This article about genetically engineering "pain-free animals" has really got my goat (download the whole Neuroethics article here). As one commentor has put it, "But wait... why don't we genetically modify humans so we don't feel empathy? Sounds reasonable enough. This way we can continue to abuse any and all who are weaker than us without a single bit of remorse." Exactly.
Let's turn this over a little bit and think about what doing this does to humans and our senses of duty. To take an extreme example, people who are prone to being cruel to animals are also prone to being cruel to humans. This exists in extreme cases in people like Jeffrey Dahmer but also in domestic spouse abusers. Can't hit the dog? Hit the wife. I think that we can propose that the person or people who are increasingly able to be cruel to animals with impunity can also be cruel to people more easily. And that brings me to another point.
Why, if we feel we ought to elimate to sentience of some animals - like pigs for example - shouldn't we do it to humans who are also sentient? As scholar John Alessio writes at Green Theory and Praxis, "in-group and out-group behaviors are projected onto an artificially created hierarchy of life – a hierarchy based on how similar or dissimilar non-human beings are to humans." (full-text available here.) So how does this relate to the article in hand?
I think that what this article at New Scientist (a journal I often like) is one that saves industrialism and the machinery of industrial agriculture and not the dignity of a) the animals or b) the people who work there. By genetically modifying them (a deeply dubious idea for these animal's survival anyway) we enable the further "out-group[ing]" of whatever species we choose. That only leads to the further mechanization of animals and the people who work with them. As if people working at Tyson or Smithfield weren't potentially dehumanizing enough to all parties on the floor of the slaughterhouse, this makes this pain-free killing. So why shouldn't we do this to people?
I don't want to beg that question. I think I've just answered it. Removing people's pain receptors removes their humanity. Removing their empathy removes their humanity. Doing this to animals takes an already depersonalizing system and amplifies it.
What a terrible idea.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Pain free animals?
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3 comments:
Thanks for the response. I think you have somewhat misconstrued the dialectic. The original article in Neuroethics was not arguing that it is better to genetically engineer animals who lack the affective dimension of pain than to get rid of factory farms altogether. In fact, I am quite clear that the best option is to get rid of factory farms. The argument is that *if* people are going to continue to eat factory farmed meat, then we should use genetically engineered animals that don't suffer as much.
A few other points: (1) the proposed knockouts would not be eliminating "sentience" but rather only one aspect of sentience, and a rather unpleasant aspect at that. (2) the point that people who tend to be cruel to animals also tend to be cruel to other humans is interesting, but it's not really clear what the upshot is in this case. Would sadists really enjoy hurting animals if the animals were not actually experiencing pain? I don't see any necessary connection between the proposal and the idea that humans will necessarily become more cruel towards one another. Anyway, it's a rather anthopocentric criteria to use to claim that we ought to continue to allow animals to suffer because that might in some very indirect way allow humans to be slightly nicer to each other.
I think empathy involves genuinely caring about the emotions of others. If we genuinely care about the emotions of the millions of animals who are suffering in factory farms, then we will do everything we can to stop that suffering and will not wait around for some day in the distant future where everyone makes ethical food choices.
I think if I have the time, I will address this in a more extensive post or some other response. While I take your points, I don't think I have misconstrued the dialectic, I am disagreeing with you on the grounds that pain is something of an essential part of sentience, that continuing to manipulate animals in a way that removes the mechanisms that have evolved to enable their survival objectifies them further into machinery, and that doing so enables the further callousness of people to animals in a broad way. It is a biocentric view and not anthropocentric because it rejects your claims cross-species criteria.
I look forward to developing the argument. Unlike you, I have not had an extended period to flesh out the specific argument.
Offering people the option of "pain free" factory farming simply provides another justification that it's OK for them to chose factory farmed products as opposed to demanding better, more ethical farming practices.
Simply put, it's supporting bad practices adding fuel to the fire rather than educating and promoting an educated understanding of the nature of industrialized "farming".
IE "I'll eat chicken knowing that their beaks were cut off BUT it didn't hurt them so that's ok???" really?
Perceiving animals as object, as peter says, is the root of the problem. removing any level of "sentience" further objectifies them.
If we genuinely care about the "emotions" of animals, we will stop supporting factory farms. Not provide alternatives to make factory farming easier to "swallow".
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