Animal rightsVeg ism FAQ

Animal Rights Vegetarianism Veganism Arguments

This website is meant to provide a one stop resource for those seeking debate information related to the scientific, historical, philosophical and spiritual arguments associated with the animal rights movement and vegetarianism. It is intended for those seeking answers to the standard, tired attacks and questions one encounters, and also the more obscure, ludicrous attempts. If you want to win animal rights arguments, you will find your ammo here. Webmaster can attest, never lost a debate using this website content. And they dont bother trying to debate me anymore.   :) 

Additions (friendly or hostile) to the list are welcome. Please submit them to: askweebler@hotmail.com.  Sorry if some emails went unanswered--the junkmail filter is mean.

MIRROR SITE: http://www.animalsuffering.com/animalvegfaq/   (has more user friendly navigation). Thanks to R for hosting.

(Last Update:  March 28 2008)  Circus elephant treatment and retaliation Section 19. Q/A 1 response f. USDA Says It’s None of the Public’s Business Who Ate Recalled Meat. Section 1  Q/A 3  response g.   Human respect for livestock   Section11  Q/A 22 k. Added information of african americans used in medical research. Section 2, Q/A 5, response j. Added article snippet on Canadian indian (First Nations whatever)  hunter hypocrisy (using commerce and modern technology while claiming tradition)  section 12, Q/A 12, response L. ZOOS MISTREATING CAPTIVES. BERLIN ZOO accused of supplying animals to Traditional asian medicine traders.  Section 19, Q/A 1 response G:

The Animal Rights Q and A List  This section sums up the most basic questions that animal activists are asked about the AR philosophy. 

 NEW PAGE: Most Common Arguments  (for term paper and talking points) Human Supremacy, Meat Eating and Animal Research

 http://animalvegfaq.tripod.com/mostcommonarguments.html  Coming soon: Attacking First Nations Nature Exploitation Tradition and Culture Arguments (next to animal

 research, webmaster's favorite debate target)

LEGEND:

Philosophical responses: general and specific(i.e. Utilitarian)

Religious responses: general and doctrine specific(i.e. Christian, Buddhist, etc.)

Scientific/Historical  responses: general and specific with references

Humorous responses: cute and caustic

Questions-attacks/Responses have been divided into these sub-categories for easier use. It is recommended, however, to check multiple sections to find a particular variety of argument. For example, many of the same arguments used for Hunting can also be used for Fishing or for the Wildlife Management sections after a little rewording. Most topical arguments rely on a variation of the "human supremacy myth" as a foundation to their beliefs. These arguments can be found under Human Supremacy, but various aspects of this approach can be found in other sections as well. Some of the more generic arguments can be located under Misc. Whaling/Native Hunting arguments can be found under Misc.

Sections

1)ANIMAL RIGHTS 

2)ANIMAL RESEARCH  

3)BULLFIGHTS

4)COMPANION ANIMALS

5)EQUALITY

6)FACTORY FARMS

7)FISHING

8)FUR

9)HUMAN SUPREMACY

10)HUNTING

11)MEAT EATING AND DAIRY CONSUMPTION

12)MISC.

13)PLANTS AND VEGETABLES

14)RELIGION

15)SPECIES UNITY

16)SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

17)TRAPPING

18)WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

19)ZOOS

*

HELPFUL TERMINOLOGY

LINKS

  1: ANIMAL RIGHTS

1)Question/attack: "If we give respect or rights to animals we will diminish our own rights and respect for humans." 

Response: a) Sumer, one of the earliest and most powerful of the ancient Mesopotamian city-states, managed its slaves the same way it managed its livestock. The Sumerians castrated the males and put them to work like domesticated animals, and they put the females in work and breeding camps. The Sumerian word for castrated slave boys--amar-kud--is the same word the Sumerians used for young castrated donkeys, horses, and oxen."
--from Chapter 1 Charles Patterson's Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (http://www.powerfulbook.com/excerpts.html)


Response: b)"Although the purpose of the German killing centers was the extermination of human beings, they operated in the larger context of society's exploitation and slaughter of animals, which to some extent they mirrored. The Germans did not stop slaughtering animals when they took up slaughtering people. Auschwitz, which its commandant Rudolf Hoss called "the largest human slaughterhouse that history had ever known," had its own slaughterhouse and butcher's shop. The other death camps likewise kept their personnel well supplied with animal flesh. Sobibor had a cow shed, pigpen, and henhouse, which were next to the entrance to the tube that took Jews to the gas chambers, while Treblinka had a stable, pigpen, and henhouse located near the camp barracks of the Ukrainian auxiliaries.-from Charles Patterson's Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust Chapter 5 (http://www.powerfulbook.com/excerpts.html)
 

Response: c) So does that mean if whites give rights or respect to non whites (or vice versa) that it diminishes their own rights and respect? If men give rights or respect to women(or vice versa) that they diminish their own rights and respects? It would seem you want to preserve the rights of some to not respect the rights of others.

Response d) Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz  About the author: Edgar Kupfer was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp in 1940. His last 3 years in Dachau he obtained a clerical job in the concentration camp storeroom. This position allowed him to keep a secret diary on stolen scraps of papers and pieces of pencil. He would bury his writings and when Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945 he collected them again. The "Dachau Diaries" were published in 1956. From his Dachau notes he wrote an essay on vegetarianism which was translated into "immigrant" English. A carbon copy of this 38 page essay is preserved with the original Dac hau Diaries in the Special Collection of the Library of the University of Chicago. The following are the excerpts from this essay that were reprinted in the
postscript of the book "Radical Vegetarianism" by Mark Mathew Braunstein (1981 Panjandrum Books, Los Angeles, CA). The book is subtitled "A Dialectic
of Diet and Ethic" and is recommended to all vegetarians especially those interested in natural hygiene. "The following pages were written in the Concentration Camp Dachau, in the midst of all kinds of cruelties. They were furtively scrawled in a hospital barrack where I stayed during my illness, in a time when Death grasped day by day after us, when we lost twelve thousand within four and a half months.  ............Dear Friend: You asked me why I do not eat meat and you are wondering at the reasons of my behavior. Perhaps you think I took a vow -- some kind of penitence -- denying me all the glorious pleasures of eating meat. You remember juicy steaks, succulent fishes, wonderfully tasted sauces, deliciously smoked ham and thousand wonders prepared out of meat, charming thousands of human palates; certainly you will remember the delicacy of roasted chicken. Now, you see, I am refusing all these pleasures and you think that only penitence, or a solemn vow, a great sacrifice could deny me that manner of enjoying life, induce me to endure a great resignment.*****You look astonished, you ask the question: "But why and what for?" And you are wondering that you nearly guessed the very reason. But if I am, now, trying to explain you the very reason in one concise sentence, you will be astonished once more how far your guessing had been from my real motive. Listen to what I have to tell you: I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the sufferings and by the death of other creatures. I refuse to do so, because I suffered so painfully myself that I can feel the pains of others by recalling my own sufferings. I feel happy, nobody persecutes me; why should I persecute other beings or cause them to be persecuted? I feel happy, I am no prisoner, I am free; why should I cause other creatures to be made prisoners and thrown into jail? I feel happy, nobody harms me; why should I harm other creatures or have them harmed? I feel happy, nobody wounds me; nobody kills me; why should I wound or kill other creatures or cause them to be wounded or killed for my pleasure and convenience? Is it not only too natural that I do not inflict on other creatures the same thing which, I hope and fear, will never be inflicted on me? Would it not be most unfair to do such things for no other purpose than for enjoying a trifling physical pleasure at the expense of others' sufferings, others' deaths? These creatures are smaller and more helpless than I am, but can you imagine a reasonable man of noble feelings who would like to base on such a difference a claim or right to abuse the weakness and the smallness of others? Don't you think that it is just the bigger, the stronger, the superior's duty to protect the weaker creatures instead of persecuting them, instead of killing them? "Noblesse oblige." I want to act in a noble way.****I recall the horrible epoch of inquisition and I am sorry to state that the time of tribunals for heretics has not yet passed by, that day by day, men use to cook in boiling water other creatures which are helplessly given in the hands of their torturers. I am horrified by the idea that such men are civilized people, no rough barbarians, no natives. But in spite of all, they are only primitively civilized, primitively adapted to their cultural environment. The average European, flowing over with highbrow ideas and beautiful speeches, commits all kinds of cruelties, smilingly, not because he is compelled to do so, but because he wants to do so. Not because he lacks the faculty to reflect upon and to realize all the dreadful things they are performing. Oh no! Only because they do not want to see the facts. Otherwise they would be troubled and worried in their pleasures.****It is quite natural what people are telling you. How could they do otherwise? I hear them telling about experiences, about utilities, and I know that they consider certain acts related to slaughtering as unavoidable. Perhaps they succeeded to win you over. I guess that from your letter. Still, considering the necessities only, one might, perhaps, agree with such people. But is there really such a necessity? The thesis may be contested. Perhaps there exists still some kind of necessity for such persons who have not yet developed into full conscious personalities. I am not preaching to them. I am writing this letter to you, to an already awakened individual who rationally controls his impulses, who feels responsible -- internally and externally -- of his acts, who knows that our supreme court is sitting in our conscience. There is no appellate jurisdiction against it.  Is there any necessity by which a fully self-conscious man can be induced to slaughter? In the affirmative, each individual may have the courage to do it by his own hands. It is, evidently, a miserable kind of cowardice to pay other people to perform the blood-stained job, from which the normal man refrains in horror and dismay. Such servants are given some farthings for their bloody work, and one buys from them the desired parts of the killed animal -- if possible prepared in such a way that it does not any more recall the discomfortable circumstances, nor the animal, nor its being killed, nor the bloodshed. **I think that men will be killed and tortured as long as animals are killed and tortured. So long there will be wars too. Because killing must be trained and perfected on smaller objects, morally and technically.I see no reason to feel outraged by what others are doing, neither by the great nor by the smaller acts of violence and cruelty. But, I think, it is high time to feel outraged by all the small and great acts of violence and cruelty which we perform ourselves. And because it is much easier to win the smaller battles than the big ones, I think we should try to get over first our own trends towards smaller violence and cruelty, to avoid, or better, to overcome them once and for all. Then the day will come when it will be easy
for us to fight and to overcome even the great cruelties. But we are still sleeping, all of us, in habitudes and inherited attitudes. They are like a fat, juicy sauce which helps us to swallow our own cruelties without tasting their bitterness.I have not the intention to point out with my finger at this and that, at
definite persons and definite situations. I think it is much more my duty to stir up my own conscience in smaller matters, to try to understand other people better, to get better and less selfish. Why should it be impossible then to act accordingly with regard to more important issues? That is the point: I want to grow up into a better world where a higher law grants more happiness, in a new world where God's commandment reigns:
You Shall Love Each Other."
Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz 
 

2)Question/Attack: "When discussing animal rights, it is always important that you have balance--and show the other side of the issue."

