Discussion about mice-to-order
So I was reading Slashdot and I found a neato article about designer mice. What was even more interesting was this discussion about the designer mice.
That comment thread covers, I believe, the gamut of opinions about animal testing and the relative worth of animals to humans:
- The musopologists who believe they understand what mice are thinking and can make judgements for them (it doesn’t hurt them, they don’t have social structure, etc.)
- The skeptical thinker who stays on the fence about the whole thing
- The person who is enlightened enough to be able to weigh the lives of many mice versus the lives of many humans and come up with the right answer (humans)
- The person who thinks its horrible that we test on animals
I don’t know how I feel about animal testing. The best I can do is this: I think it’s terrible that I live in a world where we have to make decisions such as, “A mouse’s life is worth less than our own so we may torture it.” Yes, yes, I know… the natural world is built on this sort of predator/prey pyramid and little defenseless creatures get consumed all the time so that those near the pointy end (notice I didn’t say top!) can survive… but, I don’t know, I like the fact that our big ol’ honkin brains can make us struggle against what we think of as the “natural order.”
Because, truthfully… I think our genes are biasing our arguments here. In one sense we, as living beings, are incredibly sophisticated machines whose main purpose is to propogate. I would bet that at levels that exist underneath our conciousness our very biology is biasing these arguments. Our biology is saying that it’s okay for us to tear mice apart in our searches for longevity and health. We still bear the responsibility for those actions (again, those darn big brains)... but how much time are we spending figuring out how to get those poor, living creatures out of the equation?
So, back to the mice… our brains have to save us from the inexorable push of our biologies to survive. Our biology is not free of our morality. So why are we still torturing mice again? Why are we not straining with every neuron we collectively have to solve the problem of the necessity to make other creatures suffer that we might live?