Animals Are Not People
My heart is as big as can be when it comes to pets and animals. However, I think that logical dictates that some animals have more value than others. I do not value a fish as much as I value my dogs. I do not value the life of the stray, unneutered Chow that wanders my neighborhood more than the lives of my dogs and would kill that dog (if necessary) if he attempted to harm my pets. Though Quinn would certainly do her best to defend us all.
Likewise, human life (okay, most human life…there are some humans I wouldn’t value more than slug slime) should be valued more than animal life. If my house was on fire and my husband passed out I would do everything in my power to save his life first. If he were okay I would then do what it took to save my dogs without killing myself. If I were unable to save them I would mourn like nobody’s business, but I would continue living, and probably one day get more dogs. If my husband died, life would not move on in the same way.
What’s my point?
I believe that there is a point at which so called “animal rights” activists go too far. Acts of violence against humans or human interests do nothing to further the goal of making sure animals are treated fairly. I don’t want animals tortured for unnecessary purposes like testing mascara. But I do believe science has a commitment to discovering new and better ways to treat humans (and animals for that matter). Doing so humanely is important, but the extremists don’t want any scientific progress whatsoever if it involves the use of animals.
What about pound dogs and cats? I have heard stories of people “adopting” animals and then taking them to a lab to use in testing. I have very, very, strongly mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I absolutely hate the idea of a potential loving pet being taken to a lab and used for experimentation. On the other hand, is it better to allow these animals to be euthanized with no benefit because there aren’t enough homes for them all? At least with testing they may be part of a cure or discover to help us all.
I do not think that animal testing will end anytime soon, though it would be a wonderful thing if science could instead use computers to test their discoveries. In the meantime, PETA and animal rights extremists should work harder to get dogs, cats and other abandoned animals new homes. It will do a world of good!
June 19th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I think PETA takes it too far in many ways, like being anti-training collars and anti-kennels. It’s hard to know where to stand on the animal experimentation, though. Medical research done on animals is inhumane in my opinion no matter what. Cutting open healthy dogs’ stomachs for surgery and not giving them pain killers (http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/island_veterinary_school), for example. There is so much we just don’t even know about as far as animal experimentation and what really goes on. I guess the best thing we can do is inform ourselves and fight to stop what is wrong. It bothers me to even read about a suffering animal, which makes it that much easier to stay uninformed.
June 19th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I actually believe that all animals, human and non, have the same value. From your post.. it seems that you are actually saying what lives are more important to you. In a sense i agree, because the people and animals I know, and that are close to me, have more personal value than those I don’t.
However, taking me out of the picture, I think all animals have the same value. I don’t eat animals because I think a cow has the same value as one of my dogs. Of course I’d save my dogs’ lives before I saved a cow’s, and if I were lost in the woods and had to kill to eat, I would do so.
Some AR people do go too far. Like going to dog shows and poisoning dog water… I do dog sports and I’ll tell ya, those dogs LOVE what they do and I think if they were asked if they would do their sports or live in the wild and fight for food… they would pick the sports and the comfy couch to sleep on at night.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Holy crap Cynthia…people DO THAT?!?!?! OMG! See, those are the kind of bonkers people who do nothing to help the cause of animal welfare. Good grief.
I do think some lives are more important. If there were a child unknown to me and a dog unknown to me and I could only save one (assuming the child or adult could not save themselves) I would save the person. Human life has more value.
I definitely do not think a cow has more value than a dog…though I do love driving by our small local farms and seeing all the cows. Especially the babies when they are born. I still eat them though…(not the babies…no veal thanks). They are not companions and I think that is a big distinction.
If someone thought it was “cruel” to do agility with my dog I’d laugh. He loves it SOOOOO much. He’s pulling my arm off practically to start going through the course. LOL
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:23 am
I have to deal with this all the time. Soem days it’s frightening how people refuse to listen to other points of views, reasons, evidence etc because they believe that what they’re doing is right, no matter what.
