Talk about noble causes gone awry. I agree with the premise that no creature should be made to suffer needlessly. That's fine and groovy and all. I am firmly opposed to, for instance, using specially bred rabbits for the screening of cosmetics for their potential to irritate human skin. I believe that we all deserve the same thing in the end, humane treatment during life, and a quick, hopefully painless, death. However, I cannot forget some simple facts of life.
FACT 1: No matter what you're eating you are ending life, unless you are a photosynthesizing plankton.
Celery is alive, until one cuts it, and puts it as a rather comical stirrer in one's bloody mary. It is just as alive as a cow, or you, or me. The fact that it is not sensate, in the ordinary understanding of the word, does not make it any less alive. As soon as you cut the celery, you have ended that life. For that matter, every time you breathe, millions of tiny lives are extinguished. I'll only consider the bacterial lives here, because no one is quite sure what to make of viruses yet. Just by being alive, you are a mass murderer.
Don't feel too bad about it. This is the condition of life. When you die, assuming you are not planning to carbonize yourself, the gastric bacteria that you have been slaying by the billions per day will have their collective revenge upon you by consuming your innards and flesh as it decays. Human beings are apex predators.
Does that mean we should gorge ourselves on the flesh of animals 24/7? Hell no. Atkins aside, you're not built for that sort of craziness. If you want to be a vegan, go ahead and be a vegan, what do I care? I know that the human body isn't built for that lifestyle either, but vegans, keep in mind that you're killers too. In the process of eating and surviving, there is no moral high ground.
FACT 2: You can now protest the use of animals in medical research for 50 years longer than you could have in the middle ages.
In a medicine-free society, I would be dead. I have had at least two violent episodes of "strep throat". This disorder is caused by a tiny little bacterium that can and does kill thousands of people every year, even in the presence of antibiotics. Modern antibiotics, even penicillin, have been thoroughly tested on animals before they were put to human use. Very few people over the age of 30 can say that modern medicine has never (at least potentially) saved their life.
There is an unfounded opinion out there that we can now use computer simulations, cell cultures, and other surrogates in place of animal testing. In fact, the medical community uses these all the time. The problem is that we don't know enough to make them particularly applicable, and an animal model is necessary at some point. Animal models do not match 1:1 with human testing, but they are a hell of a lot closer than a few cells in culture, or a heuristic algorithm.
The alternative is clear; going directly to human testing. I'm a biologist, and that idea makes me profoundly nervous, because I know exactly who would be lined up as test subjects. You do too, though you don't want to think about it; the poor, the indigent, the masses of the third world. These would be Merck's new mice. Can you say Tuskeegee? I prefer mice, thanks.
FACT 3: Most human beings in this world do not enjoy basic human rights.
Frankly, I think the animal rights movement is a cop-out on the infinitely more pressing question of human rights. It is simply easier for a pampered people who have never known real hunger and real oppression to get worked up about the state euthanizing a stray puppy than it is for those same people to care about the third-world wage-slaves upon whom they depend for their clothing and their lifestyle.
Trying to change the former is an easy thing. Go down to your local animal shelter, wave signs and chant slogans. To fix the latter, you have to stop wearing Nike shoes, driving Ford cars, and give up a whole range of products that we greedy, self-centered Americans love. Fighting a serious crusade against animal use only demands that you force your particular definitions of morality on your fellow human beings (a favorite Western European pastime anyhow). Doing away with, say, human trafficking and peonage, means ACTUAL PERSONAL SACRIFICE.
Last words
I could go on, but there seems little point. You can't convince the faithful. I used to think of PETA as a sort of odd collection of overly kindhearted but muddle-headed people, until someone brought to my attention that PETA considers chicken farms the moral equivalents of the Nazi concentration camps. That comparison isn't just insulting to the Jews and the Roma, or to the others who bore the brunt of Nazi hatred. It is insulting to all of us.
Oh and by the way PETA people, I don't own my cats. They agree to live with me so long as I feed them, brush them, clean their boxes, and generally do what they tell me to do. Just who is subservient to whom?
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