Response: a) If someone can talk about Negro slave emancipation without allowing a KKK member to give the "other side" of the issue, if someone can talk about hunting Nazi war criminals without showing the "other side" of the issue, and if a news reports on a "breakthrough" in cancer research doesn't need to allow an animal rights activist to speak out on the perversion of altruism inherent in all animal research, then we don't have to do that either.

Response: b) Since the preponderance of arguments on the subject of animal rights is favorable to the cause, a true balance is impossible. It is like trying to find a balanced argument on the pros and cons of jumping off buildings without parachutes. One side is definitely stronger than the other. 

Response: c) The other side of the issue is always discussed in animal issues! Since the arguments in favor of animal exploitation  are so weak why would an animal rights activist not want to expose the stupidity and erroneous nature of the other side?

3)Question/attack: "You support animal rights, therefore you must support blowing up buildings."   

response: a) it appears you are in need of taking a logic class.

response: b) you support human rights? therefore you must support the actions of John Brown, slavery abolitionist who killed pro-slavery people.

  response: c) Last I checked, it is the people who support wars against unarmed civilians who support blowing up buildings.

response: d) At least we don' t support beating and killing unarmed people. There are many many many cases of hunt supporters in the UK beating people with whips, running them over with cars and horses--whether they be AR activists,  people just standing on their property, or reporters  Hunt saboteur, Mike Hill, was killed on the 9th of February 1991 at a meet of the Cheshire Beagles. Towards the end of the day's hunting, with no kill under his belt, the huntsman boxed up his hounds in a small blue trailer being towed by an open-top pick-up truck. The kennel huntsman, ALLAN SUMMERSGILL, with another man, jumped into the pick-up and, on impulse, three sabs(hunt saboteurs) who were nearby, jumped onto the back of it to prevent them driving the pack to another location to continue hunting. Summersgill drove off at high speeds down winding country roads for 5 miles with the terrified sabs clinging onto the back. It is thought that Mike jumped from the pick-up as it slowed to take a bend. He failed to clear the truck properly, and was caught between the truck and the trailer, which crushed him. Mike died where he lay on the road. Despite the thud, and the screams of the other sabs, Summersgill continued driving for a further mile. The truck only came to a halt when one of the sabs smashed the rear window of the cab. The sab was hit with a whip as he tried to stop the truck. Once it had stopped one sab ran back to Mike's prone body while the other ran to a nearby house to call for an ambulance. Summersgill drove off. He later handed himself in at a police station. No charges were brought against him and in a travesty of justice, a verdict of 'Accidental Death' was brought at the inquest. Summersgill is still hunting hares. ***  1993: On the 3rd of April 1993, T(h)om Worby, a 15 year old saboteur attending his first foxhunt protest, was crushed under the wheels of the Cambridgeshire FH's hound van in an incident all too reminiscent of the killing of Mike Hill two years before.  After a successful day's sabbing, the hunt had boxed up and sabs were making their way back to the meet down a narrow lane. As the hound van came up behind them, revving its engine, sabs scrambled for the roadside; however Tom's jacket became snagged in the vehicles wing mirror and he was dragged some distance before he managed to gain a foothold on the van's running board. Although he banged on the window the van kept going, and when Tom finally lost his grip, he fell onto the road and under the truck's wheels. His head was crushed by the rear wheels of the vehicle and he died shortly afterwards. No action was taken against the driver of the hound van, 53-year-old huntsman ALAN BALL. *****38-year-old KENNETH MANSBRIDGE, a supporter of the Hursley Hambledon Foxhunt, convicted of Unlawful Wounding on a Green Party researcher, who needed hospital treatment for serious head wounds after being kicked and beaten by a group of hunt followers 1991. MANSBRIDGE admitted kicking the victim in the groin and punching him to the ground. (On the same day, another protester was beaten around the head with a spade, and left needing 10 stitches and a 6 and a half months pregnant woman was hit on the head with half a brick, needing 4 stitches). MANSBRIDGE was sentenced to 140 hours community service and ordered to pay costs of £150.   1998: Supporter of the Dunston Harriers, PATRICK EVERETT managed to get the hunt banned from one village after he viciously attacked a party of 1 man, 2 women and four children who had stopped to watch the hunt pass by. He was fined £800. ***** (HSA News Feature 5th August 1999) Hunt Violence    courtesy of http://www.huntsabs.org.uk/    *****"In June 1990, hunt supporter John Newberry-Street gained much valuable anti-saboteur publicity when a nail-bomb was found under his Land Rover. Further investigation revealed that he had planted the bomb himself and he later told police "I did it to discredit the animal rights saboteurs". He was jailed for nine months for his bomb hoax and asked for several other similar offences to be taken into account." ***** January 1994 Duke of Buccleuch's Foxhunt. An independent academic, commissioned by the Scottish Office to carry out research on saboteurs and  hunting, was knocked to the ground and kicked in the face by the huntsman as he tried to film a fox being killed. The hunt refused to apologise and later attempted to excuse their employee's actions by saying they thought the man was a saboteur.  ****"From now on, we're going to start hunting the saboteurs..."This is BFSS spokesman Nick Herbert's chilling announcement of the introduction of "stewards" to "deal with" saboteurs. ****Mr John Weavers, a member of the rural community hunts claim to represent, was quietly sitting at home one Saturday afternoon in 1990 when the Cury Foxhunt rampaged through his property. When he asked them to leave and complained at the damage caused he was headbutted by Geoffrey Thomas, master of the hunt, who then shunted one of Mr Weavers' cars into another. ******"one brave woman, a former hunt supporter of many years' standing, has decided to stand up and speak out against this culture of violence. Her name is Lynn Sawyer and she was at one time as committed to hunting as she is now repelled by it. She acted as a mole for the BFSS and found that saboteurs were not violent extremists motivated by class hatred, a tale she and every other hunt supporter had been force-fed for years. Instead, she found that saboteurs were on the whole deeply committed, sincere individuals who acted out of great and genuine concern for animals and that her own side were deliberately distorting the truth and provoking violence simply to suit their long-term political aims. Ironically, it was only the depth of her involvement in hunting that allowed her access to the inner echelons denied to most hunt supporters, where she encountered the brutality behind the respectable facade which was to make her question her support for bloodsports and ultimately turn her back on that world for ever. "For several reasons in 1990, I could no longer continue these activities and I then spent four years trying to ascertain what exactly my feelings were. I spent time with the Shire hunts (the Quorn, Cottesmore, and Belvoir Foxhounds) and revisited the Essex before deciding earlier this year that it was time to speak out in the hope of stemming the tide of grossly exaggerated anti-sab propaganda and the violence it has brought to the field.I went to great lengths to discuss the issue of hunt violence with the BFSS and other pro-hunting people [including John Hopkinson, Stephen Loveridge, Peter Smith and Nick Herbert of the BFSS and John Swift, director of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC)] before, and indeed for some time after, it became clear that I could not permeate their rather narrow-minded way of thinking or change or influence any of them without being patronised or being singled out as a trouble-maker."  http://www.huntsabs.org.uk/ 

Response: e) So much for anti-animal rights people caring about humans!  "During the winter of 1994 terrified young calves were flown from Coventry to end their lives in Dutch veal-crates. A few people started protesting at the airport gates. Jill Phipps was one. As a transporter came down the road to the gates she would run to it, banging on the door with her fists, shouting at the drivers to think about the suffering they caused.. The few police there would turn out and simply man-handle her and anyone else behaving similarly out of the way. Then came February 1st 1995. There were about 76 police there that day. There were about 32 demonstrators. That's over two police to every decent person there. There were enough of them to surround the transporter and walk it through!! Jill and a few others eluded the police, most of whom were in a van at the back, and reached the transporter. Any good driver would have stopped until it was safe to continue, but Stephen Yates just drove on, regardless and uncaring. Jill was crushed and died on the way to hospital. Our mother, Nancy, was with her. The driver has never been charged, not even with "driving without due care & attention". AT THE INQUEST THE POLICE STATED THAT THEIR ACTIONS HAD BEEN PLANNED BY A SPECIALIST TACTICIAN, AND THAT THE DAY HAD BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL...." Zab Phipps (http://www.violenceinanimalrights.co.uk/Fatalities.html) 
 

