this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 77 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (25 children)

So I think people here need to be mindful of how much they don’t know about animal testing, how easy it is for the topic of animal testing to become inflammatory and how much musk-hate makes that even more likely.

Animal testing and experimentation is happening all over the place. And in such work accidents to happen, as with any surgery. And a common measure to prevent suffering is to euthanise. In fact I think euthanasia is prescribed so often that it’s controversial, but you should keep in mind that any animal experimentation setup is likely to have an intentionally antagonistic relationship between experimenters and animal carers and ethicists.

There are groups deeply and actively opposed to animal experimentation of any sort and will infiltrate and target labs and try to expose them any way they can. There’s a real chance that something like that is behind these revelations. Point is that it’s often not objective and misleads you into thinking the targeted lab is particularly bad when it’s actually just a selected target for political reasons.

All of which is NOT to condone animal experimentation (I’m a vegan for example). But you really should be mindful of how dumb media hype around this issue can be.

If you’re outraged for instance, when was the last time you ate meat and how well do you think that animal was treated both before it’s killing and even during? Better than the monkey in this story? Hell, when was the last time you ran over an animal in your car and did you really need to be driving at all? Did that animal die peacefully? Did you even realise?

How many benefits come to both humanity and animals too from progress from animal experimentation and is that worth some of the mistakes and suffering caused?

These are some of the better thoughts IMO, where musk hate is really not relevant here. From what I could tell from the article, it did not seem odd at all. If you care about animals, take the issue seriously and don’t make it about one very famous person who’s cool to hate right now. Animals, and humanity, frankly deserve better.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)

i don't need to pass a purity test or stake out a moral high ground to recognize right and wrong.

no one does.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Not sure I understand you here. I wasn’t talking about purity tests. I was talking about the quality of the debate and public understanding of the general issue.

You can recognise this as wrong all you like but it won’t alter whether the broader dynamic between the media, the public and the various industries involved is mostly an uninformed and ineffectual circus that ends up not caring that much about animal welfare.

Also, if these experiments are so self evidently wrong but the meat/dairy industry is ok by you, that’s beyond a mere lack of purity, and I’d have to ask you whether the habits and pleasures of meat really are worth the suffering caused and whether you’re even aware of the sort of suffering behind the meat industry.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The overseeing bodies of humanity just isn't unbiased. We have biases and adapt and change slowly to conform to logic and reason. It has never been fair. Smoking is legal only if it is tobacco. There is no real checks on big money and their taxes they don't pay, yet you have to or face dire consequences.

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