Cucumber Dildo

[Skeptic]

What about the rights of bacteria? This is something that actually interests me somewhat; at what point do animal rights activists draw the line? For instance, are insects considered "animals", and why don't plants (who are also living creatures) command the same kind of respect? After all, we are all related via DNA, and further than that, we are all made up of the same stuff (atoms).

What exactly gives animals rights but not plants, or bacteria, or rocks for that matter. Is it because most animals can feel pain? If so, what about those that suffer from forms of congenital analgesia? So please explain (using logic preferably) why some types of life have "rights" and why others do not.

Sentience. You can't be sure that anything other than yourself has it but you can give the benefit of the doubt.

Plants and bacteria don't have central nervous systems so it's reasonable to assume that they aren't sentient. They could be I suppose but then I have to eat something if I want to stay alive and eating plants would still be the most harm reducing way to eat, since animals are an inefficient converter of plant calories to meat calories.

Insects are animals (they are of the kingdom of Animalia), I don't go out of my way to kill them like some people do but I understand that purely through the act of being alive I'm liable to be the cause of some insect deaths. It's all about harm reduction rather than some in-achievable purity.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sentience becomes a murkier area every time we look more deeply into it..lol. But generally speaking I understand. The more a creature is "like us" the more empathy we are capable of feeling for it.

[Kayenneh]

I think you'll find animals do have rights, at least here in England if you mistreat certain animals you go to jail. As for living in the city my whole life, not that it should make any difference but I have only lived in a city for about a year, before that my whole life was spent living in the countryside.

I totally agree with you that it's our responsibility to treat animals with care and without suffering though, that's all I'm trying to do.

It would seem that you took my rantings rather personal, even though they weren't directed at you.

Animals have exactly one right, they have the right to live, because they have the obligation to die. I'm not against punishing people who can't take care of their livestock, but for me it's a matter of compassion and high work morale and ethics, not about animals actually deserving anything. As for people of the city who speaks out about farm animals etc., I can't take them seriously when they barely can tell a pig from a cow and know nothing about the psychology of such a beast. Too many times the animal rights people project their feelings onto the animals, without realizing that the animals' minds just don't work the same way and that their desires might differ a lot.

My take on this is that we don't release all the domesticated animals in to the wild but that a gradual shift in society towards eating less animal products would result in the slow decline of the mass breeding of these animals until there's no longer a need to breed them on mass.

Well this just shows that you've thought it through better than most people who are for animal rights. I like to eat meat, but for the sake of sustainable development I could shift my eating habits. Actually, when alone I usually eat veggies, but when I cook for my boyfriend there's usually meat involved. The process of liquidating the meat industry would be slow though, and the economical impact could be quite severe.

[Skeptic]

It would seem that you took my rantings rather personal, even though they weren't directed at you.

My mistake, I got quite a barrage of posts seemingly directed at me so tricky to tell what was and wasn't.

[Autumnlicious]

No, there aren't. And speaking out of you ass isn't going to make them anymore more viable.

Yes there are and being obnoxious doesn't make you any more right.

No, but the number of arguments made as well as the content do lend more credence to me being "right". Not to mention that I pointed out the fields of study, research done that would allow for your fanciful modeling scenario to ever come about.

I see a lot of "you think" and not a shred of evidence. No stats about waste, consumption. No well reasoned arguments as to why animals merit equal consideration from organisms like us. Nothing.

There is work being done to understand further and allow for potential models to be constructed, but to think at this time it is viable to completely ignore an entire branch of testing is plain and utter madness, the type of madness expected from an ideologue.

You do realise that the whole world isn't going to stop animal testing instantly don't you? I do nothing to hinder animal testing but I choose to financially support alternatives to it so that in future there will be more alternatives. If you want to support animal testing charities then go right ahead, I never suggested that anyone should do otherwise, I merely voiced my own opinion.

No, you just bleat mindlessly about computer simulations. Something that entire areas of research are devoted to, something that is incredibly complex to even scratch the surface (with regards to protein folding and interactions). A very, very difficult something, that becomes quite complex and requires even massive computing arrays (like Folding@Home) to make possible.

I see this huge, incredibly complex genre of work, and then I see your statements pertaining to replacing animal tests with computer simulations.

Now tell me, who is the crazy one here? What I have noted is a very complex and emergent area of research, while you are already planning on tossing out the bathwater, baby or not, metaphorically speaking. You're suggesting an application of a rather vast and recently established field of research (biophysics, bioinformatics et al). That's pretty visionary, some might even call it a pipe dream.

