I'm sorry, I was under the impression that the word "ethics" was something other than a synonym for morals. I'm a dunce, please disregard my statements of ethics.
Back to my point, why is medical animal testing immoral? You could compare it to deforestation and consumerism, you'd be completely missing the point. Animal testing is nothing like destroying the planet. I think you'd have a hard time convincing me that it harms anything but the test subject. Its not the tip of the iceberg, it ain't even in the same ocean. Tell me how the impact of animal testing is even remotely close to the impact of global deforestation, or the depletion of our ozone. The fact is that medical testing saves lives. It is also completely sustainable. We can be fairly sure that we will never run out of rats and despite what is probably a lengthly history of medical animal testing, we still need Bob Barker to remind us to have our pets spayed or neutered because there are so many of those fuckers running around.
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Don't get me wrong. I like big houses. I like having modern medicine. I don't like SUVs - but I like cars. I am all in favor of humanity. But I don't like that people run around with the illusion that somehow they are morally entitled to do what we, as a race, do. We do it because we can - because we are not going to let some stupid animals stand in our way. We're humans, by God, and we are going to do whatever it takes to get what we want.
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You make it sound like we owe these animals something. Like we should be ashamed. We do it because we can, and because it makes sense, and because that is how the world works. It not something that is new with humanity either. Any other species, given the choice, will put its own interests in front of another species' interest.
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No, it hasn't really. Otherwise, this debate on medical testing would be irrelevant. We wouldn't bother healing the people that are going to die anyway - it is a waste of resources. We wouldn't bother keeping old people alive, which is also a waste of resources. The genetically inferior would constantly be dying - that isn't happening. In the interest of human society we're keeping alive the people that 'should' be dead, from a biological standpoint.
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This debate on medical testing
is irrelevant because they have actually been testing all types of things on animals for quite some time.
From an opportunity cost perspective we heal the sick because it costs a lot of resources to socialize children into adulthood and people dying prematurely is generally a bigger waste than figuring out how to cure them. We keep the old around because they are generally worth the resources they consume because they help raise the grandchildren. These people are worth more alive than dead. These examples are both oversimplified, but true nonetheless.
As for survival of the fittest, i'm pretty sure that if you believe in evolution you have to acknowledge the fact that natural selection is always in full effect.
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What you are essentially claiming is that the 'status quo' represents what is morally correct - we came out on top, therefore we should be on top; might makes right. I'm not a vegetarian - I like my beef as much as the next guy. My point is that you can't argue from a ethical standpoint that what we are doing is somehow correct - it's just what we're doing. It's called being selfish. Humans >> animals, because we say so. Period.
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The staus quo represents millions of years of evolution. There are no morals in evolution. I too get sad when i see the lion kill the sweet, innocent gazelle on the discovery channel, but i also realize that nature(of which we are a product) could care less about fairness and morality. Might makes right may seem immoral, and in the context of intrahuman interaction most people would agree that it is. However, every species, except for the ones on the bottom of the food chain, owes a lot to "might makes right." You could call it selfish, but you could call it nature too. Everythng animal is alive is alive because something else died to feed it.