[botexpert]

Good thing that utilitarianism is a well known concept. If I weren't aware of that I'd be living in an absolutist nightmare of a world where everything was made necessary for use and abuse of non-human animals.

Do take in mind that animal testing is an old practice, and there's plenty of evidence that data collected on non-human animals is useless in most cases. So, modern medicine would do a lot to find new ways of testing and making in-vitro or some other models of human biological system.

Here's a nice popsci http://www.livescience.com/46147-animal-data-unreliable-for-... article of how bad of a classifier non-human animal testing really is.

I guess now you will point to my inability to use antivenom when miraculously a snake bites me under my office table.

[cmdrfred]

Animal testing is reasonable for pretty much all medical advances in use today. Simply claiming it is not does not make it so.

Remember, you can't use most vaccines or epinephrine either. Do you carry around a alert bracelet informing EMT's to not revive you should you require epinephrine?

[botexpert]

Never claimed it wasn't reasonable. It's not as efficient as one might think. Having an 8% precision is ridiculously low.

Given that all of vaccines and medical treatments are tested on animals it is quite obvious I should not want to use any of them. I thought your initial remark made that point but it seems to me you were looking at the ingredients.

The amount of animals being abused by medicine has dropped significantly, I'm not an absolutist and yes I'd definitely do my best not to require medical attention. Would I be stupid enough to endanger other animals by not vaccinating myself or my children?

Your last remark is a little bit more inventive than the "anti-venom" one but it is still coming from an absolutist framework.

[cmdrfred]

So if we agree it is acceptable to use animals sometimes in order to advance a greater good, who decides where that line is? Doesn't your belief look somewhat like a religious one in this case in that while you adhere to them you certainly cannot ask anyone else as well as they may not hold the same values as you do?

[botexpert]

There's quite a clear time when not using or not abusing non-human animals was impossible. It's quite clear from all the data that the effort should go towards better biological models and away from wasteful random variable measuring which physics does so well but medicine does it by abusing billions of animals to show a statistically significant discovery.

Are you really claiming eagles are the last line of defense against drones? That is what I get from your line of reasoning. The only reason why they decided to use eagles is because it is convenient, some idiot came up with it and given that non-human animals don't get the same moral considerations as humans (speciesism alert!) it was acceptable and ignored from the stance of non-human animal cruelty.

So, if a serial killer doesn't hold the same values as I do, I guess it's fine for him to kill? Or is it not fine just because he's killing homo sapiens? What if he was killing homo erectus?

We do share the same values. I'm just making my actions consistent with those values. I'm coming from the same sentiment OP had.

[cmdrfred]

> So, if a serial killer doesn't hold the same values as I do, I guess it's fine for him to kill?

This is why democracy was invented. The people decide what laws they wish to have. You haven't answered my question. Who decides what is right if not the people?

[botexpert]

It's a pretty simple answer.

Slavery was convenient yet it was abolished.

Democracy brought Hitler, yet what he did people did not condone.

If people decide what is right and yet due to convenience act inconsistently it is worthless.

Being born into a world where slavery is convenience didn't make one decide that slavery is right. Just like use of animals or eating their flesh, wearing their skin wasn't one's decision to do it. One was raised in the convenience framework which was some time ago "necessary" and currently isn't. One was nurtured and educated to find it fine but the current values made it inconsistent.

It is not right given our current values. It is now a question of how do people get out of their indoctrination and convenience to stand up for what they believe is right.