• Question: Do you believe in animal experimentation, and why?

    Asked by anon-179010 to Amy, Claire, Daniel, John, Maria, Stephen on 14 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Stephen Baillargeon

      Stephen Baillargeon answered on 14 Jun 2018:

      One theory I want to test is the Afordability Model of Morality. AMOM basically implies that we have a moral responsibility to extend our compassion and care as far as we feel we can afford to. When humans existed only in tribes, we could extend compassion to our tribe, but cooperation with other tribes could be dangerous. As our species has grown more civilized, we’ve gained resources and slowly extended compassion across communities, race, and now species. Little to no third world countries have a prominent vegetarian community, but vegetarians are becoming increasingly common in the developed world. I think eating meat and testing things on animals has saved human lives in a time where that’s what we’ve needed to do, but I think we’re just about ready to move on and start treating animals with the same care we treat humans. I’m not 100% sure we’re there yet, but I think and hope that we’ll be there soon.

    • Photo: Amy Pearson

      Amy Pearson answered on 14 Jun 2018:

      Oooh thats an interesting question! This is something I struggle with myself- I eat meat (for now anyway) but have tried to cut down because I think its hypocritical of me to say I love animals and eat them. I do think animal research has provided SO much information that has allowed us to save countless human (and animal) lives, but I hope that one day we can move towards not needing to experiment on animals. Machine intelligence is developing at an amazing rate, and I hope that one day we will be able to use computers to model the effects of drugs to such a degree that human testing will be much more safe, and we wont need to pre-test on animals at all.

    • Photo: Claire Melia

      Claire Melia answered on 14 Jun 2018:

      I do think there is a space for animal experimentation in research, but I think (thankfully) the need for this is really decreasing. With the technology we have now we can do a lot more without needing to experiment with animals which is great, but there’s still some work to do though!

      Luckily, I don’t need to experiment on animals in my particular area, as I don’t know if I would be able to do it or not!

    • Photo: Maria Montefinese

      Maria Montefinese answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      Hi! 🙂 I think that animal experimentation is still necessary now if it helps to save human life. But I think that it should be avoided if it is not for greater causes and I really hope that in the future we wouldn’t need to perform animal experimentation, thanks to new technologies.
      All the best,
      Maria

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