The lab animal discourse is weirding me out.
I don't have strong opinions on using animal testing for medical research. I figure if there was a good way to get medical advancements without it, people'd be doing that.
But it also rubs me the wrong way to talk about how well the lab animals are treated. Medical research involves things like deliberately giving mice cancer in order to try out cancer treatments. Which, again, I understand why people do this. Cancer sucks, humans are very human-centric, and making some small rodents with short lifespans suffer extra so that Grandma gets a few more months or years with her grandkids (or hey, maybe decades, let's be optimistic) is going to be an ethical no-brainer for most people. We kill mice just because we don't want them in our homes or grain siloes or supermarkets, of course we're not going to dramatically change our willingness to harm animals that are normally viewed as pests when the possible benefits include better treatment for fatal (human) illnesses.
And also. I do think all living beings are fundamentally connected, are fundamentally one. And as someone who expects that I (not I the individual, I the universal oneness, which is the real I) do actually experience everything that Grandma and the grandkids and the mice and the researchers all experience, I (individual) am just not able to feel it directly due to limited perception, I'm not actually sure that causing some beings extra suffering in order to cause others less suffering does actually work out.
But also, trying to avoid suffering entirely ain't never going to happen, so idk. At some point you have to find something other than suffering to measure right and wrongness by.
I think a more just society would at least put up monuments to the lab rats. Have a day of mourning for them or something. Have some public, societal marker of acknowledgement that they do suffer and that their suffering is, basically, a bad thing, even if it might also be considered worth it.
