Animal Rights Groups blocks importing of test animals

[SpaceMarine93]

From the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17363257

Activists' pressure 'slowing animal imports'
COMMENTS (670)

Every year some 15,000 animals - mostly mice - are shipped into the UK for research
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Some leading scientists are warning pressure from animal rights activists is reducing the number of animals being brought into Britain for research.

All ferry companies and all but two airlines have stopped importing animals destined for research laboratories.

Former science minister Lord Drayson said that without such research "it is not possible to develop new medicines".

But animal rights group Peta said 90% of drugs that passed animal trials failed when given to people.

Every year some 15,000 animals - mostly mice - are shipped in from abroad - usually because they have particular traits that make them useful for the study of certain conditions. They account for 1% of the animals used in UK laboratories.

Lord Drayson, who was a minister under the last Labour government, said animal research was "regrettably" necessary and that people would "suffer and die" without it.

"If we do want to have access to medicines, and I believe that we do - more than 87% of the general public consistently over the last 10 years in polling have said that they support animal research for medical uses. And so unfortunately we do have to do this."

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Our problem is they can't be put in a suitable transport and just driven from country to country because we have the Channel in the way”

Dominic Wells
Royal Veterinary College
Tom Feilden: What the boycott means
However, Alistair Currie from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said researchers should work harder to come up with alternatives to animal testing.

"More than 90% of drugs that pass trials in animals fail when they're given to people," he said.

"They either prove to be unsafe or simply ineffective.

"And what we're actually seeing at the moment is over the last 15 years or so the number of animals tested is going up but the number of drugs coming out at the other end are actually going down."

The BBC's Tom Fielden says animal rights campaigners have been jailed for taking direct action against laboratories in the past and more recently have focused on creating bad PR.

He says this has included letter-writing and web-based campaigns against transport companies, which appear to have had an effect.

'Collaborative research'

BBC science editor David Shukman says the move by transport companies is a potentially serious blow to Britain's standing as a major centre of research into serious diseases.

Our correspondent says the two airlines still carrying live animals use circuitous routes that make the journeys longer.

He says until now this has all been kept secret.

But the scientists who depend on the animals for their work have now decided to speak out, to try to persuade the government and the transport companies to stand up to the campaigners.


Macaques are among the primates most often used in medical research, such as on HIV vaccines
Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, a geneticist at the National Institute for Medical Research, told the BBC it was vital scientists were able to import animals, so they could collaborate with colleagues abroad.

"That's very important - that you work with the same, try to understand, the same animal. This can be for assay development, where you need to have the same animal to test drugs and to compare drugs with other people working in other countries.

"And there are also cases where it's not cost effective for there to be lots of little animal breeding companies - so you'll have one big, very well maintained animal breeding company outside of the UK."

Dominic Wells of the Royal Veterinary College agreed.

"It's now getting to the point where enough companies have been intimidated and have refused to transport animals that we can see a potential worldwide impact of having problems of transporting animals between labs that will massively impact on the collaborative nature of research and will slow research progress," he said.

"Our problem is they can't be put in a suitable transport and just driven from country to country because we have the Channel in the way.

"And so with the blockade that is rapidly developing we're essentially going to be isolated from the rest of Europe and that's will have a huge impact on UK competitiveness and the very good work that is done in an awful lot of UK labs."

Which begs the question - which is more important, the need to preserve our moral integrity by protecting the animals from suffering, or the need to help the millions of patients worldwide who needed medication developed through animal research? How do we balance it out?

And personally, I would still go ahead with animal testing even if only 1% of the drugs developed through animal testings are actually effective.

So do anyone here think the Animal Rights groups did the right thing this time? Or that scientists had the right to test drugs on animals? Opinions?

