Animals right and the scientific inquiry

category: science, philosophy

I was sitting in a class called Information Technology & Health today, in which I could find some useful applications of machine learning [my research specialization], when I suddenly got struck by the sight of an open live monkey brain stuffed with electrodes - and I was eating lunch at the same time! Oops.

There were also some references about how we can freeze half of the brain of some creatures in order to get more information about which part does what in cognitive neuroscience, or more generally inflicting damage to the brain as a way to study it...

This reminded me that I don't like to see videos of live monkeys with metal rods in their head (rationally, I don't have any a priori problem with it; but for now, I don't like the feel). And this made me think about the animal right issues during scientific inquiry, and that I was glad that I wasn't in biology or those other fields where you sometimes have to crush mice's head for the Good of Science.

As a quick intro to my worldview, I have some kind of value hierarchy for the creatures in this world, with humans at the top, in which the amount of 'brain power' (fuzzily defined) determines the ordering (so insects are pretty low at the bottom, whereas monkeys, dolphins, dogs [my dog certainly seems to think sometimes] are close to the top - also, as a humanist, all humans are a priori equal in my value system). But even though the humans are the top, I'm quite sensitive to animal suffering. What is suffering is another thing which I'll need to define some day. But for now, all I can say is that I'm not sure how I stand on the issue of which animal suffering is justified, according to my worldview, at least. As a first gut-feeling approximation, I would like to avoid any animal suffering and so that's why I'm glad I don't need to make the direct decision of whether or not I will conduct a particular experiment on animals if I was in the field... [Eating meat is another issue which I won't get into right now.] But I guess that I'll have to take a stand on this issue one day. There are some compromises between the advancement of human knowledge, the usefulness of this human knowledge and the rights of animals (or humans).

As a side note, a very good friend of mine recently suggested that I read Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, and The Story of B. She found that those books were life changing. Without going into the details (for now at least, this entry is big enough!), and being quite reductionistic for the sake of the link, one aspect of the books is about sustainable living. And how to live with 'nature' rather than against it. I guess that would probably mean not to mess up with animals for science. I should read the books first... They are high on my 'books to read' priority list...