From: vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu (John S. Van Etten)
Subject: Re: Fund for Animals' true agenda revealed?
Organization: CIE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 17:49:58 GMT

Ted Robinson writes:

>In article <7m#zwgf@rpi.edu>, vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu (John S. Van Etten) 
>writes:
>> Hold on a minute here.  Scott has raised a pretty important point, and
>> I think it's worthy of something better than a "Gee cuz that's
>> different" reply.  Is there any true difference between animals being
>> forced to undergo testing to help members of the same species, or for
>> them to be forced to undergo testing to help other species?  Is this
>> somehow different in an AR-type's eyes than humans being forced to
>> undergo tests to help other humans (ala the Nazis)?  I wish you folks
>> would explain this one to me (in detail if possible).  As I see it
>> right now, it's drastically flawed logic for an AR advocate to say
>> that it's a Bad Thing (tm) to force testing of human drugs on humans
>> or animals, but is somehow magically a Good Thing (also tm) to force
>> testing of deer birth control on deer.  Any comments from the other
>> side of the fence?  Why is it that the rights of the individual deer
>> are only important if the issue being discussed benefits humans?
> 
>I agree - the fact that it's the same species is irrelevent. Hunters like to 
>take this approach in their culling arguments, and I don't buy it there 
>either. However, this case is different than the typical animal test ...
>
> To the extent that the deer population problem problem has been caused by 
>humans, AND to the extent that this overpopulation truly has adverse affects 
>(i.e. leads to pain/suffering), humans have incurred a responsibility to undo 
>the damage. Avoiding this responsibility is ethically worse than facing up to 
>it. Ideally, we'd work to restore the natural balance, but this is unlikely. 
>
>Failing this, the next best thing may well be to develop contraceptive drugs. 
>But then we run into the ethical problem of subjecting deer to the test. 
>We're between a rock and a hard place and must choose the lesser of two 
>evils.

Ted, I'm sorry I've taken so long to reply to your comments.  I
couldn't agree more that humans have indeed caused the problem and
need to fix it, but I'm still perplexed by the "choose the lesser of
the two evils" part of what you've written.  I realize that all you
folks have slightly different views (as do hunters), but the general
attitude I've always seen prevalent is the "rights of the individual"
above all else.  At risk of slighting you folks (which is not my
intent), I must say that I find this "do what's good for the *herd*"
opinion to be most refreshing.  It still confuses me, however.


> If the contraceptive testing involves very little pain, doesn't 
>require killing the subjects, they're held in appropriate conditions, and are 
>released afterwards, then the ethical "badness" of this approach might be 
>reduced sufficiently to render it better than the approach of shirking our 
>responsibility. 

Would your opinion change if you had reason to believe that some
individuals may suffer bad side effects (and/or die) before the drug
was perfected?


>The root of this is that our impact on the environment incurs an obligation 
>to fix some of the resultant problems, whereas I seen no inherent obligation 
>to rid someone of a disease.  

I fully agree with the first half of your sentence.


John

--
******************************************************************************
               John S. Van Etten     vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu
       Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute  1000 MIPS GaAs F-RISC Project
       --"If sand didn't irritate oysters, there would be no pearls"--
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals