A lion catches a zebra, which bellows and dies. A deer falls into a sinkhole, and that is the end of it. Hurts and deaths caused by nature are natural, not wrong. Wrong is when we rob creatures of their lives, their futures they would enjoy, because we think we have the right to do anything we want to them. Tom Regan explains:
The forlornness of the veal calf is pathetic, heart wrenching; the pulsing pain of the chimp with electrodes planted deep in her brain is repulsive; the slow, tortuous death of the raccoon caught in the leg-hold trap is agonizing. But what is wrong isn’t the pain, isn’t the suffering, isn’t the deprivation. The fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us.
(Quoted from page 36 of Ethics and Animal Rights, by Lori Gruen. Cambridge University Press, 2011)
For a brief biography of Tom Regan, click here. For images of or relating to Tom Regan, click here. To enter The Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive, click here.
For Lori Gruen’s homepage, click here. For images of or relating to Lori Gruen, click here.
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