Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and we eliminate the nesting urge, we have removed a source of suffer-
ing. Given the animal's changed telos, the new chicken is now suffering
less than its predecessor and is thus closer to being happy—that is, sat-
isfying the dictates of its nature.
Why, then, does it appear to some people to be prima facie somewhat
morally problematic to suggest tampering with the animal's telos to
remove suffering? In large part, I believe, it is because people are not
convinced that we cannot change the conditions rather than the animal.
(Most people are not even aware of how far confinement agriculture has
moved from traditional agriculture. A large East Coast chicken producer
for many years ran television ads showing chickens in a barnyard and
alleging that he raised “happy chickens”.) If people in general do become
aware of how animals are raised, as occurred in Sweden and as animal
activists are working to accomplish elsewhere, they will doubtless
demand, just as the Swedes did, first of all a change in the raising con-
ditions, not a change in the animals. It is far more sensible to raise the
bridge than to lower the river; it is more reasonable to alter clothes than
to surgically remodel a body. And it is quite plausible to do so, since we
raised chickens for millennia outside of confinement deprivational
conditions.
I have thus argued that it does not follow from the Maxim to Respect
Telos that we cannot change telos (at least in domestic animals) to make
for happier animals, though such a prospect is undoubtedly jarring. A
similar point can be made in principle about nondomestic animals as
well. Insofar as we encroach upon and transgress against the environ-
ments of all animals by depositing toxins, limiting forage, and so on, and
do so too quickly for them to adjust by natural selection, it would surely
be better to modify the animals to cope with this new situation so that
they can be happy and thrive rather than allow them to sicken, suffer,
starve, and die, though surely, for reasons of uncertainty on how effec-
tive we can be alone as well as for aesthetic reasons, it is far better to
preserve and purify their environment.
In sum, the Maxim to Respect Telos does not entail that we cannot
change telos. What it does entail is that if we do change telos by genetic
engineering, we must be clear that the animals will be no worse off than
they would have been without the change, and ideally will be better off.
Such an unequivocally positive telos change from the perspective of the
