line for animals as we do for humans who experience suffering in a comparable way? Basically because they are not our species, so we don’t empathize with them as much. A lot of animals do have the capability to suffer in ways similar to us.
So your position is that someone who gives an injection to a mouse in order to save the life of a girl is a nazi?
s0meguy:
When I think of what they do in vivisection, that is just terrible. Just imagine somebody doing that to you and opening up your entire torso while you are barely anesthetized. While in many western universities they might have ethics committees and at least anesthetize them, I doubt that they care as much around the world, and then there is animal experimentation done by western corporations who solely operate on a profit motive. In a lot of cases they probably won’t care enough to anesthetize them and will only do the bare minimum necessary so they don’t interfere like paralyzing them.
This sort of things happen only in the imagination (and websites) of animal right activists.
Oukile:
What animal activists who use words like “torture” do NOT do is participating to this ethical process. In fact, they do everything they can to distort this process by painting everything in black, putting forward words like torture and vivisection, and negating the benefits of scientific research. The reason they do that is that is that, if they were to accept weighting the moral cost and benefits of animals research honestly, then their whole ideology would fall apart.
You have illustrated my point very well.