I call it insane.

There are alternatives to animal testing BTW, perhaps if you read the Dr. Hadwen Trust website you could learn about some of them. Here, I'll make it easy for you.

What are the alternatives to animal experiments?

There is a range of different methods that can be used to replace animal experiments. These include cell and tissue cultures, analytical technology, molecular research, post mortem studies, computer modelling, epidemiology (population studies), ethical clinical research with volunteer patients and healthy subjects, and the use of microbes such as bacteria.

Ok, so fucking what? I still see little argument as to why replace and merely note that the above advocates swapping out what some people consider one tool for a collection of tools. I ask, why not use animal testing and the above mentioned techniques in tandem?

Make a good argument against that.

Can alternatives actually replace animal experiments or are they used alongside?

Alternative methods are regularly replacing animal experiments and have already saved the lives of millions of animals worldwide. For example, cell cultures have replaced the use of monkeys in polio vaccine production; pregnancy tests are now conducted in test-tubes instead of in rabbits; batches of insulin are analysed chemically and not by tests in mice; and cell culture methods have replaced the use of thousands of live mice, sheep, rabbits, goats and pigs in the production of monoclonal antibodies. Alternative techniques have the potential to replace more animal experiments and offer more humane and better quality research.

Ok, once again, so fucking what? I see examples where established procedures were improved. Good. When you think about it, maintaining a cell culture and a vat of chemicals is easier than maintaining an entire critter, especially if you're doing tests that are not dependent on certain factors. That is excellent work.

However, I still don't see a rationale as to explain abandoning animal testing.

In medical research and testing the ‘whole organism’ of interest is the human body. Increasingly, safe and ethical studies of healthy and patient volunteers can be conducted using techniques such as neuroimaging, iontophoresis, ultrasound, stable isotope methods, microdosing, microdialysis, and genetic and other analyses of tissue samples.

Um, so? All that means is that for certain drugs and certain scenarios, using humans incurs minimal risk and also completes the human test component for certification for release to the public. Talk about two birds with one stone.

The system (as the body is referred to) may be ‘de-constructed’ into its component parts, studied at the molecular, cellular or tissue levels, and then ‘re-constructed’.

Only to a degree can the body be deconstructed, and that is dependent on how much we know of existing systems to deconstruct. Lacking knowledge of how certain systems interact, one can deconstruct out entire interactions without even knowing it. As always in modeling, there are limits and approximations that are made.

So we have something bragging about computer modeling. Big whoop.

Try make an objective case for animal freedom and I might pay you some attention, but otherwise you'll get no such response.

I'm a vegan and I've not commanded you to do anything, nor have I tried to persuade you to do anything. If anything it's the other way around, I've merely responded to questions regarding my view points whereas others have tried to convince me that I'm somehow wrong to want to reduce suffering.

Nice phrasing yourself as the victim. All we've done is call you out on unsupported claims, been unconvinced by your reasoning and been, frankly, surprised by the double-think that is going on.

But nah, we're really trying to convince you that minimizing suffering is wrong, despite asking for arguments as to how and why your efforts are devoted where they are.

Yep, that sure is it.

[Kayenneh]

My mistake, I got quite a barrage of posts seemingly directed at me so tricky to tell what was and wasn't.

No problem and no harm done

[Tiberius]

Sentience. You can't be sure that anything other than yourself has it but you can give the benefit of the doubt.

Ok, but why is sentience so special? Can you formulate a proper logical argument to back up your belief that certain types of animals should have rights?

[Skeptic]

Sentience. You can't be sure that anything other than yourself has it but you can give the benefit of the doubt.

Ok, but why is sentience so special? Can you formulate a proper logical argument to back up your belief that certain types of animals should have rights?

I'm not an animal rights activist, I just choose not to harm creatures that I think may be capable of suffering. I don't think evidence is needed for that, just empathy.

[Tiberius]

I'm not an animal rights activist, I just choose not to harm creatures that I think may be capable of suffering. I don't think evidence is needed for that, just empathy.

So if we can kill animals without making them suffer, are you ok with that?

[Skeptic]

I'm not an animal rights activist, I just choose not to harm creatures that I think may be capable of suffering. I don't think evidence is needed for that, just empathy.

So if we can kill animals without making them suffer, are you ok with that?

I wouldn't eat it, I don't agree with treating animals as commodities. The method of slaughter is only one part of their lives.

If you're okay with it then that's up to you.