[Akhlut]

The thing is that at each stage of drug testing, a large proportion of the potential drugs are kicked out. You run assays on a bunch of chemicals and then you have to get rid of a bunch of them because they don't have the activity you want on your culture cells (be they cancer cells, bacteria, fungi, whatever). Then, usually, you move on to animal testing, where, as they say, some 90% are kicked out because they don't work in vitro with an actual animal with an actual metabolism, either due to toxic metabolites or because the addition of tens of thousands of different proteins and chemicals in an animal render the drug useless or having major adverse side effects in the animal. Finally, you get to the human testing stage, where, again, you run into similar problems to the animal testing phase and a bunch of drugs get kicked out because of unforeseen consequences (adverse drug interactions, proteins specific to humans interfering with drug action, etc.). All in all, for hundreds of promising chemicals, you may only get one viable drug at the end. And going directly from active compounds to human testing would, inevitably, kill a shitload of people. The animal testing phase is unfortunate, but necessary if we don't want to kill thousands of people trying to find pharmaceuticals that are effective and safe.

Organic chemistry's hard!

[Lagmonster]

It's not controversial or even news to say that PETA are crusaders who in some cases have taken that step from the merely nutsy position of "I choose not to benefit from animal suffering", to the detestably horrific position of "I will make choices for the animals and for other people".

I haven't finished writing a decent response to the swiftly-expiring other thread on the rights of meat, but I will say that however history eventually writes human-animal relations, right now, we’re not ready for ideals. There are people who need animals to suffer and die for them. I don't feel it'd even be wrong to say that animals will always need to suffer and die in some form or another for civilization to continue, so long as we live on the planet.

[Nephtys]

I like the part which says '90 percent of tests which pass on animals fail on humans'.

Well no shit. Our standards for human testing are FAR, FAR higher. Because it works on a mouse and doesn't do any harm, doesn't mean it won't have extremely major reprecussions on humans. But if the mouse or dog or monkey dies, then we know we have something we can't give to people.

PETA are idiots who reap the benefits of a modern society with advanced medicine, but feel a misguided and childish desire to 'save the animals', at the expense of human health or life.

[The Yosemite Bear]

can I introduce PETA to enough rats to give them dark ages diseases?

[Straha]

Before we get to the rest of this travesty of a thread I have to ask, do any of you pay any attention to the Animal Rights movement and/or PETA?

If y'all did you'd know that when it comes to Animal Liberation PETA is: A. moderate, B. open to compromise no matter the cost, and C. friendlier to the mainstream than any other large Animal Rights/Liberation organization.

This is the group that gave Temple Grandin an award for designing more 'humane' slaughter houses, that cuts deals with McDonalds and Popeye's, and endorses 'happy meat' alternatives. Even here the extent of their position is "we should reform how we conduct animal testing because it's grossly inefficient and causes tens of thousands of animals to needlessly suffer every year for no appreciable gain". If you're going to claim that's a radical and undesirable stance then I have serious doubts about any moral code you could claim to follow.

[Nephtys]

When compared to who amongst animal rights groups? ALF?

Here's news for you: They are directly tied to ALF and ELF, and often fund things like legal expenses of ALF members who were caught doing something illegal. Yes, PETA is 'Moderate', in the sense that they support other people setting fire to SUV lots and bombing laboratories. PETA is not moderate in any sense, except when compared to violent terrorists. They're neck deep with other far more outrageous organizations, and they often try to subvert science and push political change that push an agenda of reducing human quality of life.

They're not the SPCA. Their leaders have been directly associated with a lot of very obviously bad folks, and their continued stance against animals in research continues to show a callous indifference to human suffering.

[Straha]

When compared to who amongst animal rights groups? ALF?

Mercy for Animals, Sea Shepherds, Physicians for Responsible Medicine, AVS, OCTA, AAVS, and that's just off the top of my head. If I get out my phone I can get you half a dozen more groups that are all full-on abolitionists and view PETA as horrific monsters.