Response: f) Although we know that hunters, not being the smartest of people, have been known to shoot each other in the woods, here is just a few recent examples of hunters shooting and killing non-hunters. : Wis. woman walking dogs shot by hunter Associated Press — Dec. 3, 2001 CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. — A woman walking her dogs was mistakenly shot and killed by a deer hunter. "He saw movement and mistook her for an animal and shot her," Tom Bokelman, a safety officer with the state Natural Resources Department. The 47-year-old woman was wearing a white cap and dark clothing when she was shot Saturday, Dec. 1. The hunter was using a muzzleloader, as part of a special muzzleloader deer season. Muzzleloaders are single-shot rifles in which the powder and shot are loaded through the end of the barrel instead of the breech. The district attorney will decide whether to file charges. (http://espn.go.com/outdoors/hunting/news/2001/1203/1289389.html)*****Hunter's bullet possibly kills Penn. woman Associated Press — Nov. 28, 2001 MILL RUN, Pa. — A 66-year-old woman was killed when a bullet apparently fired by a hunter went through a window, wall and a door in her home and struck her in the neck, authorities said. Meriel Renee Bowser was struck by the bullet in her bedroom Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 28, and died shortly afterward, according to police. "The odds of (a bullet) coming through the woods, not hitting a tree, going through all that material in the house and hitting a person is ... million-to-one odds," said Charles May of the Pennsylvania Game Commission. State police and Game Commission officials were investigating. A hunter was being questioned Tuesday and the hunter's rifle had been taken to determine whether the bullet that killed Bowser was fired from that gun. Authorities said the hunter, who was not identified, was at least 450 yards away from Bowser's home. State law requires hunters to be at least 150 yards from a residence. Mill Run is in Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania. (http://espn.go.com/outdoors/hunting/news/2001/1128/1286062.html)*****CONNECTICUT Man Walking His Dog Killed By Hunter A Coventry man was charged with illegal hunting and manslaughter in late October after he shot and killed a Massachusetts man walking in the woods. Coventry police responding to a report of gunshots found Ronald Eckert Jr., 33, of Hingham, Mass., wounded from gunfire. Eckert died at the scene despite resuscitation efforts. Brian McMahon, Jr., 23, was charged with manslaughter, illegal discharge of a firearm, hunting without a license, illegal deer hunting, hunting on a Sunday, trespassing and failure to wear an orange vest. He was held on $250,000 bond. Police say the two men did not know each other. Apparently McMahon mistook Eckert for a deer. (http://www.gunsandgear.com/America%20Outdoors/Archives/man_killed_by_hunter.html) ******* I guess one can say that being able to go out and kill a four legged animal is more important than protecting the lives of two legged ones:  Shooters yesterday criticised the four-year sentence for manslaughter handed down to a deer hunter who accidentally shot a man out walking his dog. The state executive officer of the Sporting Shooters' Association of Australia, David Barton, said the verdict was unfair and that Robert John Osip the court had made an example of him to send a message to other shooters and hunters. Osip, 21, pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of Gary Paterson, 20, at Warburton on February 19, 1999.... Osip and his friend, Brian Davey, were hunting for Sambar deer in the Warburton State Forest when the shooting occurred on McDonald Track, a forestry road. The two men were only 180 metres from the main road, Warburton-Woods Point Road. Osip had claimed to see the neck and shoulders of a deer when he fired his gun but initially told police he saw a shape he believed was a deer. Mr Paterson was walking his labrador-cross through a clearing in the bush. Osip fired one shot in the direction of the noise, hitting Mr Paterson in the shoulder and causing extensive damage to his lungs. The two men heard someone cry out and ran to find Mr Paterson. They took him to Warburton hospital, where he later died. Justice Coldrey said Osip had breached a shooting code warning shooters not to fire at movement, color, sound or shape or near residential property. He said Osip fell far short of the standard of care a reasonable person would have exercised. Justice Coldrey said he accepted Osip had seen a color in the foliage but "at no time" did he adequately identify his target as a deer......Lawyers for Osip said yesterday they would be appealing the sentence.  (http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000527/A20568-2000May26.html) ******Hunter's stray bullet hits man in pizzeria NAZARETH, Pa. (AP)  A man was shot in the neck while eating a slice of pizza when a bullet apparently fired by a deer hunter crashed through the window of a restaurant Saturday evening, police said. The bullet entered Sal's Pizza and Restaurant on Route 512 at about 5 p.m. Saturday, ricocheted off the window frame, and struck John Calvert, 52, of Saylorsburg, officials said. "When I heard the sound, I looked up and saw a man stand, grab his neck, take a step or two and collapse," said Carl Garrison, a delivery person at the restaurant, which is south of Wind Gap and nearly surrounded by fields and woods. ......Police searched the area and took a hunter into custody. Coopersmith said the hunter had a .30-caliber rifle and the slug will be examined to see if it matches the rifle. "He was probably in the woods that sit on the other side of those fields and the deer crossed the field and he took the shot," Coopersmith said. "Where he was, he was probably within his rights to be in the area, but you have to know what you are shooting at. You can't shoot toward roads and you can't shoot at buildings.".... Monday, December 3, 2001
(http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:oMCl5WUX5L8C:www.timesonline.com/news/capital/4650986.htm+man+shot+by+hunter&hl=en)****
Hunter's stray bullet kills Quebec man CHICOUTIMI, Que. (CP) -- A Quebec man is dead after being struck in the head by a stray bullet from the gun of a 13-year-old boy. Marcel Savard, 69, of Jonquiere, Que. was hit Wednesday afternoon by a bullet from a .22-calibre hunting rifle fired by a teenager, who was small game hunting with a teenage friend. The young hunters were not accompanied by an adult. Jonquiere municipal police said the shooter saw a figure in the distance and fired a single shot. The figure dropped immediately. The teenager ran toward the victim immediately and was shocked to find Savard hunched over. When the boy touched him Savard fell to the ground, revealing a stream of blood flowing from his head. Shocked and panicking, the young boy ran home to his mother and alerted her. "I think I killed someone," he told the police after his mother had summoned them. Laurent Bouchard, the interim Crown prosecutor, asked for an additional investigation Thursday to determine how a 13-year-old boy could get his hands on a loaded rifle. The law regarding firearms strictly forbids possession and use of guns for people under 18 years of age, except in some very specific situations. However, even in those exceptions, the law requires a minor to be accompanied by an adult who legally owns the firearm. Shooting an unidentified figure near an urban environment contravenes standard hunting safety rules. Charges could be laid against the teenager, and eventually against his parents depending on the results of the investigation. The boy's identity is protected under the Young Offenders Act. In November, a Quebec man was shot and wounded outside his home near Lytton by an eight-year-old boy. Police say the youngster sneaked out of his family's home with his dad's hunting rifle, crept through the woods and then shot the man, who was seriously wounded. The boy, who police said is experienced with guns, cannot be charged because he is under 12 although his father may face weapons storage charges.(www.canoe.ca/CNEWSLaw0012/29_hunter-cp.html)*****Nigerian hunter kills man he mistook for a warthog (April 04, 2000) An article on iol.co.za reports that a distraught hunter in Nigeria shot dead a farmer he mistook for a warthog. He has turned himself in to local authorities. The gunman was apparently on a hunting expedition at Igbo-Ata in Ekiti State in the south-western region of Nigeria when the incident took (place.wildnetafrica.co.za/wildlifenews/2000/03/192.html) ****Bear eats hunter in Russian province Reuters — Dec. 25, 2001 (espn.go.com/outdoors/general/news/2001/1225/1301050.html) MOSCOW — A hungry bear ate a hunter in Russia's Jewish autonomous region in the country's far east, Interfax reported on Monday, Dec. 24. The half-eaten remains of the local man, who had gone hunting the previous day, were discovered near the village of Landakoz, set in the region's bleak taiga. It was not clear if the bear had killed the hunter or whether the man had died of cold before the scavenging animal found him, Interfax quoted local officials as saying. Bears have been known to attack humans in the region before, but usually during the late summer or early autumn while searching for wild mushrooms and berries.******Trespassers allegedly assault landowner After asking a group of Rhode Island men to leave his land, the Maine landowner was assaulted. The attack enrages local sportsmen and complicates access issues as posted land becomes the norm By Glenn Adams Associated Press — Nov. 18, 2001 THORNDIKE, Maine — Along the edges of woods and fields in this rural Waldo County town, the bright orange and yellow signs are popping up everywhere: No hunting. It wasn't always that way."We've never posted our land. It's all posted now, all 300 acres of it," said William Johnson, whose family has owned property in the area for four generations. The new keep-off signs started showing up on trees and fenceposts across the rolling countryside after Johnson's brother, Richard, was assaulted after asking a group of hunters to leave his property in Jackson, a tiny town bordering Thorndike. Johnson, 58, was upset that the Rhode Island men had not asked permission to use his land and were in an area near homes with children, said his brother. "Over the years, we've never had trouble with hunters," William Johnson said. "We all hunt." Richard Johnson was still recovering from his injuries last week and declined to be interviewed, but his family confirmed the police account of the Nov. 7 incident. Johnson blew the horn of a pickup truck belonging to the hunters, then propped a stick against it so it sounded continuously. There was a confrontation and one of the hunters knocked off Johnson's hat. When Johnson bent over he was attacked. His face was pounded until it was black and blue, and his teeth were broken. He crawled into his house dazed and bleeding, and passed out. He was out of work until last Wednesday. A hunter from Foster, R.I., Vincent DeCarlo, is free on bail pending a Dec. 18 hearing in Belfast District Court on a charge of aggravated assault, police said. *********http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20030729p2a00m0dm009000c.html wire reports, Japan, July 29, 2003KOCHI -- A Kochi Prefecture resident suffered head injuries here early Tuesday after a hunter mistook him for a monkey and shot him, police said. The resident, Hiroshi Tokorotani, 59, was hit with shotgun pellets in the left side of his head and his left check in the incident that occurred in the Kochi Prefecture district of Sukumo at about 8:25 a.m. Tuesday, police said. His injuries are not life-threatening. Police said they were questioning Takao Akitsuki, 64, the hunter who accidentally shot Tokorotani, on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in injury.****Man accidentally shot in hunting accident 11-05-03
By PAUL STONE H-P Associate Editor--A Flower Mound man was shot once in the abdomen Tuesday night in northern Anderson County after a member of his church group mistook him for a hog. This morning Anderson County Sheriff's investigator Chuck Franklin said Christopher McCrae, age unavailable, of Flower Mound was in "critical" condition at Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler. As of 4 a.m. today, Franklin said McCrae had undergone surgery for "internal injuries" which "didn't appear to be life threatening at this point." An Anderson County sheriff's report indicated the surgery was to repair intestinal damage and other internal injuries. A pack of wild boars, trying to escape from hunters, stormed two small towns in Bavaria, biting people, knocking down a cyclist and running amok in a boutique. http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,1959498,00.html The 15 boars caused damage worth several thousand euros in Veitshöchheim and Margetshöchheim at the weekend. ...We had some angry calls from people asking, 'Was it necessary to shoot them?' But I believe we had no choice. The animals were ... in panic and they presented a great danger," Mr Schmitt said. Children climbed walls to get out of the boars' path, he added. Damaged cars will cost an estimated several thousand euros to repair while the boutique is left with a bill of €1,000 (£675). The hunt was apparently called off early.

