Should ethics be thrown aside if working with invasive species?

[Genecks]

In a lot of ways, mice and rats are invasive. For some odd reason, we still have ethics committees about those guys.

 

Should we have strict ethics about doing biological research with invasive species?

 

What about bunnies? Should there be ethics involved with bunnies? I'm talking about Australian bunnies.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia

 

Australia is supposedly filled with a lot of these bunnies. Let alone, people have attempted to generate viruses in the past to get rid of the bunnies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11553459

 

Personally, I think creation of the viruses was seriously unethical. Secondly, why destroy a useful resource when you can do so many things with it?

 

For instance, perhaps a more ethical and considerable thing, people ate the Australian rabbits during the great depression. They generated a market around it. That's understandable.

 

But then people generated a virus with the questionable intent of releasing it into the population without permission.

 

Now that this has happened, surely people will be wary about eating the rabbits, as was done in the Great Depression and wartime.

 

We have seem the ethical and the unethical.

 

Nonetheless, as they are an invasive species, it gives a person opportunity to use them as a mammalian model to conduct biological experiments with, such as doing experiments on anatomy and physiology: And I'm not referring to immunology, as previous experiment with them in that regard have provided themselves as unethical.

[CaptainPanic]

In another post, you suggest that the ethics board is getting out of control, and that people are discussing at the wrong level.

But now I read your opening post, and I am confused what you want to discuss.

 

Do you want to discuss if there are situations where ethics can be thrown aside?

Do you want to discuss if ethics can be thrown aside in the specific case of the Australian rabbits?

Or do you want to discuss what would ethically be the best way to deal with the Australian rabbits?

 

Those are three very different levels... the first one quite abstract, the last one quite practical. Please be more specific before we all get out of control again.

[Mr Skeptic]

Ethics should never be thrown out, but should always account for all possibilities. If not, your ethics system needs adjusting.

 

I can see where if we approve of extermination attempts it would seem questionable to demand ethics review for using that very species as experimental test subjects.

[Marat]

This touches on an essential paradox of the whole 'animal rights' movement. If animals do have a right against cruelty and mistreatment, does that mean that we humans are ethically obligated to scour the planet to ensure that cats are not sadistically playing with mice and torturing them to death without eating them -- as they are often observed to do? In such a case, the pain inflicted on the mice cannot be justified by any supposed counter-balancing right of the cat to feed itself and save itself from starvation, since the mice are just tortured but not eaten. What is the moral difference between our wilfully neglecting to prevent cats from torturing mice just for the cats' own sadistic pleasure and our torturing mice in a lab experiment to find a cure for human cancer? Don't killer whales similarly 'play with' and torture seals to death in the same way? Are we now ethically obliged to police the whale population to ensure that this outrage never happens again? How can beings such as animals who recognize no ethical duties to any other living thing claim to be protected by ethical duties?

[Genecks]

This touches on an essential paradox of the whole 'animal rights' movement...

 

Definitely. There is surely a paradox here. I'm attempting to make the best of a bad situation, which can actually be a good situation for particular scientists who don't feel like shelling out cash to gather resources.

 

...

Do you want to discuss if there are situations where ethics can be thrown aside?

Do you want to discuss if ethics can be thrown aside in the specific case of the Australian rabbits?

Or do you want to discuss what would ethically be the best way to deal with the Australian rabbits?

 

All three, really, but in relation to invasive species as the title indicates.

 

As I've not really seen too many arguments in this realm, I think I will move onto a more serious discussion by providing more discussion.

 

I wanted to see what serious replies would come before I poison the river: I don't want my arguments nor line of thinking to really alter the thinking of others who may have their own opinions on the matter.

 

Anyone who wants to provide a view before reading the rest of this post might want to stop reading it and come back to it at a later time.

 

Some people rather have people who start conversations and discussions present an argument so that they have something to argue again. I attempt to start a discussion with some questions. It's Socratic, sure.

 

--

I think my question was quite specific and succinct. If you want me to break it down further for you, I can.

 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Do you want to discuss if there are situations where ethics can be thrown aside?

 

If a species is invasive, despite being a vertebral or an invertebrate, should a researcher be allow to throw aside ethics?

 

I believe that as long as the research does not directly affect surrounding organisms (in a sense by tampering with the ecosystem that was already there), then a scientist should be allowed to do the research.

 

For example, I have interests in crayfish, behavior, and their learning.

 

In Scotland, there is a currently a problem with sight crayfish, and people have been suggested to kill crayfish on sight: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/7564004.stm

 

I believe I should be in full ethical right to do research on the crayfish without ethical intervention. I believe this for a few reasons: (1) The government has classified the animal as an invasive species (2) people want them gone (3) me taking them capture as part of an experiment (in such a way) helps decrease the population of the invasive species (4) the governments have taken action to remove the invasive species.

 

In a sense, I am helping the government, the people, and help restore the ecosystem by taking away the organisms.

