So far as this argument is concerned nonhuman animals and infants and retarded humans are in the same category; and if we use this argument to justify experiments on nonhuman animals we have to ask ourselves whether we are also prepared to allow experiments on human infants and retarded adults; and if we make a distinction between animals and these humans, on what basis can we do it, other than a bare-faced - and morally indefensible - preference for members of our own species?
Interpretation
The quote questions the ethical justification of experimenting on animals versus vulnerable humans, highlighting speciesism.
In this quote, Peter Singer challenges the moral reasoning that leads people to justify animal experimentation while simultaneously dismissing the rights of infants and those with cognitive impairments. He argues that if humans base ethical decisions solely on species membership, it reflects an unjust and indefensible bias, prompting a deeper examination of our moral values and the criteria we use to distinguish between beings deserving of protection and rights.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate on animal rights to highlight ethical considerations.
The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.
Pain and suffering are in themselves bad and should be prevented or minimized, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers. How bad a pain is depends on how intense it is and how long it lasts, but pain of the same intensity and duration are equally bad, whether felt by humans or animals.
What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.
Almost everybody accepts that some people can be killed. 'The concept of 'brain death' - the belief that people on respirators can legitimately be killed - shows that.
If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate.
Even in the era of AIDS, sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations about honesty, concern for others, prudence, and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving a car. (In fact, the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more serious than those raised by sex.)
The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.
What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.
When we are returned to power we want to put in the statute book an act which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country.
Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.
Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will - with luck - come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise
Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them.
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