Animals Right

Esmael Almusallam

12 April 2013
Animal rights are benefits that humans give to animals, including the right of protection from user and abuse by people. Do you agree or disagree?
For decades, the question “Do animals have rights?” has been examined from many different angles. People contend that animals do or do not have rights based on several factors, including whether animals can learn, can use language, are conscious, are able to suffer, and are ethical beings. Whether and which animals have rights depends on which characteristics are considered. For many years, there has been a major debate regarding animal rights. So, what are animal rights? Animal rights is the idea that animals have the same rights as humans, to live free of suffering, are just as important as living individuals, and have the same moral status as humans. Also, as Doris defined animal rights “The right of animals is to be free of oppression, confinement, use and abuse by humans” (721-725). There are people think that animals need rights to be protected. They think that animals should be treated as humans. Moreover, they believe that animals should be protected from people. On the other hand, there are some other people who think that animals should not be treated as humans. These people believe that they need to use animals to live. In addition, they use them for every aspect of life. Now everyone wonders which group is correct. In my point of view, animals are not even close to being in the same league as humans. True, animals can feel pain and emotion, but that does not give them the rights to freedom that humans have. As Carroll said, “Scientists claim that the cardinal difference between animals and humans is that humans have a capacity for moral judgments and thought. We are ethical sentient beings whereas animals are only sentient beings.”
Humans can consider aspects in making decisions that animals cannot. For example, in deciding whether to shoot a bear that is pregnant or has young cubs in tow, a hunter can consider ethical reasons not to kill it, such as the bear’s responsibility to its cubs. Animals, on the other hand, have no concern to the lives, responsibilities, or feelings of other living things, as is the case when a bear attacks and kills a person whose family is nearby. When was the last time someone wanted to eat or kill his or her children? For humans, that is something unbelievable. On the other hand, animals eat and kill their own children. Mother dogs will kill or push out their young ones if they are sick or cannot keep up with the rest of the bunch. It also happens with fish, birds, cats, rodents, and many other animals. If we were to give animals the same rights as humans we would have to kill or punish the animals if they were to do such acts. It is obvious that animals cannot be responsible as humans so they should not have equal rights as human.
Humans need animals to feed themselves. There is huge number of people who are vegetarian but it cannot be compared with the number of people who are not. Some people like vegetarians and philosophers, believe that people should not eat animals because animals have the right to life. In fact, if animals have the right to life then why do animals kill each other for no reasons? Many of us have seen a house cat killing rabbits or rats just to kill them. They would not eat them, just kill them and walk around with the dead animal in their mouth. If you watch some Discovery Channel shows on young animals, especially meat eating animals, the same thing applies. In addition, some animals eat plants as humans do, so do plants have rights too? Plants are live creatures just like humans and animals, so should we prevent animals from eating plants? Of course not because this is the nature of the life of all creatures; humans eat animals and animals eat plants and life continues with this concept.
Humans have been evolving and will continue to evolve through time. To learn we must experiment and use trial and error. This involves the animal testing issue. This is where it starts getting hard to define the rights of animals. It is true that there are some unnecessary experiments, but the most are important. For example, there are a huge number of women who suffer from breast cancer; through testing on animals, humans are provided two medicines that have saved the lives of women with breast cancer. Another example of diseases which was fixed by testing animals is lung cancer. Lung cancer has been killing more people than breast, colon and pancreatic cancers. Through relying on mouse models of lung cancer and focusing on understanding, preventing, and detecting lung cancer, scientists are developing new therapies for treating this disease. These examples prove that testing animals has significant positive impact on human lives. It prevents human from death by different disease; therefore, when human use animals to find a way to prevent themselves from death there is nothing wrong about it. For instance, when you driving down a road and a small animal crossed it, would you run over it for your own safety or you will out yourself in a dangerous situation to just save that animal. Most people will choose their own safety rather than the animal’s life. This applys on testing animals to save humans lives.
In conclusion, it is true that humans should respect animals, but that does not mean that animals have the same rights as humans. When humans kill animals to feed themselves, they should kill them as painlessly as possible so that animals do not suffer as Michael mentioned “animals do not suffer and that their deaths are swift and painless” (374). Also, although it is correct thought that some animals are treated poorly, animal testing is for the better overall as it saves humans lives. Animals should not be given the rights that humans have because humans can think, judge, and behave, but animals cannot.

Work Cited
Lin, Doris. “Protecting Animals ' Moral Status and Moral Rights.” Animal Rights 9:6 (2008): 721-725. Print.
Carroll, Jamuna. “Gale Cengage.” Do Animals Have Rights? (2004): 209-217. Print.
Polloan, Michael. The Norton Reader. London, NY: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2012. Print.

Cited: Lin, Doris. “Protecting Animals ' Moral Status and Moral Rights.” Animal Rights 9:6 (2008): 721-725. Print. Carroll, Jamuna. “Gale Cengage.” Do Animals Have Rights? (2004): 209-217. Print. Polloan, Michael. The Norton Reader. London, NY: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2012. Print.