PETER SINGER CLARIFIES POSITION

[Guest guest]

Posted with permission.

 

Vivien Pomfrey [vivien.karuna@ tiscali.co.

uk<http://uk.f280.mail./ym/Compose?To=vivien.karuna%40tiscali.co.uk>

]

>Wednesday, November 29, 2006 6:22 PM

>Undisclosed- Recipient: ;

>Peter Singer clarifies his position

>

>I have permission to forward this message; please feel free to do

>likewise. I do not know whether it has been published online.

>

>Dear All,

>I was most concerned about the reports regarding Peter Singer and decided

to

>contact him directly, this morning, to find out his views 'from the horses

>mouth'.

>His response was swift and included an attached letter to the editor of the

>Observer which is as follows:

>

>~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~

>The Editor

>

>Your story " Animal Guru Gives Tests His Blessing " (Observer, 26/11/06)

>suggests that my remarks in the BBC2 documentary " Monkeys, Rats and Me:

>Animal Testing " represent a change in my position on animal testing. That

>impression needs to be corrected.

>

>Neither in my 1975 book Animal Liberation, nor anywhere else, have I ever

>said that no experiments on animals could ever be justifiable. My position

>has always been that whether an act is right or wrong depends on its

>consequences. I do insist, however, that the interests of animals count

>among those consequences, and that we cannot justify speciesism, which I

>define as giving less weight to the interests of nonhuman animals than we

>give to the similar interests of human beings.

>

>In our on-camera discussion, Professor Aziz claimed that experiments he had

>performed on a small number of monkeys had yielded major benefits for tens

>of thousands of people suffering from Parkinson's Disease. I replied that

>if the facts were indeed as he asserted, and there was no other way in

which

>the benefits could have been achieved, such research could be justifiable.

>Whether the facts are as Professor Aziz claims I shall leave for others to

>debate.

>

>Professor Aziz is quoted as saying that my remarks are " an encouraging

>sign. " Before he gets too encouraged, he might consider that in Animal

>Liberation I suggested that a test for whether a proposed experiment on

>animals is justifiable is whether the experimenter would be prepared to

>carry out the experiment on human beings at a similar mental level - say,

>those born with irreversible brain damage. If Professor Aziz is not

>prepared to say that he would think such experiments justifiable, his

>willingness to use animals is based on a prejudice against giving their

>interests the same weight as he gives to the interests of members of our

own

>species.

>

>Whether or not the occasional experiment on animals is defensible, I remain

>opposed to the institutional practice of using animals in research,

because,

>despite some improvements over the past thirty years, that practice still

>fails to give equal consideration to the interests of animals. For that

>reason I oppose putting more resources into building new facilities for

>animal experimentation. Instead, these funds should go into clinical

>research involving consenting patients, and into developing other methods

of

>research that do not involve the harmful use of animals.

>

>Sincerely,

>

>Peter Singer