 

In the case where I do not attempt to make a species specific super-virus or species-general virus (nor attempt to do any immunological and microbiological research that would lead to a possible release of a biological pathogen into the world's environments), I believe that the majority of research I do on the organism (say a sight crayfish) would be ethical. Furthermore, I also believe it would be ethical to create a research program with other researchers.

Do you want to discuss if ethics can be thrown aside in the specific case of the Australian rabbits?

 

As with the Australian rabbits, I see that many of the above premises also apply. In America, people often need approval to work with vertebrates. However, in the case of Australian rabbits, there is such an ample supply of them, capturing them and doing research with them would help decrease the population.

 

I say that this is ethical and should be freely allowed on another point: The governments and other agencies have been finding ways to kill the rabbits. The only difference is that the methods of death have involved usage of a virus (which can be used to kill an infected rabbit within about 2-3 days) and guns to shoot the rabbits.

 

A scientific experiment may require more time, thus causing the animal to undergo pain over a period of months rather than a swift death. Then again, there may be times where an experiment does not seem to go forward too fast, and the researcher decides to terminate the rabbit: Say they are investigating the involuntary nervous system and have the rabbit surgerically cut open and everything: It is decided that bringing back the rabbit would make it a neurological zombie (or something similar).

 

Or do you want to discuss what would ethically be the best way to deal with the Australian rabbits?

 

Again, another thing that can be related to the title of the thread. However, as I propose, legislation on dealing with invasive species should be liberal, because people generally want them gone. However, too much liberty in working with pathogenic materials causes issues, as shown in one of my premises.

Edited February 7, 2011 by Genecks

[JohnB]

Speaking as an australian, the answer to your questions is "No".

 

Rabbits are an invasive species and we would generally dearly love the little bunnies to drop dead. We use guns and dynamite for preference because even though we've had mixo for decades we view this as in humane and only used as a last resort.

 

The point is that the methods we use, even though we want something gone tells more about us than the thing we are eradicating. We might want it dead but that doesn't mean we want it to suffer on the way. There is a great moral difference between pest control and outright sadism.

 

I'm no animal rights freak and I don't think they are comparable to humans, but allowing for a flexible morality based on whether or not you dislike something is something I find a very bad idea. Why not conduct experiments on death row inmates? Everybody wants them gone and they are going to die anyway.

 

You could respond that animals aren't the same as humans or that this is a slippery slope argument, but the fact is that every argument you put forward can be used to justify (in)human experimentation. Add to that the simple fact that some sectors of human society do indeed equate other humans with animals, even in relatively modern societies and you have a recipe for abuse.

 

The bottom line is that any behaviour allowed towards animals will be applied to humans with exactly the same justification. The only ethical answer and way to avoid the situation is to not allow the experiments in the first place. The question is not so much about certain animals over others, but a more general "What ethical constrainsts should there be when the percieved value of the subjects life is zero?"

[lemur]

Speaking as an australian, the answer to your questions is "No".

 

Rabbits are an invasive species and we would generally dearly love the little bunnies to drop dead. We use guns and dynamite for preference because even though we've had mixo for decades we view this as in humane and only used as a last resort.

 

The point is that the methods we use, even though we want something gone tells more about us than the thing we are eradicating. We might want it dead but that doesn't mean we want it to suffer on the way. There is a great moral difference between pest control and outright sadism.

 

I'm no animal rights freak and I don't think they are comparable to humans, but allowing for a flexible morality based on whether or not you dislike something is something I find a very bad idea. Why not conduct experiments on death row inmates? Everybody wants them gone and they are going to die anyway.

 

You could respond that animals aren't the same as humans or that this is a slippery slope argument, but the fact is that every argument you put forward can be used to justify (in)human experimentation. Add to that the simple fact that some sectors of human society do indeed equate other humans with animals, even in relatively modern societies and you have a recipe for abuse.

 

The bottom line is that any behaviour allowed towards animals will be applied to humans with exactly the same justification. The only ethical answer and way to avoid the situation is to not allow the experiments in the first place. The question is not so much about certain animals over others, but a more general "What ethical constrainsts should there be when the percieved value of the subjects life is zero?"

Excellent post. I just want to add that generally I think it's better to keep ethics discussion on the level of whether a particular treatment is ethical and not whether it is good to throw ethics out altogether for some classes of entities. It is legitimate to weigh the ethics of respecting animals against the ethics of protecting the human welfare they are depleting, but I don't think it is ever ethical to say that ethics should be thrown out the window for anyone. Every living thing and probably even non-living things should be given ethical consideration before arbitrarily harming them. Totally liberating violence cannot ever be ethical, can it?

Edited February 19, 2011 by lemur

[JohnB]

I just want to add that generally I think it's better to keep ethics discussion on the level of whether a particular treatment is ethical and not whether it is good to throw ethics out altogether for some classes of entities.

 

Nicely put.