Here's news for you: They are directly tied to ALF and ELF, and often fund things like legal expenses of ALF members who were caught doing something illegal. Yes, PETA is 'Moderate', in the sense that they support other people setting fire to SUV lots and bombing laboratories. PETA is not moderate in any sense, except when compared to violent terrorists. They're neck deep with other far more outrageous organizations, and they often try to subvert science and push political change that push an agenda of reducing human quality of life.

Lulz.

PETA gives awards to McDonalds, Popeye's, and Wendy's. They gave Temple Grandin, the person who designs 'animal friendly' slaughterhouses, an animal advocate of the year award. They've spent millions of dollars on 'happy meat' campaigns encouraging people to eat certain forms of meat. If PETA isn't in the moderate wing of the Animal Activism movement challenge you to find me an organization that is.

As for the supposed ties to ALF, this is a myth that has circulated long and wide and has been blown way out of proportion. PETA gives a lot of money to individual actors (e.g. Gary Yorofsky [sp?]) to support educational activities at a local level. Some of this money has ended up going to people who have been involved in direct action. Most of that money was returned. All the so-called donations tended to be minuscule (three or four figures out of PETA's hundred million, or more, operating budget) and were always repudiated or stopped when PETA discovered, usually from internal sources, what was going on.

Ingrid Newkirk and her band of merry cronies talks the talk but it does not walk the walk.



(I want you to know that: A. There is a certain, bitter, irony when I am defending PETA, and B. this thread helped me win a bet with a colleague of mine, so thanks.)

They're not the SPCA. Their leaders have been directly associated with a lot of very obviously bad folks, and their continued stance against animals in research continues to show a callous indifference to human suffering.

Of course they're not the SPCA. At least at the bottom of their hearts PETA actually gives a shit about animals.

[Straha]

So the thread seems to be largely revolving around the question of efficacy, and about how animal testing is necessary for the development of drugs to occur. While I think this question is irrelevant to the greater question at hand here are a bunch of studies that talk about how animal testing is, at best, ineffective as a tool of scientific inquiry and how it ends up causing massive human harm:
One
Two
Three
Four (a book)

Five



I also recommend Fadali’s Animal Experimentation: A Harvest of Shame , Ruesch’s Naked Empress which both deal with the subject in extreme depth.
What this means is that if you have the least shred of care or concern for animal lives you have to, at the least, be in favor of some sort of drastic reform of animal testing, and that’s all the PETA advocate in the original article calls for. Animals are being transported and slaughtered for a system that gains nothing from their deaths and there is nothing to lose from reform, or even drastic reform.
I’ll even throw in an anecdotal story. The mother of an ex-girlfriend of mine worked at a major testing center in Pennsylvania. Her job was to dissect and study animals, for her lab it was cats, after they’d gone through the testing process, but every study they did was double-blinded. So for every drug they tested half-a-dozen cats were being slaughtered for exactly zero scientific benefit or gain. They were simply being killed for the sake of being killed. If that’s not repugnant on every level I don’t know what is.




For myself (and I’ve written about this at length elsewhere), the creation of a class of being who simply has no moral protection is repugnant and leads to a slippery slope which takes us to an ugly place. To condone animal testing because these creatures have less at stake than ‘humanity’, or because they are lesser creatures is to condone the same systems that made Tuskegee, the Guatemalan STD experiments, and Dr. Mengele possible. Or, to put it another way, to condone animal testing and its horrors is to give up the right to condemn the Nazi concentration camp. I don’t feel comfortable ever doing that.

The statement was made earlier in the thread that we, as a species, are not “ready for ideals”. I think this begs the question as to when we, as a species, will be ready for ideals or when we’ve ever been ready for ideals? We are aware of the problem, we have the ability to test alternatives (especially now when micro-testing is becoming a viable medical field), and we have to plan for the future. To not try and put our ideals into practice seems more criminal and morally repugnant than anything else.

Along with the ‘childish ideals’ comment I often wonder how this mindset would apply itself elsewhere. Go back to America in the 1850s, or the 1950s, how would it approach the idea of slavery/desegregation/women’s suffrage/overthrowing nobility (1750s)?

