The Mike Vick case... am I a life nit?

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This is ridiculous. Debated by whom?

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Scientists

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2983045.stm

http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/Zoology/fa...%20article.pdf

http://www.vet.ed.ac.uk/animalwelfar...0pain/Pain.htm

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Fish have pain nerves.

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if by "pain nerves" you mean nociceptors, perhaps. But, as stated in a link "this means only that these animals are capable of sensing noxious stimuli; it provides no evidence for the psychological experience of pain"

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Animals need them to live.

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LOL

Anyway, from wiki on pain:

From these lines of questioning the following groups have been identified;

Most invertebrates — including lobsters, crabs, worms, snails, slugs and clams- reaction to noxious stimulus does occur but no reports of longer term learning from pain — probably don't have the capacity to feel pain.[18]

Insects; possibly don't experience pain. Sometimes no response to noxious stimulus. No sign of longer term avoidance. Possibly do not feel pain.[17]

Cephalopods (octopus, squid); long term withdrawal from possibly painful stimuli observed - possibly do experience pain.[17]

Fish; respond to noxious stimuli - reports of long term learning from noxious stimulus - possibly do experience pain.[19]

Other non-human vertebrates (mammals, birds and reptiles); vocalizations and physiological responses (e.g. the release of stress hormones) are similar to our own when we are in pain, learned long term avoidance from noxious stimulus observed - suggesting these animals do experience pain

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This line of thinking begs the question of how important long term memory is to pain. Just because a critter is too stupid to learn from pain does not mean it does not feel pain. Memory and learning skills are far from the same as the ability to feel pain.

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I am not suggesting life sentence. something like 2-3 years and maybe ban from NFL for 7-8 years.

does anyone think this is unreasonable ??

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The federal sentence of between 1-3 years sounds about right.

An NFL ban of 7-8 years would be absurd. The commish will either sit by with no ban during the jailtime and evaluate afterwards, and then ban for a year....or possibly ban for the length of sentence + year.

Just my guess.

And for those folks thinking Vick will have it rough in prison, keep in mind that Federal prisons, while no cakewalk, are much, much different than State Pens.

And you don't get max treatment for a 18 month stint for interstate violations. He'll probably do his time in a minimum Federal lockup, most likely one without even a chain link fence around it, with a bunch of old men in on white collar clips. His options for exercise will include golf, and SI will probably write a huge expose on it decrying it as ridiculous.

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yes you are right. a federal prison for 3 years seems appropriate. and federal prisons are WAY better than state prisons. So you michael vick supporters need to chill out.

How can anyone in their right mind think that 2-3 years jailtime for Michael Vick is "unfair" or "unjust". they should have their head examined. !! Vick bought the property with full knowledge what was going to be happening in there. Even if you consider dogs as something below the food chain than humans, you still have to agree that it was a heinous crime !! so like i said, 2-3 years in prison CANT be unjust can it ??

its not like he would be giving up much. he will be out in 3 years and can live out the rest of his life (unlike the dogs that were drowned and electrocuted in his property). so what really is the problem ?

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The problem is we want our celebrities to be invulnerable because we identify with them so much. If even our heroes living our fantasy lives are vulnerable, what are we? You can't measure what should happen to celebrities by what should happen to other people, because everyone else can go to hell and you're not real if you aren't a celebrity anyway.

[CallMeIshmael]

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This line of thinking begs the question of how important long term memory is to pain. Just because a critter is too stupid to learn from pain does not mean it does not feel pain. Memory and learning skills are far from the same as the ability to feel pain.

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So, I guess, when I said that fish feeling pain is debated, and you said that it was ridiculous, you really meant "that anyone would debate that fish feel the blarg definition of pain is ridiculous"?


Anyway, what do you define as pain? And, more importantly, what experiments would you perform to determine if an organism feels this pain?

[DrewDevil]

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How can anyone in their right mind think that 2-3 years jailtime for Michael Vick is "unfair" or "unjust". they should have their head examined.

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The argument against sending Vick to jail is that he's being charged with running a gambling house, which I don't believe should be illegal, and for killing dogs, which I don't believe should carry jail time. They are just dogs, after all. Cuddly and cute, yes, but dogs all the same.

And the fact that human abusers often skate with so little jail time makes it seem additionally silly to jail someone for animal abuse.

By the way, please don't make the elementary mistake of thinking that just because I don't think Vick should go to jail, that I am a "Vick supporter." I think the guy's a complete scumbag. I just don't think he belongs in the slammer.

