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Controversy ahead, I'm open to discussion. This is obvious and egregious animal abuse. What is it that puts our wants above those pigs' right to a peaceful lif
by baliex 3y ago
Controversy ahead, I'm open to discussion.
This is obvious and egregious animal abuse. What is it that puts our wants above those pigs' right to a peaceful life without growing others' (another species'!) organs in their bodies. Presumably to be slaughtered once our organs have developed enough to be harvested? What gives us the right to even attempt that procedure on another living being?
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoIf you are concerned about animal welfare I suspect there are much worse things going on in the dairy and meat industries.
- nilespotter 3y agoDon't forget the absolute horror of factory egg farming
- echelon_musk 3y agoThis feels like what aboutism. The parent argument is no less valid just because other horrors occur. I wonder If you knew they were already vegan - would you have provided the same reply.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoSaving lives is way more justifiable than filling bellies.
- ChatGTP 3y agoThat's if we continue to believe human lives are more important than pig lives. I personally think this view is problematic and it's why we're ruining the environment. We have a false sense of importance which shouldn't exist and it might send us extinct if we're not careful.' For example, give me one single reason why we think we have the right to pollute the environment, fill the water ways with tyre dust, chop down the amazon, factory farm? It's a lack of respect for other things which is the issue.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoHuman lives are more important.
- ChatGTP 3y agoWhat’s more important about them ? I think all life is important.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoDo you use hand sanitizer?
- brewtide 3y ago"Our world" not "the world". Gets worse and worse as we distance ourselves further from nature and "real world things" and focus more and more on these screens and the 'world' we have created. Honestly, I think we're overall pretty doomed. But hey, round and round it goes.
- callalex 3y agoI will preface this with my credentials: I am a lifelong vegetarian and aspiring vegan. Where do we draw the line? As a human, I have to go on walks to live a healthy, long life. Every time I go on a walk I am crushing many bugs, and occasionally reptiles or their eggs beneath my feet. When I eat food, even plant based, many bugs and worms are necessarily killed in the process. At some fundamental level, human existence is competitive and destructive to other life. Personally, I just do my best to minimize this impact.
- ChatGTP 3y agoI think accidentally walking on a bug is a bit different to large scale habitat destruction.
- Turskarama 3y agoIf you don't believe human lives are more important than animal lives then you are morally obligated to kill as many humans as possible. Even a vegan human will indirectly lead to the deaths of thousands of animals in their lifetime through habitat destruction and climate change.
- treis 3y agoMaybe if we stop slaughtering millions of them for bacon we can think about the organ growing ones.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Blackthorn 3y agoIt's a tough situation for sure. Though to add something that might be interesting to the discussion, I did a (very small) amount of animal research in college. The animals were generally treated with respect, much moreso than I think most factory farms treat animals.
- Turskarama 3y agoResearchers have to pass ethics boards, there's no equivalent for farming. Personally I'd much prefer that we enforced more ethical treatment of livestock over being forced to veganism.
- vladimirralev 3y agoIt's pretty disgusting, but we all come from a long history of violence and pain. The only chance these species have to survive long terms is for us humans to figure out how (preserve DNA, leave earth, simulated environments, and so on). In that sense, I wonder if it may be fair to preserve the DNA of victimised animals and clone them somewhere in the future when resources allow, to have a peaceful life.
- throwitaway156 3y ago> to have a peaceful life profit over and over again.
- circuit10 3y agoDNA just describes their physical characteristics, it's not a soul or anything
- ben_w 3y agoI'm vegetarian, sometimes I try to be vegan, for basically every reason combined. This doesn't mean I am unaware of the counter-arguments; disregarding the ones which are essentially just an appeal to tradition, there is still one more I know. To play devil's advocate: - We have no idea at all what sentience is, and it's entirely conceivable that we're the only ones who really truly have the experience of suffering, rather than just a non-conscious stimulus-response mechanism. By way of comparison, larger current generation AI are of similar complexity to the brains of many of these animals — are those AI sentient? - Back to my own voice: I often find myself using the {animal brain complexity} ≈ {AI complexity} for the exact opposite purpose, to demonstrate why current AI might well be sentient.
- echelon_musk 3y agoI don't understand why some people give such credence to arguments of sentience. We're not even talking about killing animals for science or the "greater good" when discussing meat consumption. Animals feel pain and can experience suffering just like humans can. I think the fact that the suffering in the supply chain is hidden is the main reason it's not a consideration for most consumers.
