The last ethical dilemma
It was all about washing-up liquid.
The final dilemma in the book is the argument in response to the anti-vivisectionists. Would you rather that thousands of people died of washing-up liquid than one rat to assess its toxicity/acidity?
As I’ve said before, if you change the rat to something cuddly like a dog or a cat or a rabbit, then you might get a different response, but a rat seems to be a price worth paying. Besides, what if your gran got extreme skin cancer because of the carcinogens in washing-up liquid that hadn’t been fully tested? Why wasn’t it tested? you’d ask. “Well,” the evil company suit would reply, “You didn’t want us to test our products on animals and our computer simulations revealed nothing. Of course, even if we had tested the washing-up liquid on animals, it might’ve posed a danger to people.” Look, you’d reply, here’s a tenner for you to go down the pet shop and buy as many rabbits as you like. “So that’s what a tenner looks like,” the suit would say, leaving you to think for a moment that the company had a minuscule research budget. “I've never seen a denomination so small.”
I suppose if a bunch of technologically advanced aliens turned up, they might treat us as suitable subjects for vivisection, although they’d have to be even thicker than we are if they thought human physiology and their own were close enough for such experiments to be of any use to them. And besides, if they’re so advanced, why do they need to do experiments on live animals?
Well, that’s the last ethical dilemma. I was thinking of moving on to a running commentary on TY Ancient Greek, but since I’m doing that on the other Green Bamboo, it looks like we’ll have to move on to Martin Cohen’s 101 Philosophy Problems. Actually, I think some of these are also in 101 Ethical Dilemmas (the book’s at school, which is where I’m about to go to retrieve it), hence I probably won’t be covering all 101. But never mind.
As I’ve said before, if you change the rat to something cuddly like a dog or a cat or a rabbit, then you might get a different response, but a rat seems to be a price worth paying. Besides, what if your gran got extreme skin cancer because of the carcinogens in washing-up liquid that hadn’t been fully tested? Why wasn’t it tested? you’d ask. “Well,” the evil company suit would reply, “You didn’t want us to test our products on animals and our computer simulations revealed nothing. Of course, even if we had tested the washing-up liquid on animals, it might’ve posed a danger to people.” Look, you’d reply, here’s a tenner for you to go down the pet shop and buy as many rabbits as you like. “So that’s what a tenner looks like,” the suit would say, leaving you to think for a moment that the company had a minuscule research budget. “I've never seen a denomination so small.”
I suppose if a bunch of technologically advanced aliens turned up, they might treat us as suitable subjects for vivisection, although they’d have to be even thicker than we are if they thought human physiology and their own were close enough for such experiments to be of any use to them. And besides, if they’re so advanced, why do they need to do experiments on live animals?
Well, that’s the last ethical dilemma. I was thinking of moving on to a running commentary on TY Ancient Greek, but since I’m doing that on the other Green Bamboo, it looks like we’ll have to move on to Martin Cohen’s 101 Philosophy Problems. Actually, I think some of these are also in 101 Ethical Dilemmas (the book’s at school, which is where I’m about to go to retrieve it), hence I probably won’t be covering all 101. But never mind.
Tomorrow – another day, another dilemma.
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