Do Animals have Rights?

Authors Avatar by mijanahmed (student)

Do animals have rights? The ethics surrounding the use of animals by humans.

Animals have a large number of uses, here are some examples; Pets: Cats, Dogs, Hamsters, and Parrots etc. Food: Chicken, Beef, Pork, Lamb etc. Food producer: Eggs, Milk, Butter, Cheese. Work: Police Dogs, Horse and Cart, Guide dogs for the blind. Sport: Show jumping, Greyhound races, racing pidgins. Medical reasons, test drugs on animals e.g. mice.

There are many arguments between the uses of animals by humans.

The leading arguments favouring animal research as such: 
Certain compounds, be they food or pharmaceuticals, may have unpredicted effects that no amount of calculation or research is going to uncover. Thalidomide, in the 1960's, is a classic example. A sedative, Thalidomide made it through trials with no apparent problems. No-one, however, thought to test how this drug would work if used by woman who was pregnant. It turns out; the way it worked was that it produced amazingly bizarre, heartbreaking birth defects. The testing wasn't flawed. No-one had a clue this would happen. But clearly it did. Long term testing on primate subjects would have been horrible, but very well might have uncovered this defect before hundreds of human babies were born with dreadful and incapacitating defects, almost all quickly fatal. 
The fact is, that when it comes to prepping a drug or vaccine or procedure for use on the human population, we either need to test it on animals with metabolic and eventually genetic similarities to humans, or we'll have to let it into production without testing.

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The leading arguments against animal research as such: 

Simply because animals are not human does not imply they don't feel pain, despair, torture, and horror, somewhat as we do. Inflicting torturous procedures on animals in order to spare ourselves the pain seems morally reckless at best, and arrogant to the point of hubris at worst. As we do not "own" these creatures, we have no inherent right to subject them against their will to what we ourselves call inhumane practices, any more than we have a right to torture animals for our amusement. And worse, up until recently, this testing wasn't solely ...

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