‘Human Souls, Animal Lives’

Glidden poses the question as a simplistic dichotomy that answers itself without addressing the issue. Most animals sacrifice other animal forms to preserve their own. Man even recognizes a right to destroy those of his own kind for personal survival.

This is a fundamental concept that clearly applies to our treatment of other species. But it is a principle not without limitations and dangers. The issue remains in what circumstances and in what manner is it right to sacrifice others (including national, racial, and species “others”) to one’s own need.

The humanitarian sentiment implied in framing the question has motivated most of what constitutes human progress including the abolition of slavery and the more recent efforts to eliminate genocide, and state torture. None of these or dozens of other humanitarian movements have proceeded on the basis that self-interest must be our sole concern.

Our goals as individuals and as a society should be to minimize the wrong we do in the name of self-preservation--whether in the areas like criminal justice, or in the treatment of animals. Killing and torture of animals for amusement or adornment may obviously be dispensed with. But this doesn’t, as Glidden suggests, have to precede efforts to alleviate suffering in other areas. Nor must you be a vegetarian to recognize the cruelty and injustice of factory farming, nor forswear the benefits of medical research to insist that those benefits not come at the expense of wanton cruelty and waste of life.

What is “necessary?” Hard choices must be made. Making them requires that we stop comforting ourselves with the idea that “animal rights” is fanaticism or sentimental drivel, and start addressing this dimension of our ethical and moral responsibilities.

RICHARD W. STEELE

San Diego