Animal Testing

bleg wrote: »

a vegetable is living too...

nyarlothothep wrote:

Animals have sentience to an extent

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EamonnKeane wrote: »

You can't argue everything from an empathetic standpoint. "Oh, you support jailing murderers! How would you like it if someone locked you in a prison cell?" I know the animals are "innocent", whatever that means, but it remains that everything suffers and dies, so this is really just a drop in the ocean for the animals.

The point is, as humans we do what is best for us. If we don't infect thousands of monkeys with HIV for testing, it will wipe out most of the world's people.

You can infect thousands of monkeys with HIV to benefit humanity, but its still not a good or right thing to do, its done out of necessity. Same with killing animals to consume their vital proteins. Most people have difficulty stomaching the thought of eating cats and dogs, I think thats some indication of the fact that eating animals cannot be justified 100% ethically given the existence of vegetables.

bleg wrote: »

i'd tell them that here's a lab rat, it has the same basic biochemical make up as myself, use it.


you however, since you're against animal testing would have to put yourself forward.

Why would I? I'm an animal, I'm against animal testing...

I would not be here had they not experimented on some poor dog back in the 1920's (am a diabetic) - while I feel bad about it, I would rather be alive. Also, I can not imagine being alive today had they not tested my chemo drugs on animals first to see if they worked. I am against cosmetics testing though.

My chimp got 600 points in his leaving cert.

Do you weigh an animals life above a humans?

No. If a house was on fire you save the family before the families pets.

Animals have sentience to an extent

You're dipping into the realm of philosophy here. The best explaination is the difference in cognitave functions and the steps up the evolutionary ladder.

1. Animals are known as dumb beasts for a reason. There instincts are hardwired and though they can be relaxed eg. domestication of dogs and cats they can never be fully supressed as these animals have not evolved beyond the level of reaction to their core instincts. Humans are more evolved both in intelligence, communication and emotionally. A dog needs to pee, He will pee. A dog wants to have sex, he will have sex. He doesn't feel ashamed. He just does it. Humans have evolved to the stage where they can choose and command their instincts. (although there are behavioural scientists that may disagree with me)

Humans can THINK, can plan, can debate and can reflect. We have conquered out base desires and can choose whether to sucumb to them or not. We have instincts but they are controlled in the manner of social conditioning and personal choice.

Yes animals can feel base emotional responses e.g pain but they do not have the understanding or intelligence intrinsic to humans. A good way of describing this would be to use an example. An animal can be conditioned into responses. e.g taught to attack. But it doesn't truly understand or make decisions on whether to attack. It does it because that is what it's instinctual leader has conditioned it to do. It cannot differenciate between friend and foe. It is taught tricks.

2. Humans can manipulate their environments. Animals react to theirs.

3. Humans have advanced communicton systems and language. Animals have very basic language skills and communication.

4. Human have an ability to learn beyond their instincts. We have discovered chemistry, physics and transfered and applied this knowledge into daily lives.

5. Perhaps the major difference is what Steinbeck referred to as the "leap of the imagination" that people are capable of. That metal jump that can link two diverse ideas or that flash of inspiration that led Einstein to suddenly understand that E=MC2 etc.

There are many many other arguements that can lead one to deduce that humans are superior to animals. You cannot say strength for the bear is stronger, you cannot say speed for look at the cheetah. We cannot fly. But we can THINK! It is our minds that set us apart. To allow us to have this debate. And it is our minds that have led us to become the dominant species on this planet and to have the ability to lock the other species up and test eyeliner on them. It is our minds that allow us to debate the ethical morality of this.

But make no mistake. Animals are not equal. They are sub-human. They are our pets for lack of a better word. Maybe we should take better care of them but they are in our care nonetheless.

SetantaL wrote: »

Depends on how you look at it. Define advanced. Off the bat I don't think a chimp is as advanced as a 7 year old. For one thing it does not have the same verbl dexterity. You can prove anything you want with a proper test design. Children can understand concepts that chimps cannot.

regardless of having seen the data, it certainly does not mean that a chimp is the equivalent or equal to a 7 year old. A 7 year old is a human, a chimp is not regardles of any similarities.

Now you're getting more in to nature Vs. nurture since there have been children raised by wild dogs who had no linguistic ability from a human language point of view, only barks and yelps, and even as adults continue to have drastically reduced communication abilities. Then what of chimps trained to use sign language, many humans do not know sign language so by your logic (that one's ability to use a human language to communicate is a measure of intelligence) would these chimps not therefore in fact be more intelligent than some of the poorly educated members of our species?

Simple fact is we are only "more advanced" because we say we are, we are the ones setting the definition of what intelligence is so who is to say that dogs do not make all the same arguements as to why they should have the right to discipline (bite/snarl at) their human. The only thing that in anyway really separates us is our technology so we're more creative is all really. It's like trying to say that we are stronger than an ant because we can lift more, it's a biased viewpoint so we win, whereas if you examine which can lift more relative to it's own weight (a less biased measurement) the ant wins hands down. We need an unbiased 3rd party to establish the tests before we can really say that we are more advanced in any sense other than technology.

As for the arguement of reacting to Vs. manipulating the environment, rabbits dig burrows, beavers build damns, termites build mounds, are these not examplese of changing one's environment? Unless you mean poisoning it in which cause we win, no contest.

You say we have more complicated languages, if that is so why can we not understand what animals are saying, if our languages are so complex and we are so advanced then we should have no difficulty decoding the language of animals.

Animals also learn beyond their instincts, otherwise they would be untrainable as guide dogs, circus performers, messenger pigeons etc...
Monkeys and chimps have been known to use tools in the wild, birds will use gravity to open things with a hard shell, etc...


Strip away man's technology and we wouldn't even be more than a blip on the map.
One could in fact argue that viruses are the most advanced lifeform since even with our technology there are many we have yet to really beat (e.g. the common cold, AIDS, west nile, ebola, etc...) and they evolve at a far faster rate than we do or than our technology does.

Simple fact is we are only "more advanced" because we say we are

that's a load of horse poop. I love chimps and they can do allot of the same things that make humans stand out, using symbolism and such. They have great potential but there still Milena behind us. What a child can pick up in five minutes might take a chimp it's whole life to learn or even understand.

Strip away man's technology and we wouldn't even be more than a blip on the map.

Technology is us extending our imagination into the real world. You can't just say take it away. It's like saying take away a bats sonar and see how great he is at flying around blind.

The fact is the human is the greatest animal to set foot on this planet. We have the best qualities of every other animal, I think a species success can be judged by it's abundance and we're everywhere.

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

We don't have the best qualities of every other animal, all we have is our intelligence. Other animals are fater, stronger, and have far better immune systems.
Everything we have apart from our brain, a different animal has better.

What if you were to judge a species by the harm it has done to the planet, what then? :-)

But humans unlike animals are also good at talking through their arse!

You've omitted the religious aspect to humans ie soul? Animals don't do soul.

Sonnenblumen wrote: »

You've omitted the religious aspect to humans ie soul? Animals don't do soul.

Are you sure that humans do 'do soul'? I've certainly never seen one. Perhaps human creativity and imagination is the key difference.