Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
transmitted to them. 4 Yet, from a broader liberationist perspective, such remarks
barely scratch the surface of the moral questions that AAT raises. A liberationist
stance ascribes value not only to the life of the animal, but also to the quality of
such a life, as well as to the value of the animal's freedom, in the sense that restrict-
ing freedom requires a moral justification. For liberationists, using animals to treat
humans is potentially immoral in six distinct ways:
1. Limitations of freedom : Animals need to be kept by the therapists or be tempor-
ary companion animals of the individual being treated, or the disabled individual be-
ing helped. In some cases, when the animals are in effect modified pets (like guide
dogs), the limitations of freedom are the same as those involved in all owner-pet re-
lationships (relationships that are themselves immoral for some liberationists regardless
of their quality, though not for the liberationist stance taken by this topic). In the
case of animals that are not pets or modified pets (e.g., rabbits, hamsters, chinchillas,
snakes, and birds), the loss of freedom may be much more severe. All of these re-
spond to human beings but, unlike alarm or service dogs, they do not appear to de-
rive pleasure from such interaction and seem incapable of transferring their social
needs—for those of them that do exhibit such—onto humans.
2. Life determination : Freedom can be curtailed for a temporary period (for ex-
ample, confining a wounded animal that lives in the wild, and then releasing it once
it has healed). But unlike type 1 actions, some actions with regard to animals are
total and life determining. Turning an animal into a companion animal, into a zoo an-
imal, a race horse, a jumper, or an event horse are life-determining actions. The de-
cision to employ an animal therapeutically involves making such a total decision re-
garding a particular animal.
3. Training : Getting dogs or monkeys to efficiently assist humans in numerous
tasks involves a prolonged training period, which itself includes various violations of
the animal's well-being. Creating therapy-horses requires “breaking” them. Moreover,
unlike cats and dogs, many of the other animals used in AAT are frightened by hu-
man presence and have to undergo periods in which they get accustomed to humans
around them.
4. Social disconnection : Simians live in packs. By turning them into nursing entit-
ies, one disconnects them from whatever it is that they maintain through their social
context. The same holds for rabbits or other rodents that are isolated from their kin.
There is, to be sure, a certain degree of mystery here regarding both the nature of
the social needs and the way they might be internally experienced as a loss by the
animal. Yet it is dubious to deny that such disconnection (or bringing up the animal
without contact with its kin) is a form of deprivation.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search