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Your question was a little too garbled.

I'm not sure you can measure pain in any way other than finding some equivalent way to do a brain scan on animals while stimulated. To do it right you'd have to know in what regions and how their particular brains process pain stimuli. I think this would be pretty hard to do on a mosquito.

However, I think the non-pain argument is inherently poor and I've never heard it advanced unless by someone with an overt or covert religious bias. Why would animals have pain nerves if not for a reason? What reason is there to presume animals cannot feel pain? If one cannot prove that an animal either does or doesn't feel pain, why just opt for the idea that it doesn't as if that answer were any better than that it does? Why would pain be supposed necessary and helpful for the survival of higher animals but then posited as unnecessary and irrelevant for the survival of lower animals?

[CallMeIshmael]

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I'm not sure you can measure pain in any way other than finding some equivalent way to do a brain scan on animals while stimulated. To do it right you'd have to know in what regions and how their particular brains process pain stimuli. I think this would be pretty hard to do on a mosquito.

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Differences in brain physiology make this impossible

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However, I think the non-pain argument is inherently poor and I've never heard it advanced unless by someone with an overt or covert religious bias.

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This topic is covered in like all intro neurobio textbooks.

Are you saying you havnet read about this material in some sort of science setting, or did you assume they had religious motives for their work?


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Why would animals have pain nerves if not for a reason? What reason is there to presume animals cannot feel pain?

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This quote does a good job of explaining where you're going wrong:

"Nociceptive nerves, which preferentially detect injury-causing stimuli, have been identified in a variety of animals, including invertebrates. Indeed, the leech and sea slug are classic model systems for studying nociception. However, it is believed that invertebrates are capable only of stimulus-response reactions and lack the necessary brain system that vertebrates have to process pain."


Some animals brains arent advanced enough to feel pain. That doesnt mean that an innate reaction to a stimili wouldnt be beneficial.


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If one cannot prove that an animal either does or doesn't feel pain, why just opt for the idea that it doesn't as if that answer were any better than that it does?

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I dont think anyone 'opts' for the idea that it doesnt. The better method, of course, is to determine what appears to be necessary for pain to occur, what reactions are expected, etc. And then use this information to determine the chances that a particular animal can feel pain.


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Why would pain be supposed necessary and helpful for the survival of higher animals but then posited as unnecessary and irrelevant for the survival of lower animals?

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Because they dont have the brains for it? I mean, Im not saying it wouldnt be beneficial, Im saying it wouldnt be possible given other restraints.

Its somewhat analogous to "why dont humans breath underwater too... wouldnt that be beneficial?"

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This quote does a good job of explaining where you're going wrong:

"Nociceptive nerves, which preferentially detect injury-causing stimuli, have been identified in a variety of animals, including invertebrates. Indeed, the leech and sea slug are classic model systems for studying nociception. However, it is believed that invertebrates are capable only of stimulus-response reactions and lack the necessary brain system that vertebrates have to process pain."

Some animals brains arent advanced enough to feel pain. That doesnt mean that an innate reaction to a stimili wouldnt be beneficial.


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This just seems like gainsaying. What does "It is believed" that invertebrates are capable of only stimulus-response reactions etc. mean? I asked WHY you would have pain receptors if they didn't work, not to hear once more that there is a theory that maybe they don't.

It seems like a wasteful evolutionary development. Besides, whatever happened to vertebrates. Fish are vertebrates.

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If one cannot prove that an animal either does or doesn't feel pain, why just opt for the idea that it doesn't as if that answer were any better than that it does?



I dont think anyone 'opts' for the idea that it doesnt. The better method, of course, is to determine what appears to be necessary for pain to occur, what reactions are expected, etc. And then use this information to determine the chances that a particular animal can feel pain.


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That's what I was saying, only as we both acknowledge,

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Differences in brain physiology make this impossible


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And where they don't, I'm not sure our equipment is up to the task anyway.

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Why would pain be supposed necessary and helpful for the survival of higher animals but then posited as unnecessary and irrelevant for the survival of lower animals?



Because they dont have the brains for it? I mean, Im not saying it wouldnt be beneficial, Im saying it wouldnt be possible given other restraints.

Its somewhat analogous to "why dont humans breath underwater too... wouldnt that be beneficial?"


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Why is it not possible? So far, it seems your answers, while I'm sure well-intended, are unfolding along the line of "just because" or "it has been theorized," which kind of comes out to the equivalent of "go away kid, ya bother me." I'm just asking for a little more meat as opposed to flat denial.

