If I am going to be unethical and kill something I might as well use people on death row or consenting human subjects who are better models.
I'm all for scientific progress, but if we're thinking consequentially (ends justify means): at what point do the costs exceed the gains? Couldn't we use only human/primate models to discover cures faster? Wouldn't that mean fewer animals were killed over the course of the research? Wouldn't it mean drugs had better efficacy? But these are certainly unethical methods because of some naive declaration of human's (and to an extent primate's) non-animalness. .
Two points on using humans as a model organism. First is somewhat off-topic: we, as a society, must
never use prison or death-row inmates for research purposes. In fact, forget research, I used to think that hard-labor would be a superior alternative to prison-sentences and death-row. After all, why not make the incarcerated pay their debt to society in a useful way? Then someone explained to me that the government must never be allowed to profit or otherwise benefit from its prison population. Quite the opposite, it should cost us to keep people in prison or to execute them, because that would give us the necessary impetus to reduce prison population. If the government was allowed to profit from those that it punished, we find ourselves on a slippery slope to literal slavery.
Second, we use mice, rats, and rabbits as model organisms for practical reasons: they breed and develop quickly, are surprisingly resilient, and are relatively cheap to maintain. Primates are none of those things. In addition, we can't use consenting human populations to study basic science because of genetic and phenotypic variability. Yes, in principle we could breed or clone humans, but the fact that scientists don't dare to clone a human being points out the massive ethical complications in artificially generating an intelligent and self-aware being for scientific purposes without its consent. I remember reading about a case about two parents who had a child with a congenital disorder that could be treated with some stem cell therapy, so they pursued in vitro fertilization to obtain a second child's umbilical cord. When the second child grew up and discovered the circumstances of her birth, she sued her parents for emotional trauma. However the judge refused to rule on the case because he did not believe he had the authority to decide if
existing and suffering was worse than
not existing and not suffering. Can we extend the same discussion to animals? That brings me to my next point.
Animals may not be people, but people are animals. And comparing things to slavery puts into perspective the very real struggles of animals who cannot speak for themselves.
The slavery analogy is most useful for indicating that we have been wrong about subjugating other beings before, but doesn't prove that we are wrong again now. Anyway, it's interesting how you say that
animals cannot speak for themselves, which subtly implies that animals are aware of what is happening to them. The main difference between our research on animals and hypothetical aliens experimenting on us is that we would be entirely aware of the fact that we are being experimented upon (but would a lab-cloned human be aware? Don't know, yet they would have the potential to learn to be people, which is more than we can say for non-human animals). I doubt that mice or rats are aware of the ethical debate that revolves around them. I know that doesn't excuse our actions, but at least we can say that the lab animals aren't suffering existential crises.
On another note, be rest assured that we take all the appropriate steps to ensure that lab animals aren't subjected to unnecessary pain. They are generally anesthetized before being sacrificed.
If you get sick, nobody forces medication on you.
If your breaks fail, you don't magically stop because you wish it to.
The difference is you have a choice when it comes to the medication while the man with fail breaks does not
"I'm totally against animal research... unless I get sick and need it. But everyone else is cruel and irrational"
These are good points; it reminds me of the principle of tacit consent. In political theory, if you so much as drive on the highway or go to a public library, you have given tacit (unspoken) consent to the government by using the government's services. In the same way, I think if you intend to practice modern allopathic medicine, you have endorsed animal research. This doesn't mean you can't work to reduce animal suffering, but it does mean that you have tacitly consented to using animals to further human well-being. This is also why I had mentioned earlier in this thread that the only way "peace-with-nature" would work is if we reverted to a pre-industrial state.
It's not about would you hypothetically favor a dog over your mother. I would hypothetically favor my mother over a stranger. I would hypothetically favor my mother over a dog.
@Womb Raider
Trying to extend equal consideration to everything that can suffer is evil?
Don't you notice an underlying inconsistency here? I believe what
@Womb Raider has been arguing is that you cannot take the position that "I am equally compassionate to all beings" and at the same time say "I favor some beings over others." This doesn't make you immoral (by my standards anyway), but it does make you self-interested, like every other human being. You favor your mother because she is connected to you socially and genetically. In the same way, others favor their families over strangers, and favor strangers over non-human animals, and favor animals over rocks. Again, it is a matter of degrees, and I think self-interest is the only way you can rationalize the choices that people make.
I don't expect you to have all the answers. I sure haven't, and this topic still bothers me. I am afraid you will find that natural self-interest will always clash with our ideas of compassionate care to all beings that can suffer.
And a dog/pig is a better analog, why? Similar in size?