- ben_w 3y ago"Pain" can be nocioception, or it can be the qualia. We can trivially make a machine with the former, and that acts to minimise that sensory input. Does it have the qualia? How might we even be able to prove it either way? That subjective experience, qualia or whatever you call it, what I meant here by sentience. Given that the term pretty much always leads to discussion like this, I have only myself to blame for forgetting to mention an any of this in the previous comment.
- circuit10 3y agoWikipedia says sentience means "the ability to experience feelings and sensations" so "Animals feel pain and can experience suffering just like humans can" is describing sentience
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
- downboots 3y ago> what is it...? Presumably, reason and society
- willcipriano 3y agoWhat gives bears the right to kill all that salmon? What gives viruses the right to harm little babies! Life isn't fair.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoThat seems a poor justification. We are capable of far more introspection than bears or viruses and we should probably make use of those faculties. We shouldn't necessarily feel justified doing something just because it exists in nature.
- allan_s 3y agoThat seems a pretty reasonable one to me and one applied by many tribal culture to feel that we are just part of nature. Applying one's non-universal (even accros its own specy) moral system to other species seems odd to me. Pain is just the evolutionnary response to avoid self-life threatening situation, nothing else. So at most i would say it makes me root for bio-engineered pig without nociceptors.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoWell, we can't apply an animal's moral system. If you did that you could justify torturing cats (have you seen a cat play with a mouse?) or raping animals because they do it to each other. That's why I think we need to consider from our perspective, which is capable of introspection and empathy.
- allan_s 3y agoI think we agree on the premice and we diverge on the conclusion. (Which is fine , by no way i think i'm more right than you) My point of view is my moral system apply to my specy only, i dont see a point on applying to other specy (as i already dont apply 100% of my moral system to other human from different culture for which their moral system contradict some point of mine). And i do as such because applying empathy to pig would have for final conclusion that we should bio engineer pig without pain receptors as its the path that for me minimize change (the genus of domesticated pig still get to exists, their suffering is now out of the question, i still get to eat bacon , my neighbor working in a farm still get a job etc. And science get to progress) and it does not need the modern-man-centric "dying is bad" . So being pragmatic , i think that the current status quo is enough waiting for that.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoActually, an argument in favour of using pigs (apart from the fact that they biologically well suited) is that we already breed and slaughter hundreds of millions a year for food so that the public would probably have little objections if we bred and slaughtered a few more to save lives...
- knicholes 3y agoWhy not slaughter the SAME ONES? Might as well toss some organs into them to double their value.
- simmerup 3y agoI doubt you’d want an organ from one of those pigs, they’re treated and fed awfully
- ekaryotic 3y agoAs i understand it, you would be facing the same problem as with cannibalism, i.e. increase transmission of prion diseases, from the human tissue in the pig.
- iancmceachern 3y agoThese pigs are specifically genetically engineered and bred so as to be compatible. There are viruses, etc. that are endemic to the swine population that would kill people. It happened in that first human implant recently.
- hankman86 3y agoSacrificing any animal would be morally justifiable if it saved a human life, as is the case with kidney transplants. It does not matter that we already breed and kill millions of pigs for meat consumption. The fact that some person with end stage renal failure could be saved, return to full health and live normally justifies the means. The species (other than human) does not matter - pigs, chimps, whatever allows is to accomplish this scientific breakthrough the fastest. Where ethics come into play is how the animal is kept during its life. And whether we prevent suffering when its time to remove the kidneys and kill the donor in the process. I would speculate that in the interest of good donor organ function, we would make sure the animal does not experience any stress.
- lr4444lr 3y agoMost pigs only exists because we run extensive operations to breed them. I'm not saying this invalidates your argument, but the people responsible for their execution are also responsible foe their birth - they were created with destruction in mind. It's not like we pluck them out of the wild. Remove this moral claim to take their lives, and we probably won't eat much meat at all anymore, or do much drug research at all.
- ChatGTP 3y agoIf Robots started doing this to humans for amusement? Robots wanted pet humans for example but they only liked babies and we were slaughtered by the age of 3, what would you think about that?
- allan_s 3y agoStill preferable than being the robots' equivalent of the big mammals that went extinct during the stone age . At least our specy would get to survive.