Response g) USDA Says It’s None of the Public’s Business Who Ate Recalled Meat http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/08/7554/#comment-225250 By Martha Rosenberg. "At least 10,000 food distributors sold recalled meat from the shuttered Hallmark slaughterhouse in Chino, CA including ConAgra, General Foods, Nestle and H.J. Heinz and it could still be on store shelves.But Richard Raymond, USDA undersecretary for food safety, told an incredulous House Appropriation’s agriculture panel this week the information is “proprietary” and would not be released. Naming names could drive customers away and just “confuse” people say trade groups like the American Meat Institute, Food Marketing Institute and Grocery Manufacturers Association.The Bush Administration also opposes publicizing retailers’ names in meat recalls.

4)Question/attack: "If animals have rights, then they must be able to have the same rights as us, such as voting /If we give animals rights, we must give plants and all other organisms rights too"

Response: a) Sure--and if we can do that then fine. But if we are unable to give rights to all lifeforms--it doesnt mean we should just give up and not give rights to any. If we say that--then one could decide they only care about people within their own race/religion/gender/age group/economic status. Some people already do it anyway....

Response: b) Okay but you can be the one to go around to every plant, animal and bacteria on the planet and ensure they got their voter's guide. 

Response: c)Peter Singer, "All Animals Are Equal. . . .  Or Why Supporters of Liberation for Blacks and Women Should Support Animal Liberation Too" "There *are* important differences between humans and other animals, and these differences must give rise to *some* differences in the rights each have.  Recognizing this obvious fact, however, is no barrier to the case for extending the basic principle of equality to nonhuman animals. The differences that exist between men and women are equally undeniable, and the supporters of Women's Liberation are aware that these differences may give rise to different rights.     ***Many feminists hold that women have the right to an abortion on request.  It does not follow that since these same feminists are campaigning for equality between men and women they must support the right of men to have abortions too.  Since a man cannot have an abortion, it is meaningless to talk of his right to have one.  Since a dog can't vote, it is meaningless to talk of its right to vote.  There is no reason why either Women's Liberation or Animal Liberation should get involved in such nonsense.***      The extension of the basic principle of equality from one group to another does not imply that we must treat both groups in exactly the same way, or grant exactly the same rights to both groups.  What we should do will depend on the nature of the members of the two groups.  The basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical *treatment*; it requires equal *consideration.*  Equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights."  (It would be mean to send a dog to elementary school to sit quietly for 8 hours a day, for that matter.)
 

5)Question/attack: "Only humans can form moral contracts with other humans—since we cannot make social/moral contracts with other species, we should not care about how we treat them."

Response: a) Why does a moral contract have to be reciprocal? We make special arrangements for infants, and humans that are mentally challenged—without requiring that they “return the favor.” Why should other species be treated to a different standard?

Response b) We can and do have social and moral contracts with other species. We know that if an animal, its offspring, or its territory is threatened, or it is hungry, we can expect it to react accordingly. That is a social contract. By contrast, there are humans who make moral and social contracts with other humans—and then break them. And yet we do not turn them into laboratory fodder.

  Response c) If this argument is applied fairly and equally to a human rights scenario, then it would have significant consequences for humans that are either children, or are stricken with brain damage, mental illness, or some disease which prevents them from making a social/moral contract with others. By the logic of this argument— these humans could be exploited for medical research.  

6)Question/attack: "What about grizzly bears?  They eat other species, shouldn't we do something to stop that?"  

Response: a) that defies the whole meaning of animal rights. humans do not need to hold a paternalism over the actions of other animals.

Response: b) if there were over 6 billion grizzly bears who didn't need the fish to survive, then maybe they would need to decide what
to do about it, but that isn' t any of our business as humans. 

Response: c) oh yeah--and while you' re at it--better stop spiders from eating flies and flies from eating smaller bugs and bacteria from eating other 
bacteria..get back to me when you figure out how to police them--until  then we better stick to what we can do--policing ourselves.
 

Response: d) other species do things to survive...they may do things we don’t feel are consistent with our ethics--but we have ethics
to control our behavior--other species are able to function without the types of ethical systems we propose. They don't have the
option to not kill if they wish to survive. But they don't go around killing other species for oil, money, religion etc... when they
do--they can deal with their ethical conduct--until then--humans are the species we have to worry about. 
 

Response: e) this argument tries to say that if some group is exempt from the same moral conduct that is expected of humans--then they should be excluded from any rights to protection or respect. By this logic children, the mentally retarded and comatose people do not deserve rights to protection since they cannot reason and formulate ethical positions like adult humans can.
 

7)Question/attack: "Frogs don't care about morality when they eats flies, so if I am equal to them, shouldnt I be able to do the same and do as I want?"

Response: a) since you want to  be regarded as being able to do everything a frog can, or cannot do, then I guess you will be indifferent to human suffering--after all, a frog would be. So since a frog cant help a drowning human, you wouldnt either. After all, you want to have the same moral equality and responsibility as a frog. 
 

8)Question/attack: Animal activists  drive on roads that caused animals to lose their lives and live in homes that have caused animals to lose their lives." 

Response: a) No one is perfect. A lot of humans were killed through wars to build one's country--whether you live in Europe or North America or Asia.  No one tells a human rights activist he must rocket himself to a desert island in order to be against human exploitation--therefore the same is true for animal activists. 

Response: b) Thousands of people are killed by automobiles each year. If you are in favor of human rights--do you refrain from driving?

9)Question/attack: "You may think you avoid all unnecessary suffering, but how many animals died in the fields to grow your plants for food?"

Response: a) Don't know--but it is a lot less than the number that were killed in the fields to grow the food used to feed the cattle you eat. 

Response: b) That's an ad hominem attack. Instead of addressing the issue you are attacking me for any faults I may have. It is a separate issue but you cite it to divert attention from your own wrongdoing. 

Response: c) There are ways to provide food without causing as much harm to other life---eating meat is far more destructive. 

Response: d) So what are you saying? We should eat raw minerals? You start. Here's a rock--bite it.

Response: e) Oh I see--so since we cannot avoid all suffering we should just let people eat meat, hunt, fish, use animals in rodeos, research etc. But why stop there? Why not let people kill each other, enslave other humans, abuse children. They are doing it anyway and since suffering cannot be avoided completely why bother to try at all? RIGHT?

10)Question/Attack(FOLLOW UP):  From TIME magazine (week of July 8, 2002) An argument championed by Steven Davis, professor of animal science at Oregon State University, points "to the number of field animals inadvertently killed during crop production and harvest. One study showed that simply mowing an alfalfa field caused a 50% reduction in the gray-tailed vole population. Mortality rates increase with each pass of the tractor to plow, plant and harvest. Rabbits, mice and pheasants, he says, are the indiscriminate "collateral damage" of row crops and the grain industry...By contrast, grazing (not grain-fed) ruminants such as cattle produce food and require fewer entries into the fields with tractors and other equipment. Applying (and upending) Regan's least-harm theory, Davis proposes a ruminant-pasture model of food production, which would replace poultry and pork production with beef, lamb and dairy products. According to his calculations, such a model would result in the deaths of 300 million fewer animals annually (counting both field animals and cattle) than would a completely vegan model. "By Richard Corliss, Reported by Melissa August and Matthew Cooper/Washington, David Bjerklie and Lisa McLaughlin/New York, Wendy Cole/Chicago and Jeffrey Ressner/ Los Angeles
 

Response: a) From Time article: "When asked about Davis' arguments, (Tom) Regan, however, still sees a distinction: "The real question is whether to support production systems whose very reason for existence is to kill animals. Meat eaters do. Ethical vegetarians do not."

Response: b) The questionable moral reasoning of Steven Davis's argument can be described as thus:  Imagine you are driving along and you come to a forked road. One way is covered in darkness, the other has some children playing in the center of it. By Davis' logic, it is better to drive through and deliberately kill the children instead of taking the other route where you may end up killing more that you cant see--OR getting out and walking to check if the route is clear (after all, who says crop harvesting MUST be done by only one type of tractor-- the most destructive?).

Response: c) What about the effects of grazing on wildlife populations? The killing of natural predators to keep cattle and sheep from being killed? What about the pollution to rivers from grazing? How many aquatic organisms will be killed because of grazing? What about the trampling of insects by cattle and sheep? Has Davis calculated their deaths or do they not count? This argument to replace all crops with meat and dairy grazing leaves a lot of questions. 

Response: d) A completely vegan model would require one to ask: Who says crop harvesting must be done in the same way as it is currently? Davis is not making any effort to calculate alternative methods for harvesting or growing crops. What about greenhouses? What about switching to crops that cause less damage? What about harvesting machinery that is less intrusive? That is what a true vegan perspective would ask. As a meat eater who profits from the animal industry, Davis is not able to comprehend what a completely vegan model would be.

