Animal Research

Why is it that we consider it our “God”-given right to incarcerate, enslave, isolate, torture and kill members of other species simply because we are human and they are not, and we can benefit from these practices? (“Man vs. Dog: a Bioethical Trade-Off,” by Sherwin B. Nuland, Op-Ed Page, Sept. 5).

A “bioethical trade-off”? In whose opinion? What are the lab animals being “traded”? There is now ample evidence of animals’ sentience, intelligence, social skills, power of communication, thinking abilities and emotional life, all of which differ from our own only in degree, and in many cases not at all.

Only language separates us, and the ability to create civilizations (which, by the way, are responsible for the deterioration of all life on our planet). Is that enough to validate our treatment of animals as resources, objects whose sole purpose is to further our needs and welfare? Others will no doubt write about the vivisecting community’s greed and dubious science.

But I, in this letter, wish to raise the fundamental ethical issue: We dominate animals and others weaker than ourselves because might makes right, and then justify it through religious tenets, anthropocentric philosophy, biased morality, and just plain hubris.

Of course it’s easier to use live higher organisms than computers in research. The Nazis realized that too. They used humans. We condemn that. We can talk. Animals can’t. I can. I condemn the use of animals.

RACHEL ROSENTHAL

Los Angeles