The main article in an Awake from the 1990's had a sad looking dog in a cage on the cover. The final point of the article was that God gave animals for food so researching on them is okay if it saves lives. This lead to the biggest land-slide of mail to bethel against this article. How do you feel about this issue.
Awake says Animal Reseach to save humans is biblically Okay??
by Witness 007 5 Replies latest jw experiences
-
-
kerj2leev
Totally agree!
-
OnTheWayOut
I will say that there is no safe answer.
But going out on a limb, there have been many fine results from animal research.
Most of it can come to an end now. The data has been collected, computers can
help simulate the results on further research in many areas.There are still some medical areas where testing on rats or monkeys will be deemed
"necessary" before humans. Your hard-core animal-rights people will object to it, but
I do not. It must be done as humanely as possible.Most people have no problems with the mice or the rats, but they get warm and fuzzy
for other animals. Many of these same ones would object to hunting, but love their steak.
Cows are not easy to be warm and fuzzy with. Hunting is good, most hunters are
conservationists. If scientists would be good to the animal kingdom, be conservationists,
I see nothing wrong with it. -
Sad emo
ooohh - I reckon this should've been in the 'adult & heated debate' section!
Personally, I agree with using animals for purely medical research - just not for other stuff such as cosmetics an research merely for the sake of it.
The animals should be well cared for and any research should be *relatively* humane - I'm totally against slicing the tops off monkeys skulls and the like.
Animal testing is a sad fact of life, what we can try to do is be as kind as possible in how it is carried out.
-
JeffT
Given my family history I can't be objective on this issue. I know of too many people that have been saved by animal research. Modern animal research is done as humanely as possible (if for no other reason than not screwing up the results). It is not yet true that computers can replace live testing (although it can do a lot of things) there are still many areas that are beyond our understanding. And "research just for the sake of it" as produced some remarkable things that fell out unlooked for.
I don't think the people who wrote the Bible knew anything about medical research, so anything the Awake had to say about it was purely manufactured by the writing department.
-
Sad emo
Can someone post the full article?
I don't see how they made a connection between animals for food = animal testing ok.
I do know that other Christian groups balance the practice from scriptures about man having dominion over the animals - not at all in the sense that man is permitted to abuse them, but that they have stewardship - that essentially includes a duty of care. Again 'subdue' is viewed in the sense of domestication, taming, getting them to work for man - not as in an abusive sense.
It would be interesting to see whether this is how the WTS views it.