A Response to David Morton

David Morton's article, Some Ethical Issues in Biotechnology Involving Animals, he brings up some interesting, and some fallacious points. His last statment in his article was this, "The question is, should we do it, Or even start to research it? And what does it say about humans if we do?"

What does it say about humans if we do? That's pretty deep. What does it say? Human's love to learn and make technological advancements. We question everything, it is what makes us human. Why? How? Those three -letter words drive us to do many things. Oh, curiosity. We want to find a cure for cancer and researchers use many animals to figure this out. But, what about changing the genes of a sheep so that their lungs will be human lungs, so that when an emphysemic patient needs a transplant their is one available? The life of that sheep was created solely for the purpose of developing those lungs. No offesense, but why should a sheep donate their human lungs just so that someone can smoke cigarettes all their life? What does that say about humans? Surely, I do not think that is what God intended, if someone is using that argument.
Perhaps transgensis shows how much humans put other human's well-being over anything else.
But in certain situations you have to think about the well-being of the animal over humans, like with the emphysema example. When we were on the topic of animal experimentation the comment that a lot of the experiments with animals do not translate to humans was made. I think that transgensis should only be used for experiments where the results from an experiment will not translate to humans unless the organs or tissues are human organs and tissues, and the results have a greaqter purpose than color of fish scales. Of course not many people can disagree with the utilitarian point of veiw. Experiments should not be for human aethetics.
Question: What do you think the use of biotechnology and transgensis says about humans?

Response to Max 12/10/10

Are there apparent limitations with this? I've done the quantifying (but there may be more human measures to ascertain), but what about the installation of these procedures?

Grades are a measure of how smart one is. Income is a measure of success. Statistics, numbers, symbols, lines on a graph, and labels are used to measure all types of things. Smart people do not necessarily always get good grades. The fact that someone is labeled as lower class does not mean that they are unsuccessful. If we had someway of measuring the ethicacy of the use of biotechnology on animals, what would it matter? In Max's senerio, the fact that a researcher is purposely inflicting pain on an animal in order to get this data in the first place is completely against research ethics. No EEG, z-score, t-test, quasi-experimental design, or hedonistic calculus is a sufficient way to measure suffering units. What would the numbers really tell us? Numbers do not change anything. When a biotechnologist thinks that changing the organs and tissues of livestock will greatly benefit humans, they will find a way to justify it no matter what the majority of people think is right or what the level of suffering units will be. So thinking of a way to measure the ethicacy of biotechnology seems useless to me.

Questions: Who decides if an experiment should or should not be carried out? (playing devil's advocate) On what grounds do philosopher's have a right to prevent future advancements in medicine?

Re: Bryan 12/4/10

In Bryan's latest post he asked, "What do you think about the role religion should play in the treatment of animals?"

It seems like most people in class feel as though religion should not play a role in the treatment of animals. Yet, I disagree. Religion is what people who are religious look to when determining what is ethically wrong or right. The constitution and the beginning laws of our country were based off of religion. This is true with many other cultures. Where do our morals come from, that is, what external sources? Laws, religion and culture. If we look to the bible for how to live our lives and how to treat others, then why is it so obscure to look to the same source for how to treat animals?

I think religion should play a role in the treatment of animals if you are a religious person. My family justifies their meat-eating alone on, "that's why God made them, for us to eat." Besides this reason there is no other justification for meat eating. "it tastes good" is simply not sufficient enough for me. Yet, if your religion justifies it, then it is okay.

The reason why no one brought up religion in reference to the treatment of animals in zoos or as pets is because it is not relevant. The bible says nothing about zoos, yet one could argue that when there is an endangered species that a Noah's Arc situation (one male, one female) is pronounced okay. Yet, that is not really saying much about the ethicacy of zoos. I really do not think that the bible says anything about pet keep either.

The bible does state to treat every creature kindly, whether that is explicit or not. If we were to use the bible as a reference for animal treatment law, I do not see the animals being treated worse than they are currently being treated.

Question: If the bible was used to create new animals treatment laws, would the treatment of animals become better or worse?