Animal Research
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Whether or not animal research should be conducted on various products has long been a matter of controversy. Some forms of animal research have become so controversial that they have been stopped by most companies, such as research using animals to test cosmetic products. Medical research, on the other hand, is more easily defended and has its proponents who claim that there is no other way to test certain products or procedures, though opponents dispute this and cite the possibility of using computer models instead of animals. The issue has become a rallying point for activists who challenge the use of animals in such research and who have at times undertaken to free lab animals as a protest. The issue is clearly not settled. This is also not a new issue. In 1955 the Humane Society of the United States passed a resolution noting that at least 50,000,000 animals were used each year in American laboratories, many in ways causing great and prolonged pain and suffering, many inhumanely housed and cared for. The resolution stated that it was the moral duty of every human society to inform itself about these matters and to take all possible action to prevent cruelty to these animals. Because of this, the Humane Society undertook a systematic study of the use and care of animals in laboratories (Humane Society of the United States 1). After the study by the Human Society, the group concluded that animal research was a problem and that efforts should be taken to stop it.
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, the protection of human rights is thus essential to everyone's peace of mind, though this view has its detractors as well:
Sounds nice, but it amounts to philosophical surrender. To rely completely on this argument is to concede that language, reason, and self-consciousness are morally important only to the extent that they magnify suffering or happiness. Pain and pleasure, in other words, are the currency of moral assessment (Wright 25).
However, Wright says that many, if not all, nonhuman animals seem to possess the currency of pain and pleasure:
So unless you can come up with a non-arbitrary reason for saying that their particular qualities are worthless while our particular quantities are precious, you have to start thinking about animals in a whole new light (Wright 25).
The Animal Liberation movement sees animals as suffering and so as worthy of protection. Singer notes reasons for assuming that other people suffer pain and that animals suffer pain. He also makes an analogy between the plight of animals in research and racism, and he refers to the use of animals in research as speciesism:
The logic of speciesism is most apparent in the practice of experimenting on nonhumans in order to benefit humans. This is be
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Approximate Word count = 1517
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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