[gemy]

[QUOTE=yorkietalkjilly;4470650]I'm just wondering what rights animals should be legally given? The right to die with dignity when they are seriously ill or injured and not to go through painful, long courses of treatments or serial surgeries to keep them alive when euthanasia would be kinder, for a court or judge to decide when they breathe their last, the right not to be used for medical experimentation, even for drugs that could potentially benefit desperately ill or injured humans, the right not to be kept in cages/crates/cages - even birds and fish, the right to have his owner gain far more than his dollar worth when he's hurt or killed by another animals or human, the right for taxpayers to cover his legal costs to defend him in court should he injured or kill a person or another animal if his owners are poor, his right to not be dressed up as a human child or icon or cartoon/movie character of some sort, a female animal's right not to be bred to some male she's never met or doesn't even like, the right not to have her babies sold for money, the right not to have his species eaten for food, the hide, teeth, bones or fur used for human accessories or goods and put Gucci and Jimmy Choo out of business? Where do they draw the line?

I worry that it seems to me, and I hope I'm wrong, that many of the animal-rights proponents who want animals not to suffer in any way in experimental labs seem pretty cynical about the human race and one can count on them to expound on the horrors mankind has perpetrated over the centuries as part of their arguments for humanity not deserving any type of aid from animals and don't worry about human pain and suffering. Alternatively, they seem fairly willing to expect those of us who don't want ourselves or our own family members experimented with during times when health or lives are hanging in the balance, to just sit back and allow that point of view to carry the day and thereby expose ourselves and our loved ones to drugs and treatments that haven't ever been adequately tested before some desperate human has to try it out.

That will leave medical testing basically to some poor convict(and bear in mind, not all of them are hard-bitten desperado's or even guilty) or a very poor man or out-of-work single mother desperate to make some money to feed the family or a few volunteers to stepping up and opening themselves up to taking a pill or an injection that could seriously sicken, severely damage or kill him or her, as it's never ever been tried on any living thing before - and the animal-rights proponents just don't seem to really care that much about the human race anymore. The level of basic disregard for humanity and humans' rights to ever safer medical treatment seem to pale in their minds next to those of the animal kingdom's rights - at least it seems that way to me at times.

Most humans love animals for just what they are, think they are abused by too many people in too many ways, but also see how other humans work constantly to make their lives better, too. Most humans hate that cows and chickens and other animals live to be killed for our families to be able to enjoy a fine meal or wear leather shoes, too. But, still, most humans the world over see animals in the role they have always had in the world and will never see them as basically the same with only some differences from humans or they would barf every time they drove by a Burger King, visited a grocery store with a meat market or saw a friend in a chick leather jacket.

And if an animal-rights proponent ever talks to any desperately worried parent or pediatric oncologist in a children's cancer hospital about stopping animal experimentation and leaving all the early testing of new new drugs, treatments and surgical techniques on children, they might just get cursed out and escorted out of the facility.[/QUOTE]

I agree with many of your concerns. But I would like to discuss this experimentation on animals for research. Not being a scientist, but trying to understand the ever burgeoning field of research, there may be options of testing that does not require |whole animal" testing. I am talking about petri dishes, and stem cells, and so on.

If a way can be found to eliminate whole animal being tested, perhaps that way should be found.

And I did post a link here somewhere that talked about how the genetic research on dogs and cancers for example, may provide insightfull in-roads into human cancer research.

Obviously I don't have the knowledge to ideate what those scientific methods might be, but for sure others do have.