animal experimention - mistreating animals
- Thread starter spuriousmonkey
- Start date
not really, I'm happy to participate in an discussion about the ethics, but I made this thread here to discuss this topic from a slightly different perspective.
I can understand. It is (ab)using animals from any perspective basically.
That is a poor cop-out excuse.
We feed them and house them?
They don't NEED us to feed and house them.
They would be better off in the wild without our benevolence.
When did the animals apply for such a comfy position?
Was there an ad in the newspaper?
If you are for animal testing, fine.
We disagree, but that is fine, but please don't try and justify it or paint it as anything more than our own selfish pursuits.
Animal testing is not a "necessary evil".
It is a "chosen evil".
Also, to those that believe that ability to do this endowes us with the right to:
I couldn't disagree more.
The ability to understand that we don't need to do this.
The ability to rape nature doesn't give us the right to.
With the ability to understand how to live without harming nature, we inherit the responsibilty to do so.
it all comes down to what the monkey said. Standards
what is more important to you? I remember an old twlight zone in which a lonely overweigth women ordered magic diet pills out of a magazine to help lose weight. The pills made her hallucinate so all the food in her house began to speak to her. She had conversations with her bananas and chicken and became quite fond of them (remember she was lonely). Then her hunger began to gnaw at her after days of not eating and she couldn't talk to them because she couldn't stop thinking about eating them. Finally it ended with a morbid scene: she lay crumpled next to the wall, thin as a rail, hand cuffed to the radiator... dead. She had even sewn her lips together to further dissuade herself from any attempts of eating her new found friends.
So whats the moral of the story? I for one (and probaly spurious monkey) would have had an in dept conversation with my banana before biting his head off. It would have been mob style so he wouldn't even have seen it coming. But Canute on the other hand would probaly have starved to death.
Standards
what is more important to you? I remember an old twlight zone in which a lonely overweigth women ordered magic diet pills out of a magazine to help lose weight. The pills made her hallucinate so all the food in her house began to speak to her. She had conversations with her bananas and chicken and became quite fond of them (remember she was lonely). Then her hunger began to gnaw at her after days of not eating and she couldn't talk to them because she couldn't stop thinking about eating them. Finally it ended with a morbid scene: she lay crumpled next to the wall, thin as a rail, hand cuffed to the radiator... dead. She had even sewn her lips together to further dissuade herself from any attempts of eating her new found friends.
So whats the moral of the story? I for one (and probaly spurious monkey) would have had an in dept conversation with my banana before biting his head off. It would have been mob style so he wouldn't even have seen it coming. But Canute on the other hand would probaly have starved to death.
Standards
I think it comes down to how much someone is willing to delude themselves and convince themselves that:
they are performing a necessary evil
that animals don't have feelings
we are smarter, therefore more important
we are lords of the earth and animals are inconsequential
God put animals on earth to serve us
we are working towards a greater good
or whatever else people try to pawn off as an excuse to themselves to make them believe what they are doing is justified in some way.
but that's just me.
they are performing a necessary evil
that animals don't have feelings
we are smarter, therefore more important
we are lords of the earth and animals are inconsequential
God put animals on earth to serve us
we are working towards a greater good
or whatever else people try to pawn off as an excuse to themselves to make them believe what they are doing is justified in some way.
but that's just me.
I think you are misleading yourself actually if you think that is how researchers motivate themselves to use/abuse animals . Let me go through the list:
1. they are performing a necessary evil
no, science is not necessary at all. It is a luxury.
2.that animals don't have feelings
They have feelings and I know it.
3.we are smarter, therefore more important
Anyone who has followed me slightly on this forum knows I don't give any importance to humans as a species.
4. we are lords of the earth and animals are inconsequential
obviously not
5.God put animals on earth to serve us
god doesn't exist
6.we are working towards a greater good
Most research is unnecessary for the greater good.
The use or abuse of animals has nothing to do with higher morals or elaborate justifications. You might see them on a piece of paper once in a while. But it all boils down to Mrhero54 statement actually.
And personally i do not believe in static rights or wrongs.
Wow, brilliant, I might have to steal that one day
If we think it is absolutely necassary(for ourselves) to test things and study things etc etc, then we should do it to OURSELVES.
Forget animals being less intelligent than us, it is for this reason that it is beyond cruelty to subject them to strange prolonged periods of pain.
Put shit in my eyes, at least I understand whats going on and I can swear at you while you do it. We can't possibly know how horrible it is for these animals to have this done to them. Just incase its beyond any terror a human could ever possibly imagine we should stick with what we are sure of.
I've argued with many at these forums(seemingly everyday) about the value of human life vs animal life, and it should be obvious that I feel as though 40 million human deaths aren't as catastrophic as 1 mountain gorilla death.
But this is even more serious, humans have developed really chilling ways to torture things what with their tool user bodies and large brains. Some animals take a while to kill their prey but nothing like what we do, its so unnatural and wrong. It is something a human being could handle much easier than an animal because we know what it is, we are desensitized in a way to the horrors that our own species are capable of.