Tom Regan, a man who I agree in conclusions but not in methodology, has an interesting essay about this. I encourage you to read it here.

[Lord Zentei]

For myself (and I’ve written about this at length elsewhere), the creation of a class of being who simply has no moral protection is repugnant and leads to a slippery slope which takes us to an ugly place. To condone animal testing because these creatures have less at stake than ‘humanity’, or because they are lesser creatures is to condone the same systems that made Tuskegee, the Guatemalan STD experiments, and Dr. Mengele possible. Or, to put it another way, to condone animal testing and its horrors is to give up the right to condemn the Nazi concentration camp. I don’t feel comfortable ever doing that.

The slippery slope argument is a fallacy, you idiot.

And if animal testing = Nazi concentration camps and Dr. Mengele, then I surmise that eating hamburgers = cannibalism?

Four (a book)

Hahaha! Oh, wow.

[Guardsman Bass]

More importantly, racism was a denial of the humanity of other people in spite of biological evidence that we're fundamentally the same species, with the same general physical and mental capabilities. The mentally retarded, small children, etc are simply near one end of the normal curve distribution of human capabilities.

Animals aren't even on that curve - they're an entirely different distribution, or rather set of distributions for each species. The smartest cow or dog is never going to have the capabilities of any human being. Why shouldn't we have different moral considerations for animals under that situation?

[Akhlut]

The mother of an ex-girlfriend of mine worked at a major testing center in Pennsylvania. Her job was to dissect and study animals, for her lab it was cats, after they’d gone through the testing process, but every study they did was double-blinded. So for every drug they tested half-a-dozen cats were being slaughtered for exactly zero scientific benefit or gain. They were simply being killed for the sake of being killed. If that’s not repugnant on every level I don’t know what is.

You realize why those tests have to be double-blind, right? It's to test a null hypothesis and also to minimize/eliminate bias to help prevent potentially bad drugs from reaching the market. It is the exact opposite of useless death.

For myself (and I’ve written about this at length elsewhere), the creation of a class of being who simply has no moral protection is repugnant and leads to a slippery slope which takes us to an ugly place.

The Sikhs have long had this division and have yet to start a campaign of genocide.

To condone animal testing because these creatures have less at stake than ‘humanity’, or because they are lesser creatures is to condone the same systems that made Tuskegee, the Guatemalan STD experiments, and Dr. Mengele possible. Or, to put it another way, to condone animal testing and its horrors is to give up the right to condemn the Nazi concentration camp. I don’t feel comfortable ever doing that.

Out of curiosity, are you as anti-abortion as you are against animal testing and eating meat? After all, the product of conception shouldn't be separated as a non-protected, non-moral class with less stake as "humanity" because they are lesser creatures. To condone abortion gives up the right to condemn Nazi death camps!

Similarly, you have, in other threads, said self-defense and self-preservation are viable reasons to violate another creature's life; why is that? Do you think it is a moral obligation for me to kill lions to prevent their slaughter of hyenas, wildebeest, and the like? Why should humans be a special moral class for that as well, where we're allowed to kill other humans merely because they want to kill us? Why should self-preservation be lauded above self-sacrifice to allow others to live?

EDIT:

Some additional problems to consider: how does your philosophy deal with the elimination of invasive species? They can't be returned to their original ecosystems (it would cause an overpopulation crisis), and as long as they're allowed to live in their new environment, they cause ecological collapse. Yet, to kill them would be to segregate them from being moral beings that have valuable lives and would make it easy to go down the slippery slope to genocide and death camps.

Further, you've said before you have a cat. So, to that end, spaying and neutering domestic animals without their consent is much the same as doing it to humans without consent, is it not? We're heading down the path to eugenics there, pal.