Response: e) Baby steps. Eliminate meat and dairy production, and then switch to lower yield, less harmful agricultural practices.

Response: f) But by Davis' argument, a lot of meat eating humans would be currently guilty of causing DOUBLE harm. They eat crops (since very few are true carnivores), and they eat meat that was raised on grain that killed animals in fields. Vegetarians only eat crops. Veganism still comes out as more desirable morally.

Response: g) Studies of all but invisible animal populations in fields can be skewed for anyone's agenda. Let's use basic hard facts: you raise animals for meat, you are directly killing animals. You raise plants for food, you may indirectly kill animals. Most sensible people would say that it is better to avoid direct killing, than engage in it out of fear of causing indirect killing. (See response b)

Response: h) (from http://courses.ats.rochester.edu/nobis/papers/leastharm.htm (submission to the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, January 2003 Gaverick Matheny, Duke University)...."Davis does not succeed in showing this is preferable to vegetarianism. First, Davis makes a mathematical error in using total rather than per capita estimates of animals killed; second, he focuses on the number of animals killed in ruminant and crop production systems and ignores important considerations about the welfare of animals under both systems; and third, he does not consider the number of animals who are prevented from existing under the two systems. After correcting for these errors, Davis’s argument makes a strong case for, rather than against, adopting a vegetarian diet.".... First, Davis makes an error in calculating how many animals would be killed to feed a vegan-vegetarian population.  He explains: "There are 120 million ha of cropland harvested in the USA each year.  If all of that land was used to produce crops to support a vegan diet, and if 15 animals of the field are killed per ha per year, then 15 x 120 million = 1800 million or 1.8 billion animals would be killed annually to produce a vegan diet for the USA (p. 5).   Davis estimates that only 7.5 animals of the field per hectare die in ruminant-pasture. If we were to convert half of the 120 million hectares of U.S. cropland to ruminant-pasture and half to growing vegetables, Davis claims we could feed the U.S. population on a diet of ruminant meat and crops and kill only 1.35 billion animals annually in the process. Thus, Davis concludes his omnivorous proposal would save the lives of 450 million animals each year (p. 6-7). Davis mistakenly assumes the two systems—crops only and crops with ruminant-pasture—using the same total amount of land, would feed identical numbers of people (i.e., the U.S. population). In fact, crop and ruminant systems produce different amounts of food per hectare -- the two systems would feed different numbers of people. To properly compare the harm caused by the two systems, we ought to calculate how many animals are killed in feeding equal populations—or the number of animals killed per consumer. .....Davis suggests the number of wild animals killed per hectare in crop production (15) is twice that killed in ruminant-pasture (7.5). If this is true, then as long as crop production uses less than half as many hectares as ruminant-pasture to deliver the same amount of food, a vegetarian will kill fewer animals than an omnivore. In fact, crop production uses less than half as many hectares as grass-fed dairy and one-tenth as many hectares as grass-fed beef to deliver the same amount of protein. In one year, 1,000 kilograms of protein can be produced on as few as 1.0 hectares planted with soy and corn, 2.6 hectares used as pasture for grass-fed dairy cows, or 10 hectares used as pasture for grass-fed beef cattle (Vandehaar 1998; UNFAO 1996). As such, to obtain the 20 kilograms of protein per year recommended for adults, a vegan-vegetarian would kill 0.3 wild animals annually, a lacto-vegetarian would kill 0.39 wild animals, while a Davis-style omnivore would kill 1.5 wild animals. Thus, correcting Davis’s math, we see that a vegan-vegetarian population would kill the fewest number of wild animals, followed closely by a lacto-vegetarian population. However, suppose this were not the case and that, in fact, fewer animals would be killed under Davis’s omnivorism. Would it follow that Davis’s plan causes the least harm? Not necessarily. Early in the paper, Davis shifts from discussing the harm done to animals under different agricultural systems to the number of animals killed. This shift is not explained by Davis and is not justified by the most common moral views, all of which recognize harms other than death. "........."Although Davis does not show omnivorism is preferable to vegetarianism, he should be commended for emphasizing the importance of farmed animal welfare as a moral issue, now emerging as one of the most significant of the day. Predictably, his argument has been cited as a justification for traditional omnivorism (Corliss 2002), a misreading Davis did not intend and one that any faithful reading of his paper should prevent. The type of ruminant production Davis proposes is a world apart from the omnivorism prevalent in the United States."

11)Question/attack: "More animals are killed for a vegetarian diet than by hunters. Therefore, hunting is more compassionate than vegetarianism."

Response: a) Ideally, animals that may be killed in fields etc to grow food for vegetarians are killed unintentionally. Hunters kill intentionally. Thus vegetarianism is more compassionate, since it seeks to eliminate unnecessary suffering and killing, not encourage it.

Response: b) And yet growing your own vegetarian food in a garden would be more compassionate than hunting.

Response: c) It is impossible to gauge how many animals are killed in fields. The answer is not to advocate hunting, but to find the best way to avoid killing animals to grow food. 

Response: d) By that logic, someone may decide that resorting to cannibalism would be more compassionate than hunting. Why prey on other species for your survival when you can prey on your own?

Response: e) if everyone went and hunted for food, it would kill alot more animals than in fields that grow food for vegetarians
 

12)Question/attack:  Your values deem animals to be right-holders whereas others deem them to be resource, it is the former and not the latter that has the ethical obligation to stop killing them.

Response: a)by that logic, if someone doesnt believe that others are rights-holders, they dont have any obligation to stop those acts that violate them. So a racist can go and lynch blacks because he doesnt value them as equals. A child abuser can do likewise. You havent proven why all humans should regard all humans as rights-holders, and you need to in order to defend human rights while you attack animal rights.

Response: b) You demand moral perfection from animal activists, and you say that humans have rights, and yet you pay taxes and live in a country that has exploited and killed humans in the past and to the present. So by your own logic you must divest yourself from all acts that contribute to the violation of human rights, even if it is impossible to be morally perfect. 

13)Question/attack: "What if you were attacked by a bear? Would you let the bear kill you? If you wouldn't-and you kill the bear--then you can't be for animal rights."

Response: a) If i enter known bear territory than it is up to me to know better. But assuming it was unavoidable, defending yourself is a matter of self interest. If you commit an act in self interest it does not mean you are against the rights of others. 

Response: b) If a civil/human rights activist is attacked by a thief--and he defends himself, does that mean he is against civil/human rights?

Response: c) I live in a civilization where I can go to the grocery store and buy soy dogs, veggie burgers, soy milk, rice, beans, bagels, vegan cream cheese, organic fruits and vegetables, etc.. There is no reason why I would ever be in a situation where a wild bear would attack me.

14)Question/attack: "other species are not bound by the same rules as humans("lions eat gazelles so why should we respect either the gazelles or the lions?") and are not capable of reciprocal morality("we are supposed to respect them but they don’t respect us")..

  Response: a) But some of the mentally retarded, mentally deranged, or children are not conscious of the meaning of rights and yet they are given them without conditions. We don’t expect reciprocal morality from them, so why from non human animals? Lions and other predators need to eat meat to survive. Humans don’t.  Furthermore, lions and other large predators base their aggression on survival interests. If they don’t feel threatened or aren't defending territory or aren't hungry--they don’t attack.  In that sense--there is an "ethical conduct" to how other species behave, and unlike some humans, they don't make promises they have no intention of keeping

15)Question/attack:   "if it is ok for the lion to hunt it should be ok for me to hunt. The lion hunts in his own way. So does the snake, spider, eagle, etc...also the HUMAN hunts in their own way. It is not impossible for humans to fly of spend long periods of time under water...IN THEIR OWN WAY."

Response: a) If it is okay for you to say that you should be able to hunt if a lion does, someone else can say, using your argument, that they should be able to deal with breeding and offspring just like a lion. Male lions and grizzlies have been known to kill the offspring of rival males. Humans should be able to also--by your logic. You cant attack someone else for using the same reasoning you employ. 

Response: b) Humans are not naturally equipped like a lion or wolf for hunting. They are born for it. If humans were born for it, all humans would be doing it. Yet they aren't. 

16)Question/attack: "I can't see the difference between me eating a deer (racism by your definition) and a lion eating a deer. You apply distinctly human standards to a trans-species hypothesis."

Response: a) A lion is biologically adapted to eat animals. No tools, no trickery. Claws, jaws, teeth, (needle-barbed) tongue. Humans dont have the equipment for it. You can say we have the brain to create tools etc..but that means we also have the brain to get food from other sources besides meat. And it is not applying distinctly human standards to other species YOUR argument does. You want lions to follow human definitions of morality, or to abandon any responsibility towards non humans if they cannot.  Lions dont have the system of ethical reasoning that humans use. Essentially you are wondering why a blind man cant read road signs, or why a man with no arms cant catch a football. 

Response: b) The main difference is that humans have systems of ethics that say one should try to be fair and as just as possible to others. Under that belief, humans have to justify discriminating against others (human or not). Other species do not, as far as we can tell, employ systems of ethics that change over time. 

Response: c) Lions need to eat meat. Humans do not. Since eating meat involves discrimination, violence, and killing, humans cannot justify it if they say it is wrong to kill unfairly or unjustly (especially if, at the same time,  they emphasize it is wrong to do the same to humans). In order to justify it, they first have to show how human supremacy and the standards of value used to defend it, are fundamentally different in principle from the arguments used to defend racial, gender, religious or any other human-centered discriminatory ethical policy. In other words, show how human supremacy is based upon absolute objective, universally-sanctioned standards of value. If they cannot, then it would be hypocritical for a human supremacist to criticize a racial/religious/gender/wealth supremacist for acting upon a belief that is no more or less subjective, biased, arbitrary and non-absolute than that of the human supremacist.