[djoyce003]

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The argument against sending Vick to jail is that he's being charged with running a gambling house, which I don't believe should be illegal, and for killing dogs, which I don't believe should carry jail time. They are just dogs, after all. Cuddly and cute, yes, but dogs all the same.


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What exactly is your theory for why animal cruelty should not be a crime? Is it simply because you aren't a dog? I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. I'm geniuinely interested in why you think this sort of behavior is ok.

Keep in mind, I have dogs. They definitely feel pain, and they definitely experience emotion. Of that i'm absolutely certain just from watching my dogs. Whether or not they are "self aware" or sentient, i'm not entirely qualified to say. However i'd lean towards that they are. Why is it ok to treat something that can experience pain and emotion in this manner from the time they are born? I'd love to hear justification for this. However, I'm sure you aren't smart enough to come up with a valid reason and will say "they're just dogs."

[DrewDevil]

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The argument against sending Vick to jail is that he's being charged with running a gambling house, which I don't believe should be illegal, and for killing dogs, which I don't believe should carry jail time. They are just dogs, after all. Cuddly and cute, yes, but dogs all the same.


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What exactly is your theory for why animal cruelty should not be a crime? Is it simply because you aren't a dog? I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. I'm geniuinely interested in why you think this sort of behavior is ok.

Keep in mind, I have dogs. They definitely feel pain, and they definitely experience emotion. Of that i'm absolutely certain just from watching my dogs. Whether or not they are "self aware" or sentient, i'm not entirely qualified to say. However i'd lean towards that they are. Why is it ok to treat something that can experience pain and emotion in this manner from the time they are born? I'd love to hear justification for this. However, I'm sure you aren't smart enough to come up with a valid reason and will say "they're just dogs."

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This is actually a good question.

My philosophical answer is that I am a libertarian/government minimalist, which means I think that our government should do as little as possible to maintain order.

Therefore, while I agree that animal cruelty is a terrible thing, I think the criminal justice system should be limited to prosecuting crimes against humans. Or to put it another way, I think it is a better use of our limited resources to prosecute criminals who violate other humans' rights.

Along those same lines, when I say "they are just dogs," what I mean by that is that I don't believe animals have "rights." Animals don't understand the concept of rights and they don't obey or respect the "rights" that humans have constructed for them. I'm sure that animals feel pain, etc., but I think it's kind of foolish for a human government to spend time and money preventing pain in animals, especially when we can't currently prevent pain in people.

And just to be extra clear, I don't "condone" animal cruelty nor do I think dogfighting is "okay." I just think we should worry about people first and spend our resources protecting them.

[djoyce003]

Couple of problems with your line of thinking. Really think about these.

1) people willing to treat animals in this manner are almost certainly willing to treat people in a similar fashion. You are talking about the blatant disregard for the right, feelings, etc of another living being. Nobody gets upset with vets for painlessly putting a dog down. We are talking about electrocuting till dead, a living animal for no purpose other than it didn't fight well enough and someone with $100 million didn't want to pay $1 a day for food. this isn't "killing" a dog. This is torturing a dog until it's dead. There's a difference here. There would be outrage if he shot the dogs in the head...but the outrage would be much less simply because it's a quick, painless death.

2) If you decide which crimes are "important" and which crimes aren't, you are going down a slippery slope. there are unsolved murders in every major city. Do you propose that we pull every cop off of every street and have them work on the single unsolved murder because it's the worst crime possible? You can't simply ignore other crimes because you think there are other ones that are more important. I seriously doubt there are other federal crimes out there that they decided to not prosecute because they were devoting too much time to Michael Vick. You can't honestly believe the police in America can prevent all "pain" in humans as you put it by ignoring dogfighting?

3) With all due respect, you don't sound like a libertarian/government minalist. You sound like an anarchist. We the people of the United States as a democracy by an overwhelming majority i'm sure, do not condone dogfighting. Further we have seen fit to make it a criminal activity, generally a felony in every single state. Furthermore, it's also a federal crime. Since the will of the people is to criminalize these acts, the government did. If the overwhelming majority of America thought this was ok, there would be outrage in defense of Michael Vick. That isn't the case obviously.

I believe libertarians are more along the lines of "i'm doing something that doesn't hurt you or anyone else." Well dogfighting hurts dogs. Dogs are provided protection under our laws, therefore you can't participate in activities harmful to them. Libertarians aren't for dogfighting, they are for letting people gamble, go to strip clubs, watch porn, drink, etc. They aren't for animal torture. Surely you can see that.