[Guardsman Bass]

Some additional problems to consider: how does your philosophy deal with the elimination of invasive species? They can't be returned to their original ecosystems (it would cause an overpopulation crisis), and as long as they're allowed to live in their new environment, they cause ecological collapse. Yet, to kill them would be to segregate them from being moral beings that have valuable lives and would make it easy to go down the slippery slope to genocide and death camps.

I think it would be more clear to say that we don't have an obligation to keep other species alive, especially animals that compete with us over habitat space. We choose to keep them alive because we like them for aesthetic and scientific reasons, which also includes preserving ecosystems with particularly good aesthetic and scientific value to us from other species.

[Guardsman Bass]

EDIT: Posting fuckup.

[Sidewinder]

I never expected a board member to VALIDATE the stereotypes against American left-wing liberals.

Back to the point, if a pack of rats were hungry, and you were locked in a room with them, do you think they're consider your rights as a living being, and refrain from eating you? If the rats were sentient, and were developing... say, a vaccine against the bubonic plague... do you think they'll consider your worth equal to one of theirs, and refrain from testing the potentially deadly vaccine on you, to make sure it wouldn't kill a rat?

"Survival of the species" is an instinct that's genetically hardwired into ALL SPECIES OF ANIMAL. Rats are NOT the same species as human beings, and will NOT hesitate to sacrifice one of us, to save their own kind. And like it or not, human instincts make the majority of us share the same attitude towards other animals.

[Guardsman Bass]

EDIT: Never mind.

[Straha]

For myself (and I’ve written about this at length elsewhere), the creation of a class of being who simply has no moral protection is repugnant and leads to a slippery slope which takes us to an ugly place. To condone animal testing because these creatures have less at stake than ‘humanity’, or because they are lesser creatures is to condone the same systems that made Tuskegee, the Guatemalan STD experiments, and Dr. Mengele possible. Or, to put it another way, to condone animal testing and its horrors is to give up the right to condemn the Nazi concentration camp. I don’t feel comfortable ever doing that.

The slippery slope argument is a fallacy, you idiot.

And if animal testing = Nazi concentration camps and Dr. Mengele, then I surmise that eating hamburgers = cannibalism?

It's really not. The reason why Nazis tested on Jews was because they had whole schools of scientists, and philosophers, telling them that Jewish people were incapable of accessing higher level human functions and feeling, and that Jews could in no way be part of the moral community. The response was to use them for 'the benefit' of all humanity via extreme medical testing.

The rationale and conclusions are the exact same ones used to justify animal testing, and then ignore its horrific harms. There is, quite literally, no difference.

More importantly, racism was a denial of the humanity of other people in spite of biological evidence that we're fundamentally the same species, with the same general physical and mental capabilities. The mentally retarded, small children, etc are simply near one end of the normal curve distribution of human capabilities.

Animals aren't even on that curve - they're an entirely different distribution, or rather set of distributions for each species. The smartest cow or dog is never going to have the capabilities of any human being. Why shouldn't we have different moral considerations for animals under that situation?

A. Racism wasn't done in spite of biological evidence, it was done with massive schools of eugenics and racial theory pounding away in public about how non-white races were inferior and incapable of the same amount of feeling, both physically and emotionally, that white people had and thus fell outside the set of morals and ethics that were applied to white people. They were treated as if they were 'animals', and were openly associated with animals.

B. The question you ask begs the larger question. Why should we have moral considerations for human beings? There can be no consistent answer as to why human beings alone deserve protection that does not allow for the possibility of the arbitrary removal of groups of human beings from the moral community as a result of societal whim. That is not a ethical world I can ever endorse, and that is not a world that I think anyone wants to live in. The only way out is through a universal system of ethics that is all-encompassing and protecting. (If you want to see me talk about this more you can go here and scroll through the rest of this thread.)

