Animal 'rights' versus human rights

...Ok fine. I'll do it...

Edwin A. Locke: Animal 'rights' versus human rights HUMAN LIFE versus animal life.
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HUMAN LIFE versus animal life. This fundamental conflict of values, which was dramatized a few years ago when AIDS victims marched in support of research on animals, is still raging. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has just launched a campaign against Covance Inc., a biomedical research lab in Vienna, Va., that uses animals for drug testing.
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It is an indisputable fact that many thousands of lives are saved by medical research on animals. But animal rightists don't care. PETA makes this frighteningly clear: "Even if animal tests produced a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it." Such is the "humanitarianism" of animal-rights activists.
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How do these advocates try to justify their position? As someone who has debated them for years on college campuses and in the media, I know firsthand that the whole movement is based on a single invalid syllogism, namely: men feel pain and have rights; animals feel pain; therefore, animals have rights. This argument is entirely specious, because man's rights do not depend on his ability to feel pain; they depend on his ability to think.
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Rights are ethical principles applicable only to beings capable of reason and choice. There is only one fundamental right: a man's right to his own life. To live successfully, man must use his rational faculty, which is exercised by choice. The choice to think can be negated only by the use of physical force. To survive and prosper, men must be free from the initiation of force by other men -- free to use their own minds to guide their choices and actions. Rights protect men against the use of force by other men.
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None of this is relevant to animals. Animals do not survive by rational thought (nor by sign languages allegedly taught to them by psychologists). They survive through sensory-perceptual association and the pleasure-pain mechanism. They cannot reason. They cannot learn a code of ethics. A lion is not immoral for eating a zebra (or even for attacking a man).
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Predation is their natural and only means of survival; they do not have the capacity to learn any other. Only man has the power, guided by a code of morality, to deal with other members of his own species by voluntary means: rational persuasion.
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To assert that man's use of animals is immoral is to claim that we have no right to our own lives and that we must sacrifice our welfare for the sake of creatures who cannot think or grasp the concept of morality. It is to elevate amoral animals to a moral level higher than ourselves -- a flagrant contradiction.
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Of course, it is proper not to cause animals gratuitous suffering. But this is not the same as inventing a bill of rights for them -- at our expense. The granting of fictional rights to animals is not an innocent error. We do not have to speculate about the motive, because the animal "rights" advocates have revealed it quite openly. Again from PETA: "Mankind is the biggest blight on the face of the earth"; "I do not believe that a human being has a right to life"; "I would rather have medical experiments done on our children than on animals."
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These self-styled lovers of life do not love animals; rather, they hate men. The animal "rights" terrorists are like the Unabomber and Oklahoma City bombers. They are not idealists seeking justice, but nihilists seeking destruction for the sake of destruction. They do not want to uplift mankind, to help him progress from the swamp to the stars. They want mankind's destruction; they want him not just to stay in the swamp but to disappear into its muck.
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There is only one proper answer to such people: to declare proudly and defiantly, in the name of morality, a man's right to his life, his liberty, and the pursuit of his own happiness.
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Edwin A. Locke is Dean's Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Motivation at the University of Maryland at College Park and is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, in Irvine, Calif.
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I agree for the most part.
PETA is way out there and as far as anything I have seen out of line.

I feel we have an obligation as humans to treat our fellow residents of the planet..animals ..with kindness and compassion becasue they cannot speak and advocate for themselves.
If we grow them for food...they should be cared for properly and their lives ended humanely. If we use them for experimentation, likewise.
I love my dogs very much. Would I put their lives before those of my children. No. Not without much heartache, but no.

I have mixed feelings about animals and rational thought. I really feel I see it in my dogs at times. You can see them plotting certain things, and thinking of doing something and not doing it because they know mom will yell at them. On the other hands there are things they will do like bark at the neighbors...no matter how much you try to teach them not to.
 
Probably writing too much but...:)

Personally, I agree with the notion that mankind is the most destructive creature that walks the earth, and that one day we may be the end of ourselves. I don't agree with PETA on much. I'd rather us use prisoners(child molesters, rapists and murderers) as test subjects than an animal that has done nothing wrong. I honestly wouldn't have a second thought about that, because they'll end up having to spend years designing for that genome anyway. It makes me sick that these people have rights, if I didn't know any better, I'd say we should build an arena and have pitbulls set loose on them. I know alot of people who regret having to do testing this way. I do appreciate these animals though, even though they may not understand their situation they're giving many people hope that they will recover from a disease. Animals,insects, even plants have a type of intelligence, because even with instinct there has to be some kind of initiative behind their actions and behaviors. A group of plants in my yard, just before it rains will droop so that the rain will slid down instead of ripping through the leaves. It's a reaction to atmospheric changes. But how does it know to do that? Animals have senses that at some point we may have lost. I don't ever kids want in my lifetime, but I wouldn't sacrifice them for testing either, I think people who are really guilty of horrible things should be. I'd die before I ever gave up my pets to something like that too, they've been there for me in hard times. In this world those things are hard to come by sometimes. One thing I do have to say is, this world would be very boring if there were no other creatures to share this earth with.
 
This is a very slippery topic to try and grasp. I think most people will give widely varying answers depending from one day to the next, or after seeing certain films or experience certain events.

Animal testing is a very useful tool to humans. This, I believe, most people will agree with. Otherwise, why is so much effort, time, and money spent on it? Despite all the protests? It does yield benefits. Not only directly to Humans.

How many of our pets are saved due to medicines and vaccines developed by animal testing?

On the aspect of saving humans from fatal diseases like AIDs? Many trains of thought...

A LARGE percentage of humans, facing their demise from a fatal disease, will very willingly become tests of possibly helpful treatments, no matter how small a chance they stand, to cure that disease. So why subject animals to that treatment to try and cure it?

Well, it seems that it has to pass some margin of safety before scientists are allowed to test on humans based on many countries laws. So there go the animals.

That's the legal aspect...is it ethical? Moral?

The problem with morals, ethics, what is right and wrong, is that it differs to every human.

No one is the bad guy themselves.

It's always the other person who is wrong, evil, messed up, stupid, etc.

Not me. Oh no. I might make mistakes...but the other person is the real reason why there is a problem.

So there will never be a right answer or opinion to this debate. It is only what you personally think is the right answer for you. If you are in the majority, then cool.

If you aren't...join PETA. :devil:

(Sorry. Couldn't resist. :p: )
 
Riso-chan...there has been history of prisoners being used as test subjects. Not sure what the current status of that is tho.
Even if someone has commited a heinous crime it is still our obligation to treat them humanely. (I don't intend to have the death penalty debate again...it can be done humanely if it's done and lets leave it at that)
How criminals treat themselves and each other in prison is another matter.
 
Thanks for quoting it, Watcher74.
 
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