No kidding. If it weren't for the animals it'd be us.
It's always ironic to see animal rights advocates' responses when they are asked if they'd rather volunteer to be the research subjects instead. They are surprisingly reluctant...
This tends to make them ponder a bit more:
"If we hadn't experimented on animals, you might not even be alive today."
This is speciesism in its purest form. So if we took a Planet of the Apes style plot twist, and apes became the dominant life form on earth, I suppose you'd be OK with them strapping you in to some test where you will probably meet a horrible end, all so they can progress their technology?
Using animals as test subjects isn't really comparable in magnitude to the damage we do on a global scale to ecosystems, which is what is actually causing extinction
This reeks of naturalistic fallacy. Humans are bad because we exploit animals. Yet, humans are animals, and this is what animals do given the chance. We don't need an excuse.
Just because we can introspect and consider the ethical state of things doesn't mean we have to abandon all progress and be an agrarian society.
Can we improve? Sure. I don't like to see anything needlessly suffer, but a few bears being killed in the name of science is a drop in the bucket to other concerns.
> This reeks of naturalistic fallacy. Humans are bad because we exploit animals. Yet, humans are animals, and this is what animals do given the chance. We don't need an excuse.
> Just because we can introspect and consider the ethical state of things doesn't mean we have to abandon all progress and be an agrarian society.
It's exactly because we can introspect and consider the ethical state of things, that means that we should. The fact that you can think and reason about the fact that you're stealing from someone else, or otherwise harming something else, the fact that you are (hopefully) intelligent enough to think of a different way, means that you have a moral duty to be better than that.
You argue that I succumb to the naturalistic fallacy, and yet you are the one doing so. You argue that we do not need an excuse for our behaviour because we are animals, and it is natural for animals to exploit other animals.
In addition to that grave error, you're also making a complete false equivalency in equating "not using a random bear as a test pilot" with "abandoning all progress and becoming an agrarian society".
2. Pretty much all human buildings are on land that was previously occupied by animals and those animals are now excluded from those areas. Do you want to demolish human civilization and cut the population down to numbers small enough that we can all survive eating vegetables from places that animals can't reach?
Indeed. In fact, a bear is quite a bit more sturdy than a human, so the fact that one survived an ejection only means a human might have a chance; but it was to establish a possible upper limit.
Chances of bears testing humans in ejector seats are rather low. In spite of bears being massive and dangerous humans are far more dangerous to bears than the other way around, even before we start using them as test subjects for new technology.
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1676-5-horrifyin...