Animals' Right to Life

For decades, animal rights activists have attempted to advocate the notion that animals, as with humans, have an implicit right to life. Such premise is reasonable and often easy to accept, especially where everyone that owns a pet knows the great sensation it is to get home after a stressful day at work and be received by your playing dog or cat. For many, it is easy to recognize that dogs and cats for example, are living and sustainable animals, and therefore, that all animals have the right to live. Unfortunately animals continue to be viewed in many circles as inferior creatures, and are often used in medical research where they are not granted any right including the right to live and their only destiny is to suffer to death. The purpose of this short-essay, is to evaluate, analyze, and assess whether or not animals have a recognized right to life, specifically within the context of biomedical research and testing.

According to many scientists and academics, any living organism can fall into the broad definition of animal, and any living organism has “a basic moral right to respectful treatment” (Dunnuck,para.2), therefore all animals have the basic moral right to a respectful treatment. For instance, the definition of animal comes from the Latin word animalis, meaning “having breath” so humans also fall into the category of animals (Cresswell). Animals that are used in research are not given any type of respectful treatment, so their most basic right is violated from the start. If humans have a right to choose to live a life without pain the same choice should be given to the animals that are used in research. Even though in the text it mentions that animals “cannot vocalize their own preferences and choices”(para.2...

... middle of paper ...

...e: Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.

2. Cresswell, Julia (2010). The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins (2 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN 9780199547937. "‘having the breath of life’, from anima ‘air, breath, life’

3. Paterson, Charles (2002) Treblinka, Eternal. Our treatment of animals and the Holocaust, Oxford Press.

4. Ryder, Richard (2005). All beings that feel pain deserve human rights: Equality of the species is the logical conclusion of post-Darwin morality. The Guardian. Aug. 6, 2005.

5. Skidelsky, Edward (2000). Nonsense upon stilts. Animals are the last great "victim class". Edward Skidelsky finds the arguments for animal rights sentimental, self-serving and intellectually unsound. New Statesman, June 5, 2000.

6. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Endangered Species Statistics, January 4, 2011.