Extremist compromise human welfare for the sake of animal welfare, and that’s the wrong way to go about the issue. You hear about overseas where dogs are bashed to death, or never vaccinated, or bears are farmed etc. The one thing all those places have in common is that human welfare is low. When human welfare is improved (such as in the developed nations), the society cares a lot more about animal welfare and that improves too.
July 4th, 2008 at 4:32 am
“I have heard stories of people “adopting” animals and then taking them to a lab to use in testing.”
It would be impossible to say that this has never happened, but there’s two reasons I don’t think it has happened for a very long time, at least. First, experimental design requires that you have a good medical history on every animal in a trial for practically any experiment I can think of. And you can’t get that at the pound where half the animals were captured by animal control, who found them digging through someone’s trash cans on the side of the road for food. As for pets that have been turned in, you have the same problem - people who give up pets have rarely taken the animal for regular veterinary checkups. The result is, no matter what the test is about, you can never really tell if the animal has had a previous disease or environmental exposure which will alter their response to the experiment, thus messing up the results. Second, it is much more expensive and risky to send out people to adopt animals fraudulently, than to breed and raise animals or buy them for this kind of work. Such animal adopters would be defrauding the pound and they’d risk prosecution anywhere I’ve ever been.
Lindsay raises the following point:
“Cutting open healthy dogs’ stomachs for surgery and not giving them pain killers (http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/island_veterinary_school), for example.”
If she had correctly read the PETA report, she would find that PETA complains that Island Veterinary School gives animals anesthesia. Giving animals anesthesia is the opposite of not giving them pain killers.
PETA’s actual complaint regarding anesthesia is that the anesthesia is given unnecessarily, an opinion I concur with. But they do not appear to me to claim that Island Veterinary School cuts open unsedated animals.
If the complaint was *actually* that dogs were getting cut open without painkillers so as to train students to do surgery, I’d respond that students thrown into such an environment would learn nothing. You can’t learn to do surgery when confronted by the mad thrashings of a healthy, unsedated dog experiencing conscious surgery. Even experienced veterinary surgeons would find such conditions extremely challenging for the simplest of procedures. Lindsay has foolishly confused the issues.
In closing, I’d like to mention that I’m a veterinary surgeon and pathologist, and conducted animal research for the first ten years of my career. Our research project was conducted on mouse and human tissue cells cultured in a lab, and we tried to find treatments for cancer. We found several, now fast-track FDA approved or in phase-3 trial, for treatment of breast and pancreatic cancer. Lindsay, who says “medical research done on animals is inhumane in my opinion no matter what,” would undoubtedly condemn me for this. On the other hand, I’ve also been involved in the development of non-dissective anatomy course materials, model animals for learning invasive techniques on non-living specimens, and I’ve been involved in getting such curriculum materials introduced in several veterinary schools.
This experience gives me some perspective on the reality, if not the issues, of animal testing. Animal experimentation won’t be going away, period. The number of Parkinson’s patients, cancer patients, diabetics, etc, and their families constantly remind everyone that what little we can do for these people we first learned to do on dogs, pigs, or mice. On the other hand, a lot of progress has been made, with genetically modified organisms and cultured tissue experimentation, that animal testing is dropping quickly. For practical purposes, computer simulation of a complex multicellular eukaryote will not be happening - we’ll be using conventional testing for all our lifetimes. Maybe in a few generations this could change, but we need to learn a lot more about biochemistry before it becomes remotely possible.
The real problem, as I see it, is that as long as we have the Lindsays of the world making things up about what places like Island Veterinary School does, and as long as we have PETA taking a threatening and adversarial (and occasionally violent) approach, research and teaching institutions will not listen to them.
But if Lindsay were well-informed and stuck to the truth, and if PETA started granting some of their massive wealth to the purchase and bequest of artificial animal models and non-dissective teaching aids, instead of threatening an entire island’s economy in order to get what they want, they’d probably get a lot of traction and influence in my community. My conclusion has long been that people like this are far more interested in a nasty fight - over anything - than they are in actually helping solve the problems they perceive in the world.