17)Question/attack: "Marx sees rights as the formal boundaries or markers of real social power. Since animals lack real social power, under the Marxian conception of rights they do not qualify [NB - children and moral incompetents 'counter examples' do not defeat this particular understanding, since marginal cases such as these need to be incorporated into the rights-bearing category in order to 'reinforce the borders' against attack by government or monarch]."


Response a) why should animals not qualify for rights under a  Marxian conception of rights because they lack "real social power?" Why does this matter? What makes the quality of possessing "real social power" a critieria of absolute objective value and the basis for discrimination? If it cannot be demonstrated that "real social power" is a criteria of absolute objective value then anyone could use a similar subjective criteria of value(from skin colour to intelligence to religion) to discriminate against other humans who they deem as arbitrarily unworthy of moral regard(and this happens all the time). 


Response: b  Why do marginal cases need to be incorporated into the rights-bearing category in order to 'reinforce the borders' against attack by government or monarch? Where is the necessity for reinforcement demonstrated? People have and do discriminate against children and incompentents while believing that they themselves have "rights," without apparent concern about attack by government or monarch so proof of necessity is missing. It is a subjective view, vulnerable to doubt, not based on absolute objective criteria, and therefore not a basis for justifiying the discrimination against non humans who, like children and mental incompetents lack real social power according to Marx but are discriminated against without a concrete justification for doing so. The real issue becomes one of saying that humans possess some quality that makes them superior in value as a group to all other life, without being able to demonstrate this quality as absolute, objective truth(which must be done in order to prevent other humans from using other subjective criteria to discriminate against other humans(which, as noted, happens all the time regardless of human rights laws or beliefs).

 

2: ANIMAL RESEARCH  

 1)Question/attack: "If we stopped testing on animals the products would be unsafe for humans." 

Response: a) Even with animal testing the products are not always safe for humans. In fact, there are drugs and treatments tested on animals that have proven unsafe for humans(i.e. Thalidomide). 

Response: b) Human testing is essential for human drugs etc. You can take the animal out of medical research but not the human--if you doubt that, then lets see you volunteer to test a drug that had only been tested on non human animals?

Response: c) Animals used in experiments become so stressed that their blood chemistry changes, invalidating the science. 

Response: d) Animal research can also lead to the transmission of diseases--even the creation of new ones. From the Lancet, 2004: "At the time of writing this review there have been two re-emergent cases of SARS, both from laboratory infections. One case in Singapore22 and the other in Taiwan.23 WHO must continue its efforts to promote scientific responsibility for both SARS and influenza viruses. Laboratory regulations globally are inconsistent. We now live in a global village, so universal guidelines need to be adopted. The situation with H2N2 influenza is a case in point. Although H2N2 influenza has not circulated in human beings since 1968 and everyone under the age of 36 years is susceptible, the H2N2 virus is widely distributed in laboratories and is still used in some laboratories. The re-emergence of H1N1 influenza, in 1977, that continues to circulate in human beings is another unresolved case. This H1N1 virus remained genetically conserved for 27 years.24 The most likely explanation is that the virus came from a frozen source and a laboratory seems the most probable culprit. Thus SARS CoV and many influenza viruses (eg, H2N2, H5N1, and H7N7 from human beings) must be restricted to Biosafety level 3+ laboratories."

2)Question/attack: "If your child was ill, would you sacrifice the life of a rat, or  cat, or dog, or chimp etc (in medical research) to save it?"  

Response: a) This hypothetical argument is intended as a catch 22. If the activist chooses the life of their child over that of a rat---then they are endorsing the principle behind vivisection whether they admit it or not. If it would be okay for an animal rights activist to use an animal to save their own child, then how could he or she object to the animal research industry? If they say no, then they are deemed as not loving their child and are a terrible parent. The first error with this is the unrealistic nature of the hypothetical situation. Can a cure for an illness be attained by killing one rat, without any human clinical trials? Of course not. Such a scenario is an oversimplification intended to force the validity of animal research and portray the vivisector as someone capable of making miraculous treatments if only he/she is allowed to exploit animals as they wish. It also perverts the nature of altruism and compassion by suggesting that one must prioritize the recipients of such altruism and compassion.

Response: b) If your child was sick, would you sacrifice the life of your neighbor's child in medical research to save it?  If you say no, does that mean you don't love your child as much as you may claim to, especially since you know that the chances for a treatment are greatly increased by using humans--and wouldn't you want only the best for your child? If you say yes, does that mean you are going to focus on getting humans used for research so you can offer your child the best possible treatment? The answers one gives to these questions can be made applicable to the scenario involving non humans.

Response: c) If it is wrong for me to exploit my neighbor's child in order to aid my own, then it would be wrong for me to do the same if my neighbor happened to have four legs instead of two. Exploiting others in violation of consistent ethical beliefs is wrong.

 3)Question/attack: "If we weren't using animals in research we wouldn't be able to find cures for diseases and cancers./Animal research is necessary if we hope to cure diseases and help sick children."

Response: a) Saying animal research is necessary in order to cure human diseases makes as much sense as saying that one needs to conduct research on humans in order to cure rat diseases (there would almost seem to be a Neo-Darwinian myth at work, that by testing on  so called "simpler" animals one can move up the "Evolutionary ladder" until you reach the complexity of human beings). You can remove the animal from medical research but you still need humans in research. If you wanted to cure leukemia in cats--working on dogs would not help much. 

Response: b) if that's the case why haven't we cured the common cold? Humans have been experimenting on animals non stop for at least 150 years and yet we are still plagued by diseases. new ones surface and old ones become drug resistant. So much for success through animal research.

Response: c) Animals used in experiments become so stressed that their blood chemistry changes, invalidating the science. 

Response: d) The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine maintains a list of non-profit medical research organizations that do not test on animals, yet do perform important and groundbreaking work - the list can be found at http://www.humaneseal.org/approved.html

Response: e) From http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=471139 December 8, 2003 "A senior executive with Britain's biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them. Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them. It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public." .....Dr Roses, an academic geneticist from Duke University in North Carolina, spoke at a recent scientific meeting in London where he cited figures on how well different classes of drugs work in real patients. Drugs for Alzheimer's disease work in fewer than one in three patients, whereas those for cancer are only effective in a quarter of patients. Drugs for migraines, for osteoporosis, and arthritis work in about half the patients, Dr Roses said. Most drugs work in fewer than one in two patients mainly because the recipients carry genes that interfere in some way with the medicine, he said. "The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people," Dr Roses said. "I wouldn't say that most drugs don't work. I would say that most drugs work in 30 to 50 per cent of people. Drugs out there on the market work, but they don't work in everybody." RESPONSE Rates: Therapeutic area: drug efficacy rate in per cent Alzheimer's: 30 ***Analgesics (Cox-2): 80 ****Asthma: 60 ***Cardiac Arrythmias: 60 ***Depression (SSRI): 62 ***Diabetes: 57 ***Hepatits C (HCV): 47 ***Incontinence: 40 ***Migraine (acute): 52 ***Migraine (prophylaxis)50 ***Oncology(cancer): 25 ***Rheumatoid arthritis50 ***Schizophrenia: 60 *******CONCLUSION: if drug effectiveness among humans is so erratic and unreliable it means that  the differences physically between humans and non humans would be far more extreme--and thus animal research is as unreliable as animal activists and responsible physicians have said for decades..

4)Question/attack: "If vivisection and dissection are banned, how about those who wanted to be a veterinarian? How or what can they refer to? I know you probably would say: "There are electronic programs which allows those students to watch what is inside the animal's body... like computers, videos..." But then those who did these are probably cruel, right? Why how come they know the illustration of the animal's body inside? They also did open up the animal's body, right?"

Response: a)It is basically impossible to avoid any and all exploitation of other humans and other species(or products derived from that exploitation--i.e. for humans we are talking about paying taxes to fund wars, living on land which may have been the scene of someone's murder in order to seize it, reckless medical experiments by companies that injured volunteer patients etc,), and those computer- video illustration programs are the perfect example. The argument can be made that since the research had already been done, we might as well use it(as was the case with the Nazi research). One could say that it would be immoral not to use it because then the animals would have suffered and died in vain. (there are however, some vegans who would disagree with this, and others would argue that using the research may encourage more experimentation).

Response: b) it is said that countries like India have had animal hospitals for decades if not centuries(under the religion of the Jains) and have not had to resort to vivisection to treat members of other species (source: the Vegetable Passion).

Response: c)You can not cause harm to one, in the hope of helping another, and call it true altruism or compassion. Would you help a homeless man by kicking someone else out of their house, and call that a compassionate solution? The line of Medical progress should stop at the point when it is proposed that other lives should be sacrificed --especially against their will--to foster that "progress." Human patients may volunteer for dangerous medical research, other species do not. In other words, two wrongs do not make a right.

Response: d) The issue of veterinary medicine is not relevant from a strict vegan philosophy which argues that humans should not have members of other species domesticated, and thus, we should not presume to be "stewards" of their well-being. Thus, veterinary research would not be an issue. 
 

5)Question/attack: "Would you accept a medical treatment that had been tested on animals if you got sick?"

Response: a) This attack is flawed because it implies that if an animal activist would use a medical treatment that had been tested on animals then the activist is guilty of hypocrisy: contradicting his/her argument, and must either refuse any future medical treatment, or abandon the animal rights cause. The activist is pressured to be a moral perfectionist before endorsing animal rights---and since perfection is not possible--then it alleged the animal rights agenda is a false one. This attack draws an unrealistic connection between the present act of vivisection, and the already existing products of that vivisection. In order for the animal activist to be guilty of hypocrisy, he or she would have to consciously participate in or endorse the present and future activities of vivisectors, not the medical treatments that resulted (in part) from policies that included animal experimentation (i.e. saying they are against vivisection, then paying a researcher to do it). The activist could counter-argue that since the research was already done, it might as well be utilized so the animals did not "die in vain." It also makes an unrealistic demand upon the activist--to remove him/herself from a world where all governments engage in some form of exploitation (or have connections to those that do) before beginning to make protests and arguments that seek change.

