(no subject)
My sister says, "Argh. How does one write a paper on animal testing without sounding like a psychotic animal rights activist? i'm trying to be reasonable here."
Eh, I'd hate to see a writer wrestle the facts into pretzels to force the paper to go to whatever conclusion happens to look moderate in their time and place. If you lived in the US in 1857 and were writing about slavery, a middle of the road conclusion like "we should keep it but should institute stronger legal protections to keep masters from physically abusing their slaves" would do no good to the writer or anyone else. Seeking a moderate or liberal or conservative conclusion, instead of a reasonable and natural and true one, seems too much like intellectual dishonesty. Truth is a matter of ideas, not people, and even if you happened to live in a society where nearly everyone worshiped Marduk or Huitzilopochtli and thought human sacrifice was a great idea, that wouldn't mean you should feel compelled to take their views into account and advocate a middle-of-the-road compromise with them. They'd just be stupid, and wrong, and evil, and you should honestly disagree with them, instead.
Most of the really tough philosophical and political questions are about what and who should and shouldn't get empathy. It's always been pretty clear that there's no problem with using rocks and plants as we please, however arbitrarily and violently, because they're not "people," and for a few decades it's been settled that women and blacks should have equal rights, because they are "people." But is a fetus a "person"? How much mercy and charity should we extend to convicted criminals, or fetuses and zygotes, or dogs and cats at home, or pigs or chickens or cows on farms, or rats and slugs in labs? What about pet pigs at home, or monkeys and dogs in labs? Should dogfighting be illegal, or cockfighting, or hunting dangerous game like boars with dogs? What about exterminating pests like British foxes and American coyotes? No facts or evidence can prove what we should do, because it's a value judgment rather than a testable claim*. However, there does seem to be a trend toward more charity and mercy over time, so I suppose if you want to look good to posterity, go vegan.
(*It is possible that someone much more clever or resourceful than I am could design and run an experiment proving that one way of living or the other produces societies that are provably healthier or more desirable or whatever, but I doubt it.)
One possible way to a good paper would be to explain the situation as it is now, both cons like the details of the horrible cruelty of animal testing, and pros like the details of how our whole understanding of neurology is based on horribly cruel experimental brain surgery on live subjects:
http://hubel.med.harvard.edu/book/b28.htm <- really beautiful and vicious visual cortex experiment
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2000/monkeys-1206.html <- monkeys run robots with their brains
Another possible way to a good paper would be to explain how we could transition to a world without animal testing, with new protocols for using only non-invasive scanning, or perhaps only invertebrates like slugs, to do neurological research, and new protocols for testing prospective medicines that involve using low doses on humans in a way that isn't unethical, and new protocols for using only the cosmetics and soaps and other chemicals that have already been proved safe, or new protocols for somehow testing them directly on humans ethically.
Honestly, I personally will probably blithely continue avoiding dealing with animals at all myself, although still eating meat and using animal-tested products sometimes, and not particularly caring whether farmers, researchers, dogfighters, and other people are as brutal with animals as they are with plants. It may not be right, but it's just not my biggest problem.
Eh, I'd hate to see a writer wrestle the facts into pretzels to force the paper to go to whatever conclusion happens to look moderate in their time and place. If you lived in the US in 1857 and were writing about slavery, a middle of the road conclusion like "we should keep it but should institute stronger legal protections to keep masters from physically abusing their slaves" would do no good to the writer or anyone else. Seeking a moderate or liberal or conservative conclusion, instead of a reasonable and natural and true one, seems too much like intellectual dishonesty. Truth is a matter of ideas, not people, and even if you happened to live in a society where nearly everyone worshiped Marduk or Huitzilopochtli and thought human sacrifice was a great idea, that wouldn't mean you should feel compelled to take their views into account and advocate a middle-of-the-road compromise with them. They'd just be stupid, and wrong, and evil, and you should honestly disagree with them, instead.
Most of the really tough philosophical and political questions are about what and who should and shouldn't get empathy. It's always been pretty clear that there's no problem with using rocks and plants as we please, however arbitrarily and violently, because they're not "people," and for a few decades it's been settled that women and blacks should have equal rights, because they are "people." But is a fetus a "person"? How much mercy and charity should we extend to convicted criminals, or fetuses and zygotes, or dogs and cats at home, or pigs or chickens or cows on farms, or rats and slugs in labs? What about pet pigs at home, or monkeys and dogs in labs? Should dogfighting be illegal, or cockfighting, or hunting dangerous game like boars with dogs? What about exterminating pests like British foxes and American coyotes? No facts or evidence can prove what we should do, because it's a value judgment rather than a testable claim*. However, there does seem to be a trend toward more charity and mercy over time, so I suppose if you want to look good to posterity, go vegan.
(*It is possible that someone much more clever or resourceful than I am could design and run an experiment proving that one way of living or the other produces societies that are provably healthier or more desirable or whatever, but I doubt it.)
One possible way to a good paper would be to explain the situation as it is now, both cons like the details of the horrible cruelty of animal testing, and pros like the details of how our whole understanding of neurology is based on horribly cruel experimental brain surgery on live subjects:
http://hubel.med.harvard.edu/book/b28.htm <- really beautiful and vicious visual cortex experiment
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2000/monkeys-1206.html <- monkeys run robots with their brains
Another possible way to a good paper would be to explain how we could transition to a world without animal testing, with new protocols for using only non-invasive scanning, or perhaps only invertebrates like slugs, to do neurological research, and new protocols for testing prospective medicines that involve using low doses on humans in a way that isn't unethical, and new protocols for using only the cosmetics and soaps and other chemicals that have already been proved safe, or new protocols for somehow testing them directly on humans ethically.
Honestly, I personally will probably blithely continue avoiding dealing with animals at all myself, although still eating meat and using animal-tested products sometimes, and not particularly caring whether farmers, researchers, dogfighters, and other people are as brutal with animals as they are with plants. It may not be right, but it's just not my biggest problem.