Who would you rescue first from a burning building, the baby or the guinea pig?

Surely that’s obvious? I’d rescue whichever I could get to! Whichever was in more danger. Whichever I could rescue without endangering my own life. It’s not about choosing which has more ‘right’ to live than the other, it’s about saving another life! Any life.

At the weekend I read about a 16 year old school boy who has been receiving death threats due to a Pro-Test website he set up supporting the new scientific research lab in Oxford. Although I see no reason to endorse violence or even threats of violence I’ve got to ask — What did you really expect? Has he never heard of the Animal Liberation Front? Does he not know the consequences of such a radical statement? Has he not read about the workers who risk their lives every single day? or the fact that one building company pulled out of its contract due to the dangers set upon its staff? Any slight intelligence would have told him that support for such a project would not go unnoticed. I don’t even think he wanted to go unnoticed! How would that be of any benefit to his cause? By living an animal cruelty-free lifestyle I quite obviously see no reason to support animal testing but were you to ask me ‘well what if by testing on animals we managed to find a cure for cancer or aids or any other terminal disease would you support it then?’ I’d struggle to answer. In my current situation there is no way that I could lend my support to animal testing or the building of laboratories to do so. But what if my circumstances changed? What if a relative or a close friend of mine became ill and their survival depended upon scientific breakthroughs based on animal testing? Could I really so easily write science off? Having not experienced such a scenario am I really in any position to draw a bottom line?

One thing I will be quite clear on however, is how much those morons that ask ‘would you support animal testing if the outcome was intended for an animal?’ piss me off. If the said product was beneficial to its animal receiver I don’t see any reason to protest — the same as I see no reason to protest against ‘human guinea pigs,’ testing products intended for human consumption. Another note of annoyance for me are animal rights activists that eat meat. I’m guessing these are only a minority (correct me if I’m wrong) but come on — practice what you preach at least or how can anyone take you seriously? The comments section at Harrys Place covers all of the above but what I found most interesting is the measurement of ‘rights.’ One commentor suggests that while testing on chimps is the crime of the century it’s ok to test on mice. Why is that? Is it because as a less civilised species it ‘logically’ follows that mice have less ‘rights’ than chimps? hhhhmmmm. Interesting.

Bookmark It

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 2:31 pm and is filed under News and tagged as animal rights, ethics. Print this blog post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.