- circuit10 3y agoI'm not sure it would be
- allan_s 3y agoThat's a matter of opinion and I respect yours. Maybe a robot will raise its voice and they become conscious of their wrong doing and they will decide that the best course of action to minimize suffering in their human pet is to end them completely as other solution would always come with a non zero amount of pain (Have you seen human living in the wild ? So much suffering) Or maybe you should buy this new breed of human born without nociceptors ? (Its not like the evolutionary need for it is anymore relevant in our robotics world)
- ftxbro 3y agoimagine thinking that we will stop slaughtering them for life saving organs when we slaughter them for snacks because they taste slightly better than tofu
- echelon_musk 3y agoHumans have become a kind of homo supremacist. Exploiting and disregarding other species. I think a big part of the cultural and historical justification of being able to slaughter and exploit animals comes from Noah's covenant in Genesis. Prior to industrialisation and mass production people ate far less meat in their diets. Being able to see ourselves, our humanity, in animals seems like a rare and precious quality. "60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals." https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...
- dehrmann 3y ago> "60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals." Yeah, but chickens outnumber them.
- hankman86 3y agoThis is not about excessive meat consumption. Neither is it about animal abuse in the meat industry. It is not even about animal testing for pharmaceutical products. These issues are completely unrelated to harvesting donor kidneys from pigs. I fail to see any more obstacles in sacrificing a pig’s life to give a person in end stage kidney disease a chance to live. Oh and besides: the numbers would not justify moral outrage either: it is true that there are many people waiting for an organ transplant. However, that number still pales when compared to how many pigs are slaughtered for meat production. It is all but guaranteed that genetically modified pigs bred for organ harvesting would be treated well - unlike their meat producing cousins. Not to mention that there are perfectly viable alternatives to consuming meat. By contrast, people suffering from end-stage kidney failure have little choice, other than dialysis and waiting for their turn to receive a donor organ (i.e. many years in declining health on the waiting list). So can we stop the blubber about meat consumption and animal abuse in this context please? We should rather celebrate the apparent progress in addressing a major challenge in caring for people whose organs fail.
- Turskarama 3y agoPlease, the only reason ancient people didn't eat more meat (apart from the inuit of course, who ate almost exclusively meat!) is because it was a lot more work to get it before industrialization. There's no philosophy about it, humans exploit more than other animals simply because we have the power to.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iancmceachern 3y agoAlso, there are so so many animal products used in modern medicine. Pig heart valves, bovine collagen in grafts, on and on. You just don't know about it.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> What is it that puts our wants above those pigs' right to a peaceful life Evolution. As I noted below, pigs enjoy eating human beings very much. It's their tough luck that we're smarter than them. Pigs will also eat mice, snakes, birds, and cute little bunny rabbits.
- yungporko 3y agoand yet pigs don't forcibly breed millions of us to commit countless atrocities against our entire species, causing suffering on such a massive scale that it makes the holocaust look like a joke.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> and yet pigs don't forcibly breed millions of us Only because they can't. > it makes the holocaust look like a joke. Umm... okay.
- hankman86 3y agoIncorrectly weighed priorities IMHO. People on dialysis have a poor quality of life, a dramatically shortened lifespan and will frequently not survive until that time that a donor kidney becomes available. By contrast, donor organ recipients live a normal life for 10 years or even longer. A pig’s lifespan is shorter than that to begin with. So even if you were to equate a pig’s life with that of a human: the added lifespan of the human is more than what the pig’s entire life expectancy is. But frankly, it bothers me that we are even having a debate about this: a pig is vastly less valuable than a human life. Whoever disagrees with this fundamental premise has his priorities completely wrong.
- yungporko 3y ago>a pig is vastly less valuable than a human life give just one single concrete argument that this is the case which isn't "because it just is".
- csomar 3y agoThis discussion will end here: Everything we consume (even if you are vegetarian) is a living being with its own proper DNA. That's really how this world works. Except for plants, all other beings are consuming other beings.
- RunningDroid 3y ago*Except for most plants Carnivorous plants aside, I've heard trees will extract and use calcium if planted close enough to bones (or vice versa.)
- csomar 3y agoBy bones, you mean dead animals? In that case, I think it's more appropriate to call it recycling.
- proc0 3y ago> What gives us the right to even attempt that procedure on another living being? Imagine being pig and realizing your entire existence has been shaped by thousands of years of selection. Unfortunately the sentiment of animal justice is a few thousand years too late. We have literally evolved farm animals into their current form. These creatures have no other purpose than what they have been artificially selected for - human consumption. They have been molded into a bastardization of their former ancestors, their new purpose at the whim of humanity. I'm mostly rambling, but the main point is that it's not very straight forward. Would it be better if pigs never existed? If we stopped all animal farming tomorrow, how will they survive, where will they go? And I'm not even mentioning morality, which would complicate things even more, especially if one does not believe in a higher power, a.k.a. God.