They also can’t offer dissent. They don’t possess the reasoning capacity to make choices. They’re lower order creatures, somewhere down the food chain from us. They also sometimes provide necessary opportunities to do research that can save human (and occasionally even animal) lives. And quite often, they’re very nutritious and tasty.

I really do sometimes feel people have too much time on their hands in this country.

Obviously that’s a rhetorical question, Rob. ;-)

I thought I’d ask you about this:

I’m trying to stop eating the dairy (especially) and the eggs. But I find that I feel really weak if I don’t get at least some cheese in a week. Somehow the extra beans and hummus I add don’t seem to cut it for me. Can you suggest anything? I know you’re not a nutritionist, but can you suggest anything?

Mythago, we live in a deeply imperfect world. A lot of animal rights work is about bearing witness, starting conversations, and engaging with people to change hearts and minds. The goal here is changing consciousness — and my limited experience has been that this sort of tactic of alternative donations does help begin that process.

I’m not gonna let perfection be the enemy of progress.

1. Document everything and 2. talk to a lawyer.

Hugo, setting aside the argument about animal experimentation, I don’t understand your approach. You ARE supporting these organizations; you’re just doing so indirectly, rather than with cash. Especially when you alleviate the asker’s expenses; now instead of paying $50 for shoes, I can give $50 to the Bunny Testing Society.

An appeal to authority may well be useful inductively and in a debate (And they are the foundation of abductive logic)but only insofar as those experts are in at least near universal accord. Such is manifestly not the case here.

This is textbook cherry-picking. And while it may be what is Chosen to be believed, it is not proof; but it is presented as such.

But there are probably limits to your empathy. Insects can probably suffer on at least the rudimentary level necessary for them to avoid getting swatted. Do you squash insects? Some unicellular organisms can sense and avoid noxious stimuli. They probably, in some sense, suffer when in contact with said stimuli. Do you take steroids to decrease your immune respons to avoid giving pain to pathogenic bacteria? (Again, I’m trying to push on the limits and describe the underlying philosophy, not talk you out of it. I don’t squash bugs unless I have a particular need to. Bacteria are outside my empathy range, though.)

The other question one might ask is do animals suffer in medical experimentation? The answer is sometimes clearly yes. Hard to imagine that the Draiz (? spelling…I mean the squirt substance in the eye test) test doesn’t cause suffering. On the other hand, I’ve worked with mice in the lab before and they have never suffered anything more painful than a needle stick, have generally lived longer than an average mouse in the wild would, and have indulged in the usual mouse pleasures of company of their siblings, food, sex, and raising babies. Apart from the existential issue that they wouldn’t have existed if they hadn’t been made for research (transgenic mice), would their lives really have been better if they’d been in the “wild” where most would be eaten by cats, poisoned with a substance that would prevent their blood from clotting and kill them through internal hemorrhage, starve to death as pups because their mothers couldn’t make enough milk or had been killed, be run over by cars…in short, suffer a good deal and be offered no more pleasures than they experienced anyway. Therefore, in my opinion, the issue is not whether animals should be used in experimentation, but how they are used. If they are used only in ways that minimize suffering down to the point that they suffer less than they would in the wild, who is hurt?

The informal logical fallacy of “appeal to authority.” At least as many, if not far more argue the contrary.

If you wish to remain comfortable, listening to the echo of those whose view reflects your own is certainly sufficient. If you wish to move beyond that and actually change hearts and minds, you can - and must - do better.