[Lord Zentei]

For myself (and I’ve written about this at length elsewhere), the creation of a class of being who simply has no moral protection is repugnant and leads to a slippery slope which takes us to an ugly place. To condone animal testing because these creatures have less at stake than ‘humanity’, or because they are lesser creatures is to condone the same systems that made Tuskegee, the Guatemalan STD experiments, and Dr. Mengele possible. Or, to put it another way, to condone animal testing and its horrors is to give up the right to condemn the Nazi concentration camp. I don’t feel comfortable ever doing that.

The slippery slope argument is a fallacy, you idiot.

And if animal testing = Nazi concentration camps and Dr. Mengele, then I surmise that eating hamburgers = cannibalism?

It's really not.

Yes, it really is.

The reason why Nazis tested on Jews was because they had whole schools of scientists, and philosophers, telling them that Jewish people were incapable of accessing higher level human functions and feeling, and that Jews could in no way be part of the moral community. The response was to use them for 'the benefit' of all humanity via extreme medical testing.

The rationale and conclusions are the exact same ones used to justify animal testing, and then ignore its horrific harms. There is, quite literally, no difference.

That is completely false, because Jews are not rats.

Also, you missed this:

And if animal testing = Nazi concentration camps and Dr. Mengele, then I surmise that eating hamburgers = cannibalism?

[Akhlut]

It's really not. The reason why Nazis tested on Jews was because they had whole schools of scientists, and philosophers, telling them that Jewish people were incapable of accessing higher level human functions and feeling, and that Jews could in no way be part of the moral community. The response was to use them for 'the benefit' of all humanity via extreme medical testing.

Except that the Nazis were clearly wrong about the Jews' mental capacities, as Jews have identical mental capabilities as other human beings. Mice, in contrast, clearly lack several distinct human/intellectually advanced animal capabilities (language, sense of mortality, theory of mind, etc.).

A. Racism wasn't done in spite of biological evidence, it was done with massive schools of eugenics and racial theory pounding away in public about how non-white races were inferior and incapable of the same amount of feeling, both physically and emotionally, that white people had and thus fell outside the set of morals and ethics that were applied to white people. They were treated as if they were 'animals', and were openly associated with animals.

Except that human races are very nearly identical to one another minus a few very basic differences (some genetic disorders, skin pigment, skull proportions, etc.), whereas meaningful differences are essentially not there (black people and white people have the same general capacities for abstract thought, theory of mind, and language).

B. The question you ask begs the larger question. Why should we have moral considerations for human beings? There can be no consistent answer as to why human beings alone deserve protection that does not allow for the possibility of the arbitrary removal of groups of human beings from the moral community as a result of societal whim. That is not a ethical world I can ever endorse, and that is not a world that I think anyone wants to live in. The only way out is through a universal system of ethics that is all-encompassing and protecting. (If you want to see me talk about this more you can go here and scroll through the rest of this thread.)

So, again: are you anti-abortion, against the elimination of invasive species, and against spaying/neutering domestic animals?

Hell, you've said before that plants and microbes should be included in the moral calculus as well; so, by logical extension, you should be AGAINST the elimination of smallpox, vaccinations, and antibiotics. Why should Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections be treated aggressively, then, if we should extend moral consideration to individual bacteria as well as humans and all other life and things that have the ability to replicate? After all, you're killing off a great deal more individual bacteria (including those that are innocent and/or beneficial) when undergoing bacterial infection treatments. Why should self-preservation be a moral consideration, since any action that isn't self-harming can be said to be about self-preservation.

[Guardsman Bass]

A. Racism wasn't done in spite of biological evidence, it was done with massive schools of eugenics and racial theory pounding away in public about how non-white races were inferior and incapable of the same amount of feeling, both physically and emotionally, that white people had and thus fell outside the set of morals and ethics that were applied to white people. They were treated as if they were 'animals', and were openly associated with animals.

Pseudoscience and racial rhetoric that even then went challenged, if not as much as it would be today. This doesn't really change my point, either - racism was denying the humanity of other people in spite of clear biological evidence of similarities. The fact that early twentieth century people either lacked that evidence (or more likely, simply ignored it) doesn't change that.