Response: b)This argument reveals how vivisectors attempt to make the recipient of their works feel guilty because he/she benefited from their research. It perverts the altruism of the medical profession by tainting the recipient with the tag of a conspirator!

Response: c) If this "moral perfection first" approach is applied fairly and equally to human-related issues-it has the following consequences for the animal research proponent: Any patient who benefits from a procedure that was based upon the human experiments of the Nazis, effectively endorses those atrocities committed, and cannot declare otherwise (In 1989 concentration camp survivors attempted to get Nazi research destroyed--but were rebuked by the medical establishment which argued the research could be employed for the greater good). An organ recipient, who receives a transplant from a victim of a car wreck, or shooting, cannot claim to be against such tragedies, since he/she benefited from such incidents. Furthermore, a Chinese student living in Bejing, could not protest for democratic reforms since he receives his food, shelter, and financial support through agencies of the government he is attacking. And someone in North America could not claim to be for Indian rights--unless they remove themselves from their present dwelling and let aboriginals move in. No one could protest, or seek to make reforms for any social cause unless they first removed themselves from all imperfections. Since it is impossible--all attempts to make the world a better place would have to be abandoned. In trying to portray the animal activist as a hypocrite, the animal research defender puts forth an ethical standard which they do not apply fairly and equally to themselves--thus revealing who the actual hypocrites are.

Response: d) It is well documented that corporations past and present have been known to profit from the exploitation of others--including humans. From USAToday, Feb 21, 2002: "There is considerable evidence that proud names in finance, banking, insurance, transportation, manufacturing, publishing and other industries are linked to slavery. Many of those same companies are today among the most aggressive at hiring and promoting African-Americans, marketing to black consumers and giving to black causes. So far, the reparations legal team has publicly identified five companies it says have slave ties: insurers Aetna, New York Life and AIG and financial giants J.P. Morgan Chase Manhattan Bank and FleetBoston Financial Group. Independently, USA TODAY has found documentation tying several others to slavery:* Investment banks Brown Bros. Harriman and Lehman Bros.* Railroads Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National.* Textile maker WestPoint Stevens. * Newspaper publishers Knight Ridder, Tribune, Media General, Advance Publications, E.W. Scripps and Gannett, parent and publisher of USA TODAY. ....Lloyd's of London, the giant insurance marketplace, could become a target because member brokerages are believed to have insured ships that brought slaves from Africa to the USA and cotton from the South to mills in New England and Britain. The original benefactors of many of the country's top universities -- Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton and the University of Virginia, among them -- were wealthy slave owners. Lawyers on the reparations team say universities also will be sued."

Response: e) A better question would be if you would accept a drug treatment that was tested on unsuspecting humans who may well have been tortured and killed for it  "By the end of July a US district court will decide whether drug giant Pfizer should stand trial in the United States for presiding over a coercive, botched 1996 experiment on Nigerian children with meningitis. In a class-action suit filed last August, thirty Nigerian families say the company violated the Nuremberg Code by forcing an unapproved, risky experiment on unwitting subjects who suffered brain damage, loss of hearing, paralysis and death as a result.......Globalizing clinical research solves the pharmaceutical paradox that while the average American brings home more than ten prescriptions a year, just one in 350 is willing to play guinea pig for new drug testing. An abundance of poor, undertreated and doctor-trusting patients in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia renders the quick, positive results corporate sponsors need to get new drugs approved fast. According to one review, a whopping 99 percent of controlled trials published in China bestowed positive results upon the treatment under investigation.....Even if Americans were willing to participate in trials, they take so many medications that they make poor lab rats anyway, clinical researchers say. To prove a new drug safe and effective, "you want patients with no other disease states and no other treatments. Then you can say relatively clearly that whatever happens to those patients is from the drug," says MDS Pharma's Simon Yaxley, whose company sells what industry PR folks call "patient recruitment solutions" in Eastern Europe, South Africa, Latin America and China. In developing countries, many people, because they are poor and don't have access to clinicians and hospitals, aren't taking any medicines for their illnesses...Conveniently, many of the FDA's ponderous regulations stop at the border. For example, the FDA's requirement that companies prove that their experimental drugs are safe on animals before starting tests on humans doesn't apply for tests conducted outside the United States. And experiments on Americans must undergo painstaking, lengthy reviews by government-regulated "institutional review boards" (IRBs). But "if you go to some countries and say you want the IRB to review this, they say, 'What is an IRB?'" comments Dennis DeRosia, chair of the Association of Clinical Research Professionals. The FDA simply requires that foreign trials conform to the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki, a series of ethical recommendations that critics call rudimentary, nonbinding and ambiguous. Scientists routinely ignore Helsinki directives to publish negative results and make study designs public, and they liken Helsinki-required ethics committees in developing countries to rubber stamps. "No ethical questions are raised at all," one investigator admitted to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC).....What results is one set of acceptable risks for patients at home and quite another for patients abroad, a double standard that has left hundreds of preventable deaths in its wake. Most notoriously, in the mid- and late 1990s, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control funded and defended studies in which Western scientists withheld treatment from HIV-infected pregnant women in developing countries, even though they knew antiretroviral drugs would reduce the rate of HIV infection in their infants by two-thirds. Hundreds of infants "needlessly contracted HIV infection" while Western doctors presided over their care, according to an incendiary New England Journal of Medicine paper by Public Citizen's Dr. Peter Lurie and Dr. Sidney Wolfe.."   Published in the July 1, 2002 issue of The Nation. Globalizing Clinical Research: Big Pharma Tries Out First World Drugs on Unsuspecting Third World Patients by Sonia Shaw. 
 

Response f) taken from: http://www.micahbooks.com/readingroom/Nazisandanimalresearch.html   "In 1987, the Supreme Court heard a case in which a U.S. soldier sued the government for having used him as a test case for LSD experiments, without his knowledge (Stanley vs. The United States). The court voted 5 to 4 against the victim. For a recent review of experiments conducted on human beings in the U.S., without their informed consent, see Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests over Populated Areas, by Leonard A. Cole, Subjected to Science, by Susan Lederer, Johns Hopkins Press (This books studies experimentation on human beings between the two world wars); and Stranger at The Bedside by David J. Rothman, which studies this problem in the period after the Second World War. There are many more books on this subject. Many of them can be found on the Internet, under "Human Experimentation," or at Amazon.com, under the same heading."

Response: g)(American Consumers Suffering as More New Drugs Debut in US, Analysis Shows  December 18, Knight Ridder/Tony Pugh, Seth Borenstein) WASHINGTON - Thousands of Americans are getting sick and many are dying each year from prescription drugs that were pushed onto the U.S. market ahead of the rest of the world. A Knight Ridder analysis shows that as the number of new drugs given first to Americans has increased, the reports of drug-induced ailments have soared. Yet, even as the deaths and damage have increased, the Food and Drug Administration has never instituted an aggressive system to track the safety of drugs once they're on the market. On Friday, the makers of the painkiller Celebrex and the attention disorder remedy Strattera warned consumers that health problems associated with the drugs had surfaced, requiring changes in their use. Both were introduced first in the United States, Celebrex in 1998, Strattera in 2002. Nearly 60 percent of all the genuinely new drugs sold in the world in 2003 - those with active ingredients never before marketed - were first dispensed in America. That's up from about 3 percent 20 years ago when most drugs were first introduced abroad, where the approval process in many countries is much more stringent than in the United States. "We're the guinea pigs in the sense of extensive population exposure," said Dr. Marcus Reidenberg, a professor of pharmacology, medicine and public health at Cornell University Medical School in New York City...... Knight Ridder found that in 1992, just before Congress directed the FDA to speed up drug approvals, there was an average of one adverse drug reaction for every 16,300 prescriptions filled. In 2003, adverse reactions hit one in 9,000. While the FDA has no official estimate on the number of people killed by these drugs, the agency says 106,000 people a year die from all types of drug reactions. One new drug, the painkiller Vioxx, which was pulled from the market this fall, may have caused 55,000 deaths, a top FDA scientist said recently. ...The issue of drug reaction and monitoring is a simple case of numbers. Before the FDA approves a drug as safe for sale, it's tested on a few thousand people. It's enough of a sample to find big and obvious side effects, the kind that hit maybe one out of every 100 users. But when drugs are sold commercially and used by millions of patients, rare side effects can show up, some with deadly consequences. A rare side effect that would hurt maybe one person in 10,000 wouldn't show up in the initial study, but it would in the mass marketplace. That's what happened with Vioxx.

Response h)Network of top scientists helped 'Angel of Death' Mengele  http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1443039,00.html Krysia Diver: The "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele, who was long thought to have been the black sheep of Germany's scientists under the Nazi regime, was in fact supported by a network of elite researchers, new research has revealed. Mengele founded a kindergarten and played the violin to children in a concentration camp, but also injected the hearts of children with chloroform, infected them with typhus and destroyed women's fallopian tubes with acid....Although his deeds are well documented, assumptions that he was one of a few who pushed back the boundaries of science for his own pleasure have been shattered. Six years of research led by a political scientist, Dr Susanne Heim, has revealed that the Angel of Death was not alone. Archives have previously revealed that Mengele had assistants such as the Hungarian pathologist and prisoner of war Miklos Nyiszli, who said: "I would bathe the corpses of cripples and dwarves in calcium chloride and cook them in large pots so that their skeletons could be preserved in the Museum of the Third Reich." But records have been unearthed that Mengele's work was supported by elite researchers attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute, whose scientists have been awarded more than 20 Nobel prizes. Although their personal goal was not essentially to create a super-race for Adolf Hitler, they did not object to the scientific freedom that the dictator bestowed on them. Indeed, Mengele's supervisor for his PhD was the internationally acclaimed scientist Otmar von Verschuer, who was renowned for his research into twins. The Max-Planck Institute - formerly the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute - decided in 1997 to fund research into its murky past. A spokesman for the institute said:... "We wanted to discover how and why the limits of science were crossed and why there was such a blur between animal and human trials. We appointed a group of independent historians to get to the bottom of a mystery that has lain dormant for a long time." "The distinction between politics and science was hazy and doctors had the freedom to do as they liked, so long as they could prove that their goal was to breed a super-race of strong soldiers for the advancement of warfare." She added: "We cannot deny that the work carried out at that time has helped the advancement of medicine. "Until recently, the brains of people killed by euthanasia during the war were used for scientific research." Dr Heim's research also revealed a possible connection between the Nazis and the deceased Adolf Butenandt, whose work on sexual hormones and protein belonged to the greatest scientific breakthroughs in the 20th century.

