The Moral Obligation Of Animal Rights By Singer

The rights of animals are something that we must consider and carefully analyze. Many animal rights activists are fighting to protect animals from certain experiments that can cause the animals harm, and even death. They state that animals have the “right” to be free from these kinds of tests. If something can feel pain, then that something has the right to equal consideration. Animals can feel pain and pleasure, as stated by Singer in “All Animals Have Rights”. Therefore, animals have rights. He also goes on to state that since we know that animals can feel pain, we have a moral obligation to prevent that suffering. We, as moral agents, have the obligation to avoid causing suffering to moral patients. And considering that we have these obligations, …show more content…
We would lose much ground, as Cohen states in “Do Animals Have Rights?” in medical science if animals had rights. Mice are being used and have been used for ages as test subjects for new vaccines and medicines to check their reliability and effectiveness against certain diseases and pain. The reason being that our genetic makeup as humans are close to that of a mouse. That being said, this means that if it works on a mouse, then it should work on a human. (M.P.) Vaccines, like the vaccine for polio, worked on a rat, therefore humans were vaccinated from polio, which is now practically eradicated from this side of the globe, as mentioned in Cohen’s argument. While I do agree that we have a moral obligation to respect the desire not to be hurt, we also have to concern ourselves with the possible medical setbacks we would face due to not testing on mice. Humanity would suffer a great blow because we would lose our ability to test vaccines on anything besides humans and that would be deadly to test subjects. While testing on mice may be something that is morally wrong, in certain opinions, it is the lesser of two evils. We can’t test on humans, as some may suggest as an alternative. Doing so in the early stages of developing a drug may …show more content…
You cannot bring a dog or a horse to testify on your behalf in a court trial. They have no opinion. They cannot speak on your behalf as to whether your character speaks against the crime. And if they could speak, it would only be about their instincts because that is as far as an animal thinks. Their prey is their survival, not another creature with their own life and family. However, when we take a look at ourselves in a similar situation, we wouldn’t kill another human for survival, unless on grounds of self-defense. People recognize that they do have rights and a conscience and deserve to be treated as such. In the current world, America fights against governments who kill people. We view this as wrong doing and it must be stopped. We punish the people who are responsible for these actions. The punishment for their actions is death. However, hunting is a way of gathering food as well as sport. We allow animals to be killed by the thousands every year with no fault. Animals are not awarded rights in these situations. Nor are people charged with crimes against the animal kingdom for the mass murder of their kind. The human culture has recognized around the world that the death of animals is overshadowed in comparison to the death of humans. We can look at it in such a way as if a human is murdered, then someone