B. The question you ask begs the larger question. Why should we have moral considerations for human beings?

Moral considerations for human beings is useful in keeping human communities together, which in turns usually makes us all better off in terms of living standards and personal satisfaction.

There can be no consistent answer as to why human beings alone deserve protection that does not allow for the possibility of the arbitrary removal of groups of human beings from the moral community as a result of societal whim.

It only seems inconsistent when you inter-relate people at the margin of the normal curve of human capabilities with members of other species. I think it's very easy to think, "These other beings are biological humans - it's good for us to save them" versus "these beings are another species that competes with us for ecological space - we can save them if we think it has merit, but we have no obligation to keep them alive and living in some form of natural or man-made ecosystem".

That is not a ethical world I can ever endorse, and that is not a world that I think anyone wants to live in. The only way out is through a universal system of ethics that is all-encompassing and protecting. (If you want to see me talk about this more you can go here and scroll through the rest of this thread.)

Universal systems tend to either turn into circular logic or bizarre non-consequentialist beliefs that open the door for all kinds of religious nonsense as well.

[Magis]

Animals aren't even on that curve - they're an entirely different distribution, or rather set of distributions for each species. The smartest cow or dog is never going to have the capabilities of any human being. Why shouldn't we have different moral considerations for animals under that situation?

I must wonder the following. If tomorrow a race of space aliens were to arrive at Earth, and they were as intellectually beyond us as we are beyond rats, such that the smartest human is never going to have the capabilities of any of the aliens, couldn't they make the same argument about us as you just made? If we turned out to be a suitable biological analogue to them as rats are to us, would you support humans being used in medical experimentation for their benefit?

[Magis]

Back to the point, if a pack of rats were hungry, and you were locked in a room with them, do you think they're consider your rights as a living being, and refrain from eating you? If the rats were sentient, and were developing... say, a vaccine against the bubonic plague... do you think they'll consider your worth equal to one of theirs, and refrain from testing the potentially deadly vaccine on you, to make sure it wouldn't kill a rat?

Wow, what a great moral argument you made. I guess you'd be okay with sentencing a convicted rapist to be raped, huh? Or maybe torturing torturers? Because if another entity is willing to do something to us, then that makes it magically acceptable for us to do it to them, right? Pay to mind to the fact that we are capable of a bit more ethical reasoning than rats are. That doesn't matter, does it? If a little kid kicks me in a temper tantrum, then I might as well kick him back, right? No, you fucktard.

[Lord Zentei]

Animals aren't even on that curve - they're an entirely different distribution, or rather set of distributions for each species. The smartest cow or dog is never going to have the capabilities of any human being. Why shouldn't we have different moral considerations for animals under that situation?

I must wonder the following. If tomorrow a race of space aliens were to arrive at Earth, and they were as intellectually beyond us as we are beyond rats, such that the smartest human is never going to have the capabilities of any of the aliens, couldn't they make the same argument about us as you just made? If we turned out to be a suitable biological analogue to them as rats are to us, would you support humans being used in medical experimentation for their benefit?

Let me answer that from my own perspective, though Guardsman Bass must speak for himself.

My answers are, in turn: "sure they could make that argument", and "obviously not, stupid".

Notwithstanding the fact that rats are not sapient: if the aliens were to regard us that way, then we would obviously fight for our self-preservation. I don't doubt that lab rats would too, if they understood WTF was going on. I wouldn't begrudge them that, though that still does not change my views WRT non-sapient rats.

[Akhlut]

The greater argument is, if aliens held that viewpoint, what the fuck would our moral philosophy matter anyway? I don't hold debates on Plato's forms with my pet rat, why the fuck would these alien overminds bother to do the same with us? Our moral philosophy is not going to help us too much anyway.

Also, if they're that much more intelligent and they hold that philosophical view, maybe they're onto something. :v

[Guardsman Bass]

You guys had better answers than mine. I'll just leave it at that for now.