Response: i) Israeli doctors experimented on children  Chris McGreal, May 11, 2005 The Guardian A leading Israeli doctor and medical ethicist has called for the prosecution of doctors responsible for thousands of unauthorised and often illegal experiments on small children and geriatric and psychiatric patients in Israeli hospitals. An investigation by the government watchdog, the state comptroller, has revealed that researchers in 10 public hospitals administered drugs, carried out unauthorised genetic testing or undertook painful surgery on patients unable to give informed consent or without obtaining health ministry approval.At one hospital, staff pierced children's eardrums to apply an experimental medication yet to be approved in any country. At another, patients with senile dementia had their thumbprints applied to consent forms for experimental drugs...They should be stripped of their licences to practise and they should be prosecuted. If you don't show by example that the medical profession does not accept this kind of conduct the phenomenon will go on and on."It's not an isolated phenomenon. It spread through different institutions."The state comptroller, Eliezer Goldberg, found that patients were often not properly informed about the experiments they were agreeing to and, in some cases, not told at all....The comptroller said that in some cases the deaths of patients who were part of clinical trials were not immediately reported, which undermined attempts to establish whether the experiments were to blame. Dr Michel believes some doctors bowed to incentives from pharmaceutical firms to test experimental drugs.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1481159,00.html

Response j) African Americans  used in medical experiments.  The Washington Post on Jan. 7, 2007 by Alondra Nelson.

"J. Marion Sims, a leading 19th- century physician and former president of the American Medical Association, developed many of his gynecological treatments through experiments on slave women who were not granted the comfort of anesthesia. Sims's legacy is Janus-faced; he was pitiless with non- consenting research subjects, yet he was among the first doctors of the modern era to emphasize women's health. Other researchers were guiltier of blind ambition than racist intent. Several African Americans, including such as Eunice Rivers, the nurse-steward of the Tuskegee study, served as liaisons between scientists and research subjects.

"The infringement of black Americans' rights to their own bodies in the name of medical science continued throughout the 20th century. In 1945, Ebb Cade, an African American trucker being treated for injuries received in an accident in Tennessee, was surreptitiously placed without his consent into a radiation experiment sponsored by the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission. Black Floridians were deliberately exposed to swarms of mosquitoes carrying yellow fever and other diseases in experiments conducted by the Army and the CIA in the early 1950s. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, black inmates at Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison were used as research subjects by a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist testing pharmaceuticals and personal hygiene products; some of these subjects report pain and disfiguration even now. During the 1960s and '70s, black boys were subjected to sometimes paralyzing neurosurgery by a University of Mississippi researcher who believed brain pathology to be the root of the children's supposed hyperactive behavior. In the 1990s, African American youths in New York were injected with Fenfluramine -- half of the deadly, discontinued weight loss drug Fen-Phen -- by Columbia researchers investigating a hypothesis about the genetic origins of violence." From Counterpunch, There They Go Again, The Crazy Rev. Wright By ISHMAEL REED March 25, 2008.

6)Question/attack: "Animal research is justified because of the benefits (to human health, happiness, knowledge, progress, science, companion animals, wildlife, etc)."

Response: a) Its basic problem is that it is stating the INTENT of the Animal research, not a moral /ethical DEFENSE of it. “Why are you torturing animals to death?” Answer: “Because we hope to benefit from it.”   A casual observer would hope that they benefit from it, or why else would they be doing it? This argument is nothing more than an appeal to Selfishness.

Response: b) A thief steals because of the benefits to him or others. A rapist rapes because of the benefits. If the rapist defended his act by pointing out that others could benefit by taking items from the unconscious victim's house, would that justify the rape? If one accepts "benefits" as a justification for animal research, and applies it fairly and equally to human relationships, then it allows anyone to commit an act on the basis of the perceived benefits to the perpetrator or others--whether the victim is human or not. 

7)Question/attack: "vivisection is justified because humans can subdue and control other creatures for whatever purpose we wish."

Response: a) This argument would attempt to suggest that humans are following the "law of Nature." The act of vivisection is seen as being no different than a lion chasing down a gazelle. The question poser may even concede that if an alien race were to do the same thing to humans it would be justifiable. The first problem with this approach is that it suggests vivisection serves a natural purpose, similar to the act of killing for food. Yet the act of killing for food is a primordial instinctive need shared by all life, while only a small number of modern humans engage in the practice of vivisection. It also conveniently ignores the harsh reality of life and death. One could counter-argue that disease exists to control population—a thoroughly natural process--and that the vivisectionist is deliberately obstructing that process by attempting to prolong human life-spans. What about the impact on food and natural resources? A vivisector would probably answer that the solution lies in more research, colonizing space, etc. ad infinitum. Nevertheless, the claim that vivisection is a natural process in harmony with the realities of life can be strongly protested.

Response: b) Even if a concession is made for extraterrestrial exploitation, one does not need to go so far out to discover the unwelcome consequences of such a philosophical position. By "might means right" or "survival of the fittest," one could then justify killing or enslaving his/her next door neighbor for the benefits.. This philosophy ordains that if one can do it, then one is justified. A thief, murderer, rapist, --practitioners of any of these "professions" would find the vivisector's reasoning to be very useful. 

Response c) There is nothing in that defense that would keep one from applying "might makes right" to a situation where a stronger human preys on a weaker one. You would have to prove human supremacy to justify a distinction or exemption for humans. Since no supremacy exists, you cannot defend this argument. It would lead to social chaos if applied fairly.

8)Question/attack:  "Bioengineering may seem like mad scientist work, but its just another form of evolution."

Response: a) Bioengineering IS mad scientist work, or as I prefer to say "moron scientist" work, because they claim to be improving things, yet they always create new problems (Thalidomide, DDTs, Industrial pollution etc). There is a fundamental logic flaw in this sort of thinking. Humans cannot even create a society free from war—and yet they think they can improve Nature. An imperfect creature creating perfection? That's a pipe dream.

9)Question/Attack: "Mice, birds and rats get eaten by pythons--certainly that is just as bad as what goes on in a laboratory--or even worse."

Response: a) Pythons need to eat birds, mice and rats to survive. It an instinctual drive. For humans, experimenting on non human animals is certainly not an instinctual need.

Response: b) Humans do not need to torture rats, mice and birds in the vain hope of curing human diseases--they need to experiment on humans if they are SERIOUS about seeking cures.

Response: c) This argument tries to defend one form of cruelty by pointing to another unrelated one. Since humans get killed and mangled by cars, a mugger could argue, then why complain about a thief beating someone in the street? Not a logical argument. All Pythons need to eat, humans do not need to torture rats, mice and birds in laboratories.

10)Question/attack: "If you could save countless human lives by xenotransplantation (genetically engineering non-human animals to harvest their organs for humans), isn't that for the greater good? I mean, people eat those species every day anyway."

Response: a) Since eating meat is unnecessary--exploiting them for animal research and genetic engineering is compounding one injustice with another. It is like saying "well, since we are planning to kill this guy--there is nothing wrong with us torturing and robbing him first.

11) Question/Attack: "Didnt the Nazis ban animal research?"

Response: a) from  http://www.micahbooks.com/readingroom/Nazisandanimalresearch.html  'On April 24, 1989, Drs. Daniel Johnson and Frederick Goodwin from the National Institutes of Health, argued on the McNeil-Lehrer television program that "The only people in modern society that have not used animals for research were the Nazis." They further contended that because the Nazis passed an anti-vivisection bill in 1933, they were led to experiment on human beings, and that there is therefore a relationship between animal rights and a loss of human rights. None of this is true.The "anti-vivisection law," which the Nazis purported to pass, like Hitler's vegetarianism, is filled with contradictions.  A study of the law the Nazis passed shows that this law had enough loopholes in it to assure the continuation of animal research; consequently, an enormous amount of animal experimentation continued to be carried out by Nazi doctors. The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, reviewed the Nazis law and warned anti-vivisectionists not to celebrate because the Nazis law was no different, in effect, from the British law that had been passed in 1875, which restricted some animal research, but hardly eliminated it. Furthermore, a law passed by the Weimar government in 1931 required that all experiments on human beings be first conducted on animals. Such a requirement exists in the United States as in many countries that practice animal research. In other words, animal research is often a legal justification for experimentation on humans, as it functioned in Nazi Germany. The 1931 law in Germany was never abrogated. Nazis doctors dutifully submitted written statements when they requested "human material" for experiments which carried the legal notification that such experiments had been first conducted on animals. The first request for "test persons" was made by Dr. Sigmund Rascher to Himmler on May 15, 1941, "for two or three professional criminals" for "High-Altitude Research." It states that human beings were needed "because these experiments cannot be conducted with monkeys, as has been tried...."***Robert Proctor's book, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton University Press, 1999), records Nazi animal experimentation, which should leave no one in doubt about where Nazi doctors and scientists stood on this issue. These animal experiments were often embedded in the continuum of animal research that had been ongoing for decades. By the 1920s the Germans had developed s