It has been a while since I’ve written anything on this blog. I often feel like I run out of things to write about or that I don’t have enough of an opinion on something to seriously write about it. This is what could have been said about the subject of this post a mere year ago.
Of course, I have shared my opinion about varying aspects of animal rights here and there, sometimes saying and thinking certain things that contradicted each other. On one occasion, two years ago, I said to one of my friends that the extension of special rights to apes other than ourselves (Yes. We are not only descended from ancestral forms of ape, we are apes ourselves) should seriously be considered. On the other hand, I have often maintained that animal testing was a necessary evil if it was useful (that excludes animal testing for beauty products and other frivolous forms of entertainment). Unlike everything I’ve written about so far, I cannot say I have a clear-cut stance on this. I must admit, it has been fairly easy to write about things for which I have a definite point of view, particularly things for which the alternative stance appeared to be bigoted and misguided (i.e. gender and sexual preference issues). That is not to say that my point of view on some of the previous issues has not changed. I no longer embrace the view that smoking should somehow be made illegal just because I judge it inconvenient behavior. There are many advantages to keeping dangerous substances legal lest they become more dangerous and lead to unnecessary violence. Substances within the legal realm can be regulated. Furthermore, one should have the freedom to destroy ones health if they so wish. I personally may not smoke and still find it a nuisance having people around me who do, but with time I have tried really hard to think as objectively as possible about important societal and ethical issues. The point is not that I take radical stances and stick with them, but that when I do change my mind, I don’t spend much time in the undecided zone.
This is different. A mere year ago, I could hardly describe my opinions about the issue a stance at all but more like a default position, what one says about an important subject matter when questioned about it without really having taken the time to properly think about it. The aggressive and almost mindless vociferations of the animal right activists of the P.E.T.A pedigree I encountered at university did nothing to help me on my way. One could even say that their extreme point of view gave me an excuse to dismiss the whole issue altogether as a way for those individuals to justify their time at university. I can’t help but think that I probably wasn’t that much better when it came to the global warming issue back in my first year at university and that in some cases the intransigence with which I presented my views might have been seriously off-putting. Having said that, I have never condoned unnecessarily hostile gestures in the name of environmentalism that could be equated with some of the more atrocious actions of P.E.T.A and their terrorist allies (A.R.M).
In the last few months however, with the aggressive voices of the fanatical no longer polluting my ears and the more balanced and varied views offered by Radio France Inter’s “Vivre avec les bêtes” (Living with creatures) accompanying my daily journeys to-an-fro university campus, I have developped quite an interest in the animal condition. Credit must also be given to shows such as Jean-Claude Ameisen’s “Sur les épaules de Darwin” (On the shoulders of Darwin); which gently reminds me how closely tied we are with the rest of the animal kingdom, sharing similar senses crucial to the feelings of pleasure and pain, and Mathieu Vidard’s exceptional “La tête au carré” which occasionally deals with the ethical component of science to which I have payed little or no attention before.
So what has fundamentally changed in my position? As I have said, my views here are a work in progress. What has evolved here are not so much my views themselves but my awareness of the issue. The fact of the matter is, animal ethics has forced me out of my comfort zone and into a realm where many approaches (which seem more or less equally valid) present themselves to me. None of them have so far taken me in completely. But I do find myself agreeing with the idea of a gradualist approach to animal rights. I mean by this that we should not think of animal rights in terms of one set of rights for all non-human animals but a set of varying rights specific to sets of species. After all, the human animal has its own set of laws. We do not want animal rights to be another reaffirmation of the ‘there’s us and there’s them’ syndrome. If we take the view that a gradualist approach to the question of animal rights is the way forward, then the fate of other apes than ourselves should be our greatest concern. How far we can allow laboratory testing in this case should be of vital concern, much more so than with mice.
Alternatives to animal testing exists and they should be actively pursued whenever possible. With our newfound genome sequencing abilities we should now be able to learn a lot more from the studies at the non-invasive genotype level rather than the occasionally invasive phenotype level. This is not to say that the animal testing era has come to pass, far from that, just that we must consider the many options that exists first (all of these options providing similar quality of data and research so as to not stymie the progress of science) instead of taking animal testing as the default position.
I haven’t got much else to bring to the table, as I’m still uncertain where I stand on the issue overall. I could probably give my opinion on specific examples, but would the accumulation of these opinions make sense altogether? I’m not sure. The important message here is that what I’ve heard in recent times has got me thinking and I no longer take a fatalistic approach to the subject. It’s taking a while to decide, but in a way I take comfort in this. It proves to me that I’m truly thinking about these issues seriously instead of blindly following a tendentious collective hysteria like some of my friends sadly have. One thing I will not do is let myself go overboard with this issue. I’m certainly not going to become a vegan and you will never see me encouraging blood being thrown on kids at Disneyland (fucking P.E.T.A scum). But a transformation is ongoing. Ethics in general and animal rights in particular, have become new areas of interest for me.
