The question is whether animal research ought to continue. Does Goodall wish it wouldn’t, even if there are no good alternatives? The statement implies that possibility. Is that your position Sheril?

Industry has a great new product that involves a new material. They want the general public to share in this bounty. “But is it safe?” they cry, “It’s got chemicals in it!” they complain. So how do you test to see if it’s safe for humans without illegally exposing any humans to untested, potentially unsafe chemicals?

The other question is about what you are comparing it to. Animals in the wild suffer too, and few people see any great need to prevent such suffering. Disease, predators, parasites, poisons, sexual violence, territorial disputes, accidental injury and slow starvation. There’s no Medicaid in the animal kingdom.

Take the Tarantula Hawk Wasp, for instance. I’ve seen cheery animal-loving naturalists on kid’s TV shows pointing these out, and telling us about their evil ways. An agonising, paralysing sting, being buried alive, only to get eaten alive by a wasp grub, that carefully eats around the vital organs so as not to kill too soon. But the TV naturalists let them continue on their ways, unmolested. Perhaps they think the spiders deserve it.

This is at the core of the ethical question. Would it be right to try to stop the Tarantula Hawk Wasps doing what they do? You can be sure, if a human had done what they do, she would be condemned as unspeakably cruel; worthy of punishment. But not an insect. So is the ethical question really about the victim’s suffering, or is it about the perpetrator’s intentions? Is it actually the fact that a human is breaking the social rules against cruelty that bothers us? Instinctive human rules about human behaviour.

Because if so, then the right question to ask is what the social rules actually are. We have to understand that those rules vary from person to person, can change arbitrarily, are not necessarily consistent, and there are no objective standards to be sought out. It is a political question, one where you can seek to sway society’s opinion towards less cruelty, to make it wrong.

But we should bear in mind the law of unintended consequences.

Here’s my $.02:
Animal testing for medicines for both humans and animals is fundamental and necessary to furthering the research.
Animal testing for cosmetics, lawn fertilizers, or other other products of hubris would be fine, except in many cases it’s taken to the extreme. I remember the propaganda attacks on Mary Kay by Berkley Breathed in his Pulitzer Prize winning Bloom County. I had read up on the issue before his month-long siege on the pink ladies and was happy to find someone with an outlet to the masses say something about the needless testing. It came at a time when protest groups were becoming more vocal. This was the result of their efforts!

Of course, it still goes on regardless of public opinion. I, for one, am quite pleased with the progress our pharmaceutical companies are making toward helping people with serious medical conditions. And those researchers have to do a job I could not bear to do. I am grateful for them.

How thoughtful! Tremendous advances? Rubbish. I say it is the outrageous lie of the supporters of vivisection, a lie serious in its consequences, that animal experiments take place for the good of mankind. The opposite is the case: animal experiments only have an alibi function for the purpose of obtaining money, power and titles. Not one single animal experiment has ever succeeded in prolonging or improving, let alone saving, the life of even one single person.

Kirshenbaum claims there is necessary suffering – at least for others, including animals -so she can avoid suffering. Such a noble, heroic, compassionate, reasonable woman,

Read Jane Goodall’s Preface to Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Experiments on Animals, by C. Ray Greek, MD, and Jean Swingle Greek, DVM -

http://www.vivisectionresearch.ca/goodall.htm