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Essay by Joshua Ritter |
The following is an open letter to Oberlin Animal Rights.
Recently I have noticed the increased efforts of Oberlin Animal Rights (OAR) to speak out against the use of animals in medical research. While I compliment them for standing up for their beliefs, I find that fundamental problems with their actions must be addressed.
OAR bases its opposition to the use of animals in research on its belief that all sentient life, from the snail to the cocker spaniel to the guinea pig, is equal to that of a human and therefore not to be manipulated for human needs. Such an odd idea prompts me to wonder how OAR members view the natural world and their place in it. I also must scratch my head in consternation over their attempts to deny humans the same right to survive that they believe every animal should have.
I recently ran across a sugar-sweet helping of nature naivete from an "animal memorial service" in New York sponsored by Trans-Species Unlimited (TSU), an organization propagating many of the same values as OAR:
"Blessed are the animals, for they shall lead us back to our lost innocence ... Blessed are all wild free things for they live in harmony with their mother."
Nature is anything but harmonious. Nature is a brutal death, as anyone who has ever seen a lion kill a gazelle will tell you. After first using its claws to drag the gazelle to the ground, the lion will suffocate the animal until it ceases to struggle. It will then tear the body apart eviscerating and consuming vital organs. Other animals, like vultures, hyenas, and maggots, will devour the blood and pick the bones clean. This is nature. While we feel sorry for the gazelle because its death was far from harmonious, we likewise uphold the lion's right to survive as a means of justifying its actions. I ask OAR, how are humans any different from the lion? If the lion has to kill in order to survive, upon what grounds must I voluntarily submit myself or my loved ones to the ravages of nature that I could otherwise prevent?
An animal rights activist will tell you that we are different from the lion because we have a choice as to whether or not we wish to cause other animals suffering in order to ensure our own survival. This fuzzy-wuzzy argument falls short in its assumption that humans are not governed by the same savage equality that governed the lion or the gazelle.
I came across this passage in Richard Preston's The Hot Zone:
"He brings up an incredible amount of blood from his stomach and spills it onto the floor...Then comes a sound like a bedsheet being torn in half, which is the sound of his bowels opening and venting blood from the anus. The blood is mixed with intestinal lining...His intestines have come off and are being expelled with huge amounts of blood."
The ebola virus is only one of millions of potential examples of nature's very real effects on humans. It kills people violently while ensuring its own survival by dissolving body organs, causing hemorrhages that lead to fatality rates as high as 95 percent.
Not wishing to overtax their flimsy belief in the sanctity of all animal life, I will not ask the members of OAR to envision themselves in the shoes of an ebola victim needing up-to-date medical research made possible by animal research that could save their life. I will not ask them whether they would sacrifice a thousand rats for the life of a mother or grandmother dying of breast cancer. I will ask them to find me a person with HIV, diabetes, or liver disease who will deny themselves or others the right to survive by working to prevent the uses of animals in medical research. I will also ask them to name one significant medical discovery in the past 50 years that has come about without the use of animal testing.
I understand that many uses of animals make no real contributions to the quality or survival of human life. I applaud the legal efforts of groups like PETA or OAR to end practices such as blinding rabbits for the sake of a lipstick that "lasts as long as his kiss." I likewise fully agree with the necessity of an administrative structure of outside evaluators whose purpose is to assess the level of need for animal use in research projects, and to set guidelines for reasonable animal care. Nevertheless, I believe that currently the use of animals in research is absolutely crucial to the survival of our species. As our species grows, we will invariably come into contact with new health problems (to be scared out of your wits, read The Coming Plague) whose solutions cannot be left to the chance discovery of a cure or the feeble substitution of a computer model as a test subject.
This viewpoint also takes into account the need for fully trained health care professionals who can implement the treatments that are needed to ensure continued human life. If I am ever diagnosed with a brain tumor, I will be damn sure that my surgeon will have been properly trained before sticking a scalpel in my gray matter. Perhaps in the future, computer programs will be available that can fully simulate a brain surgery, but I believe this to be a long ways off. Currently, expecting future doctors to learn complex techniques using frog dissection computer simulations, seems to me to be very much like strapping a child who has just learned to ride a bike into the cockpit of a jet fighter. Perhaps, if OAR members are against the training of medical professionals using nonhuman animals, they can further their cause by developing a moral argument for the use of other human beings, like themselves, as test subjects.
I ask all people who are considering joining these organizations or lending them their support to carefully consider the consequences of such an action. I likewise ask all members of OAR, or members of larger organizations like PETA, to consider the ramifications of their actions. By holding membership in these organizations, you are accepting partial responsibility for preventing research that can save the lives of those you love.
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