I was reading through the materials from a physiological
psychology textbook and came across these four bullet points about the ethical
treatment of animals by psychological researchers:
•
There is no excuse for mistreating animals in
our care.
•
In fact, the vast majority of laboratory animals
are treated humanely.
•
Pet ownership causes much more suffering among
animals than scientific research does.
•
Fifty times more dogs and cats are killed by
humane societies each year because they have been abandoned by former pet
owners than are used in scientific research.
Point one: The use of
the word “care” is over-the-top euphemism for “hold captive, starve, torture, drown,
maim, drug, poison, and/or slice into histological sections for analysis,” which
makes the “mistreating animals in our care” part pure tautology. So the
sentence means something like “there is no excuse for what we do.”
And I agree.
Point two: “Treated humanely” can be translated as “the
animals haven’t been held captive, starved, tortured, drowned, maimed, drugged,
poisoned, and/or sliced into histological sections for analysis unless we
thought it necessary to do so.” Or that’s
true for more than 51% of laboratory animals.
Point three: More newborn infants test positive for mercury
than test positive for cadmium. So we really
don’t need to worry about a pregnant woman’s exposure to cadmium.
Point four: Almost ten times as many infants test positive
for mercury (83.9%) than test positive for cadmium (8.5%).
Also note in point four that humane societies “kill” and pet
owners “abandon” but that scientists (neutrally) “use”.
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