Animals have a right to live just as human beings have a right to live on this earth. They must not be used as experimental subjects or be killed for sport. It is false of us to think that animals are created by nature just for the use of man. The traditional thinking that makes us think this way is not right and is wrong from the very basis. To give pain to a living being for sport or experiment is something inhuman.
The healing art depends for its advancement on all the sciences, but especially on biology. The laws of biology can only be discovered by observation and experiment, just as the laws of other sciences have to be discovered. Observation may suggest a law, but only experiment can substantiate the theory. As men can only be observed comparatively casually and can only be subject of experiments in exceptional circumstances, animals that are closely similar in physiological processes have to be used. The assertion that these laws might have been elucidated without experiment on animals is beside the point. Most of them certainly would not.
On the other hand it is believe that medicine and surgery are arts as well as sciences, and the animal economy is much more than a piece of machinery which can be taken to pieces and investigated in a vivisectior’s laboratory. Experiment s done on sub-human creatures when, applied to men, are apt to be misleading and therefore dangerous. The lat sir Fredrick Treves, himself a vivisector admitted this as regards certain of his own experiments. The artificial diseases of the laboratory are not the same as disease occurring naturally.
Psychopathology depends largely on animal experiments, particularly the study of instinctive behavior and reflex action. Vivisection has taught us much about the purely physiological side of sensation and thought. It has saved an enormous amount of suffering both for man and for animals. The greatly increased knowledge of foodstuffs, of the role played by vitamins, of the value of proteins, etc., is dependent on systematic experimentation with animals, mostly, of course, by giving them special diets and noting results. The value of experiment on animals is firmly justified and established in this field. To those experiments we owe the great diminution in the number of children deformed by rickets, the reduction of the death rate from puerperal sepsis by some 95 percent etc. can anyone maintain that sacrifice of a few thousand mice is too high a price to pay for the saving of so many human lives.
The people belonging to other quarters believe that the results of the biochemists’ researches into food merely confirm what medical men without faith in killing and dissecting animal, unorthodox practitioners, food reformers and others have said for many years, viz, we must not sophisticate our food stuffs more than is necessary, we must buy food of good quality, we must take exercise and get plenty of fresh air. The same is true of the present vogue of sunlight. Those who could afford it have always known it to be desirable to get sea air, avoid the chemical laden atmosphere of the industrial town.
The persons who speak against using animals for laboratory have no case on scientific grounds. Their moral principles are dubious. Most experiments are of a trifling character that involves only slight discomfort to the animals concerned, and often not even that. Serious operations are conducted under anesthetics, and, moreover, are only 5 percent of the total number of experiments. The other 95 percent are trifling experiments, such as inoculations and feeding tests.
The ‘others’ believe that not even the surest advance in knowledge justifies the infliction of incredible suffering on dumb animals. Even the serum experiments involve acute pain, while sensation experiments involve acute pain, while sensation experiments must necessarily be done without anesthetics. In tacitly inviting the public to tolerate the use of animals for laboratory, the scientists are encouraging callousness and cruelty, and deliberately stifling compassion in the human heart.
Animals have rights, though in a less degree than men. They consist in the restricted freedom to live a natural life in harmony with the perpetual requirements of the community. On the other hand it is also believed in some quarters that such rights are absurd. They said that we should be kind to animals for the sake of our self-respect, not because they have the right to exact kindness from us.
The rights of animals have long been recognized by thinkers, e.g. Bentham and emphasized by some religions, e.g. Buddhism. While it is criticized that, these theories are connected with mysticism and vegetarianism etc, which have no application to Europeans, to whom they are uncongenial.It is absurd for distinction to be drawn between ‘domestic’ and other animals, so that it is allowable to inflict pain upon the latter but not the former. We protect domestic animals because they are valuable. The only argument against hunting is that it may demoralize the hunter.
The lack of recognition of these animal rights encourages great cruelty under the excuses of scientific research, the provision of food, and so on. The cruelties of vivisection have been much exaggerated, and its benefits are incalculable. Man is entitled to ensure his own survival, at the expense of animals if necessary.
Animals (if left to themselves) live their own lives fitly, killing for food only and not for the pleasure of inflicting pain, which is more than can be said for man. Like man himself, they form part of nature’s scheme of evolution: from them we do not know what developments many yet come. Animals have no other purpose than to preserve them until they have contributed members to the next generation. Animals need man’s protection, and before pain or death is inflicted, we must be assured that it is necessary. While sometimes man has to be protected from animals that would kill him either by violence or by eating up his food supplies. Animals show small consideration for other species of animals, and are only entitled to the same treatment.
If rights must be reciprocal to be allowed to exist, what claim on our protection can a lunatic or an infant have? Solidarity between members of the same species is natural and necessary, but not between members of different species. The feeling community among all sentient creatures would increase the finer virtues and religious emotions. This feeling would be all on one side, and in practice means sacrificing one’s fellowmen.
