Against Public Performances by Animals

...Yet, in pursuit of these goals, they cause incalculable amounts of animal suffering. The overwhelming majority of animal suffering is not the result of cruelty, and therefore the injunction to avoid cruelty is largely irrelevant to thetreatment of animals in society. At the same time, restricting one's moral vocabulary to "cruelty" in assessing the treatment of animals leads to a situation where those who are concerned about animals tar all those who cause animal suffering with the same brush, be they dog fighters or medical researchers; if they cause animal suffering, they are ipso facto "cruel." essays on cruelty to animals
One of the most pervasive claims about the moral status of other creatures— a claim that, as we shall see, permeates our laws concerning cruelty to animals—grows historically out of the positions we have discussed. This approach, epitomized in the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant, suggests that although animals are not themselves direct objects of moral concern, there are nonetheless certain things that are not morally justifiable when done to animals. On this view, unnecessary cruelty to animals is forbidden, not, however, because animals are intrinsically objects of moral attention, but rather because of the psychological fact that people who brutalize animals will or may tend to behave cruelly toward other people. research paper animal abuse
Much of the abuse to which animals are subjected in scientific practice can be traced directly to the nature of scientific education, or perhaps one ought to say, scientific training. Contrary to what the layperson or humanist tends to expect, the training of professional scientists, pure and applied, is not designed to foster Newtons, Einsteins, or Darwins.Although the essence of science in one sense consists of free thought and inquiry, the spirit of wonder harnessed to relentless questioning, the actual molding of a scientific career bears little resemblance to this