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"Primum non nocere" (Latin) - Hippocrates. "First, do no harm."
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"Primum non nocere" (Latin) - Hippocrates. "First, do no harm."
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The Ethical Argument “When are experiments on
animals justified? Upon learning of
the nature of many contemporary experiments, many people react by saying that
all experiments on animals should be abolished immediately. But if we make our
demands as absolute as this, the experimenters have a ready reply: Would we be
prepared to let thousands of humans die if they could be saved by a single
experiment on a single animal? This question is, of course,
purely hypothetical. There never has been and there never could be a single
experiment that saves thousands of lives. The way to reply to this hypothetical
question is to pose another: Would the experimenter be prepared to carry out his
experiment on a human orphan under six months old if that were the only way to
save thousands of lives? If the experimenter would not
be prepared to use a human infant, then his readiness to use non-human animals
reveals an unjustifiable form of discrimination on the basis of species, since
adult apes, monkeys, dogs, cats, rats and other mammals are more aware of what
is happening to them, more self-directing, and, so far as we can tell, at least
as sensitive to pain as a human infant.” Peter Singer, Animal
Liberation Photo: Courtesy PETA USA |
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