Ah... So I totally forgot to blog last week. This week I will do a whopping two whole entries, so here we go.
It's interesting how the topic of animal rights has been coming up in pretty much all my classes. It's making me think about how relevant it is to various things. Like, on Thursday we literally talked about hunting in THREE out of four of my classes. It was so weird! But so cool. It's alllll connected. I even found myself teaching my Honors Colloquim class about Peter Singer's views. Anyway, reflecting on what we talked about last week... Reading so many different views on eating animals and using them for testing has left me pretty confused on what I actually believe. I think this is good though, challenging my own beliefs as I learn more. Last week we read Cora Diamond's argument, which states that we should not eat animals not because they can suffer but because we are all mortal creatures and that binds us together. I like this argument because it brings in community and it's all very beautiful and warm-fuzzy, but I don't know how convincing it would be to someone who does not appeal to emotional arguments like this. Diamond simply believes we have an obligation to not eat animals because we are alive like them, but their suffering has nothing to do with anything. However, I feel like the fact that we want to respect their life means that we don't them to suffer - so it really is all connected.
Lalalalaa.... I will do another post tomorrow!
I am also super confused as to what I believe now. It is really easy from my position as a white, middle class female to say "the animals deserve to be treated better, get rid of animal testing!" but it is not easy to ignore the benefits that I have experienced from such testing. I have had so many vaccines since I was born, against polio, meningitis, etc. but I have never given a thought to the animals that these vaccines were probably tested on. I never went to the doctor, got a vaccine and then said a silent thank you to the (probably) hundreds of animals that were mal-treated in order to get that vaccine just right. That's not right. ..but what is then?
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