We know human beings hate being tortured right? Maybe more than anything, well I would argue it would be far more traumatic for an animal who has no idea whats going on and is scared out of its brain. But because they can't go on the news and cry while telling of their ordeal we don't think about it. Ironically when humans do this it is yet another form of comfort they recieve. Humans get everything so easy due to simple things like this that we take for granted. Ever see a mother on the news saying she "demands closure!", meaning she demands to know what has happened to her missing child. We feel as though we deserve these unbelievable comforting gifts. Fact is nothing else gets these benefits. The world is a far scarier place for these other animals and when things get nasty in our eyes they are undoubtedly downright horrible in theirs.
Cetaceans, elephants and apes die of grief a hell of a more frequently than we do. Who here could possibly die of grief? Well these animals do quite often when a member of their families die or dissapear. This indicates to me that these quite a bit. I've seen a 10 year old chimp find his dead mother stand there in a daze and then shakenly stumble to a nearby tree where he stared at his mothers corpse for three weaks until he died.
This can't happen to us we are so cosy and comfortable in our big societies with everybody around us trying to help us and make us feel better. We have knowledge about the world fed to us which again is comforting. The death of our mother would be terrible but not THAT terrible because you have in a way prepared for it by knowing how life works and so on.
The same can be said for torture, we've heard of it, we know what it is, we fear it but if it were happening to us we would know that we were getting a rawdeal, we would have the hope that people will find out and remember us and feel sorry for us.
Its hard to explain because we can't possibly understand what it would be like without our knowledge but it is such a blessing in times of pain and sadness.
Animal torture is this strange thing we can never fully understand. It is terrible beyond our wildest dreams, wronger than any human tragedy that could ever possibly happen. The holocaust was a walk in the park in comparison.
There is some argument to be had in the value of human life vs animal life. But human torture vs animal torture is a no brainer, animal torture is so worse its not funny.
If its for scientific gain it really doesn't make a difference, it seems silly to think it would really, if we need to know something that bad do it to people; criminals, poor people, braindamaged people, mutes, old ladies, me whatever... it wont be as bad as doing it to animals.
IMO the fact that something can complain shouldn't give it more rights to comfort than something that can't.
What if your bananas started talking? You'd starve to death! Right mrhero?
That sounds like a good episode mrhero, but as you can now see it is interprettable in more ways than one
Dr Lou, Mrhero54 and I are such animals that we would eat a talking banana. Or at least exploit it as a freak if there was only one. That is just how low we would go.
I suspect Mrhero54 and spurious monkey are reincarnated cannibals. Run for your lifes…..
So it boils down to ‘if we are so similar to animals that they can be used in scientific experiments rather than us, how can they be so dissimilar to us to not be excluded on what ever grounds we exclude ourselves?’ Yes it might be standards, which I’m taking as a different word for morals.
‘If its for scientific gain it really doesn't make a difference, it seems silly to think it would really, if we need to know something that bad do it to people; criminals, poor people, braindamaged people, mutes, old ladies, me whatever... it wont be as bad as doing it to animals.’ They (US) did. People didn’t like the idea.
Maybe ‘human rights’ is just a mene?
So it boils down to ‘if we are so similar to animals that they can be used in scientific experiments rather than us, how can they be so dissimilar to us to not be excluded on what ever grounds we exclude ourselves?’ Yes it might be standards, which I’m taking as a different word for morals.
‘If its for scientific gain it really doesn't make a difference, it seems silly to think it would really, if we need to know something that bad do it to people; criminals, poor people, braindamaged people, mutes, old ladies, me whatever... it wont be as bad as doing it to animals.’ They (US) did. People didn’t like the idea.
Maybe ‘human rights’ is just a mene?
Neither do I.
However, I do attempt to avoid using that as a convenient crutch to lean on and support my justifications in support of animal cruelty.
To me, MrHero's statement sounded like a justification of cruelty by using the guise of necessary evil. (ever listen to "disgustipation" by TOOL?)
How do YOU interpret MrHero's statement?
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I interpret it as 'I don't really care about animal experimentation, because I am not a morally sophisticated human being'
hence i don't need a justification.
hence i don't need a justification.
I could have said that I am an animal, but we all know that this would be an insult to animals.
no many of these animals could not live in the wild, like the narotic mice I mention the died horribly when thye were freed.
you figure out a way of talking to animals!
the we would only take in the animals that choose and everyone could be happy.
By the way everyone keeps saying things like how horrible things are done on them to experiment. Could you elaborate? Most experiments are not exactly horribly painful, some are and some are just plain wrong and if you want to stop those go ahead. But please know the difference between mice that could not live in the wild and further research needed to understand our most debilitating brain disorders, and goats that “had” to be euthanized because some lazy bum would not pay the money needed to keep feeding them while homes were acquired for them.
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WCF...you are just antagonizing people now....for the sake of antagonizing.
These animals wouldn't exist without science, but that doesn't change what we do to them.
These animals wouldn't exist without science, but that doesn't change what we do to them.
ok then many people would not be alive today if slavery was not legal in the past.
many people would not be alive today if slavery was not legal in the past.Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
ok then
or many more people would be alive today if slavery hadn't been legal in the past. many people never got a chance to live because of slavery. They died on the slave transport ships, or under brutal repression by their owners. What if the populations of the coasts of africa for instance were never raided by us? Wouldn't they have had a greater chance of having a life?