Oddguy 999, how do you define "self aware"? I know enough about rats and rabbits to know they will react to pain.
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Untill the hippyies came along and started sugesting that rats and mice have fellings and they should be free in the wild, where in their great numbers would reek huge amounts of envirmental distruction
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The rats and mice are not plucked from their natural habitats to be used for experiments. They are bred with the fate of painful medical/cosmetic testing. These animals would not exist at all if they weren't to be subjected to experimentation, so the environment has no place in this argument. It's unethical to breed living beings who are capable of pain and subject them to torturous experiments.
Why use animals when you can use computer simulations? It's not like medical testing is essential to the human species' survival. Humans already have a population problem, we cut down forests, pollute waterways and even destroy the ozone layer of our planet! Perhaps humans accepting death and disease as a part of life is a more healthy perspective, rather than chopping up innocent organisms to propell our species into a rampage of destruction. Either that or do something like what China is doing to control the population.
"What is it that should trace the insuperable line? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" --Jeremy Bentham (philosopher)
"I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things that crawl upon earth." --Mahatma Gandhi (statesman and philosopher)