Vivisection

Three years ago, I was very moved with my decision making with animals as I went to a PETA convention. They informed me about animal cruelty and illustrated with disturbing images I yet to have forgotten till this day. It was on October 1, 2007 I became a vegetarian. In doing so, I made it my job to inform my classmates and peers about animal cruelty and vegetarianism. I bought a copy of Earthlings when it came out and decided to show my best friend one night. He also became a vegetarian, after viewing the film. Animal cruelty has many aspects to it. One part is vivisection. As Harriet Ritvo describes it, is "commonly understood as dissecting a live animal or performing some other painful operation on it for scientific purposes" (388). As I read on about the Victorian era, scientists believed they were above "moral obligations" (387), and it got me thinking who are they to determine this? They are not God or anyone superior to declare this title upon them, and no one has the right to inflict pain or cause suffering or even death upon another living creature. I was agitated by the fact that scientists, were willing to ignore a being's agony in order to prove a scientific experiment or perhaps it being a step to the medical field. I started to question, if scientists believe that by vivisection, we can find cures in diseases and medical problems. How is it by using animals we do so? Animals, are similar to us humans in many ways but they are also different too. Can we really determine a cure for cancer if we inflict pain on a rat? Why not just use human beings in an experiment? That is the reason we use animals, why are human beings any different?

In Lewis Carroll's letter to the editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette", he states "pain is indeed an evil, but so much suffering may fitly be endured to purchase so much knowledge" (384) as he mimics the idea that he praises the guy for acknowledging the fact that "you shall suffer that I may know" (384). Carroll illustrates vivisection can lead to many medical solutions but it is "hell for animals" (386) and by doing so we are going against our moral codes and giving into selfish education. He questions the need for vivisection and what our world will come to once every university practices vivisection. As I continued reading, it comes up that the University of Texas, my beloved university, a place I look up to, actually has its own Animal Research Center. The story about trying to find a better "understanding of novelty" (392) by experimenting on male/female Japanese quails frightens me that my college is actually doing this and other experiments! How can one cutt off a quails head and observe it through a microscope have a heart or yet a moral standard upon them? What good does it do? Is doing "an immoral thing for moral reasons" (393) worth the suffering and torturing of animals? My ultimate question is, would we do it to humans?

1 http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/v/vivisection.asp
2 http://www.dmn.dmatter.org/Inside/images/Pingfan_diorama_vivisection.jpg