Re: Animal Research
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if we were widely self-destructive, we wouldn't last long on the planet.
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I'm not proposing that we be widely self-destructive. Testing on a few thousand babies, or even a few million is not like nuclear holocaust.
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I'm talking about tendencies. If we had a tendency to harm babies without remorse, we'd be less successful amongst the various life forms on the planet that do not slaughter their own.
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2. What makes you think our genes are what make us think babies are cute?
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It's not taught and is mostly true. Very few people do not think babies are cute, and it is difficult to harm something that you think is cute. What's the simpler explanation?
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What benefit do we get from doing studies on animals? We can learn better how to either fight diseases that may affect us, find ways to repair ourselves better, or find ways to lessen our own pain. All of these things make us more likely to succeed against various plagues and other forms of death.
So, saying that something like animal testing is unethical is on par with saying that you don't value our own survival over that of rats, as long as you take a big-picture approach.
Like, you may be fine with your ethics telling you that you're no more worthy of living than a rat is. If even a majority of people felt that way, well, we'd face extinction. At the very least, our numbers would reduce substantially.
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Why can't I sub in "baby" in place of "rat" here if I accept your reasoning?
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Because killing babies regularly would not be a successful evolutionary strategy, and we likely wouldn't have lasted this long to have the discussion.
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I highly doubt that animal research is as necessary to our survival as you construe it to be. After all, other animals don't do research on us and they're still around.
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Virtually every species to have existed is extinct right now.
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A lot of their populations will grow if we let them. And if I say that rats have as worthy of living as we are, then why would I be so alarmed at the prospect of us dying instead of the rats?
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You might not be, but your genes wouldn't do as good a job of hanging around through the ages if that were truly a base tendency of yours.
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