[CaptainPanic]

I can see some form of consensus developing in this thread, where most (if not all) of us agree that there is no case where ethics simply do not apply. Therefore, even in the case of an evasive species, the animals must be terminated in the most humane way possible. There is a mention of a (slippery) slope where all animals are equal regarding ethics, (but some animals are more equal than others?).

 

[...]does that mean that we humans are ethically obligated to scour the planet to ensure that cats are not sadistically playing with mice and torturing them to death without eating them -- as they are often observed to do? [...]

Cat-ethics ≠ human-ethics

 

If you say that the cat itself is responsible then we must use cat-ethics... and in cat-ethics, playing with a mouse is most likely completely ok (I'm no cat, so I'm no expert).

 

Some people say that they (as the cat-owner) are responsible for the actions of the cat. And they take responsibility by putting a cat-bell around the neck of the cat, which completely ruins the cat's chances to catch anything at all... until they learn to hunt without ringing the bell around their neck.

 

The point is that the methods we use, even though we want something gone tells more about us than the thing we are eradicating. We might want it dead but that doesn't mean we want it to suffer on the way. There is a great moral difference between pest control and outright sadism.

I agree... however... mosquitos bring up the sadist in me.

 

How unethical is it to slowly dismember a mosquito? I really hate the bastards… and as a species I’d like to see them go extinct (although I am not fully aware of the ecological implications that would have). I will always try to kill them if I can, and it's easy enough to stun them, or injure them so they cannot fly anymore... I really don't see the need to finish them off. Let them suffer. I'll take one wing off to make sure they never sting me again. (Ok, in reality I kill them most of the time - but just regard me as a sadistic mosquito killer for the sake of this discussion). Is this then the other end of the (slippery) slope? Is it ok to have that slope, and to distinguish between the higher mammals and tiny annoying insects, or are they all equal?

 

Please note that we really hurt some microorganisms in a terrible way... take for example yeast. We allow that organism to either slowly bake to death in bread. Or we boil it to death in a distillation. And we have no problems to alter its genetics while it's still alive. Obviously, microorganisms are not really part of the animal-cruelty discussion. How large/intelligent must an animal be to become part of the discussion?

Edited February 21, 2011 by CaptainPanic

[Marat]

I don't think you can relativize the ethical situation as one applying only to cat ethics rather than to human ethics. People have a legal responsibility for the actions of their animals if they cause damage to property, so the human ethical duty to supervise the behavior of animals is already enshrined in law, implying that we are in an ethically supervisory role over what animals do. Also, if you are in control of a relative who is too profoundly mentally disabled to know what he is doing and who thus has no legal liability for his actions, and you see him starting to drown his younger sister in the bathtub, you can't just stand back, relativize the situation, and say: Well, I'm responsible for human ethics, not for the ethics of those without a normal human intellect.

 

So if animal suffering is recognized as such a significant moral problem that we must avoid causing any animal suffering in the choices we make, then there must also be a duty on us to protect animals from suffering in nature, so we are as immoral in our refusal to fulfill our fiduciary duty to animals by not rescuing mice from cats as we would be in torturing those mice to death by eating them alive -- as cats do.

 

The essential misstep in all the modern reasoning about 'animal rights' arises from the fact that the campaign against racism became a massive obsession in the Western world in about 1968 and that preoccupation extends to the current time. The over-inflated obsession with racist mistreatment of humans -- which is important to overcome because humans are essentially morally defined as equal -- was then ridiculously overextended to the assumption that treating anyone or anything differently because it belonged to a different group of any kind was also an evil sort of racism. This then meant that treating ants unequally with respect to humans, frying pans unequally with respect to nucelar reactors, or gold unequally with unequally with respect to horse manure must be racist, or 'species-ist' -- which is a term actually thrown about by the animal rights advocates -- was just as bad as intrahuman racism, which it is not, since there is no corresponding moral injunction to treat everything equally with the moral injunction to treat all humans equally.

[JohnB]

Well, I'm responsible for human ethics, not for the ethics of those without a normal human intellect.

 

No switching allowed. Whether a human has a normal intellect or not they are still human. The analogy fails.

 

Your analogy also refers to "the actions of their animals if they cause damage to property". Unless the mouse is someones pet it is not property. If it is a pet, then yes there is an ethical duty to save it from the cat, otherwise tough luck for the mouse.

 

Nobody here has argued that "animal suffering is recognized as such a significant moral problem that we must avoid causing any animal suffering in the choices we make", simply that suffering should be minimised. If an animal needs to be put down and there is both a fast and slow way to do it the fast way should be chosen.

 

For a simple example. During the filming of a movie some years ago in the Victorian mountains a horse broke its leg. This meant that the animal had to be put down. The vet would take some time (about 2 hours) to reach the site so a roadie used the back of an axe between the horses eyes. The argument being that waiting for the vet to come and deliver the injection would cause the animal unneeded suffering. Animal rights people tried to make a case and failed. They called the method "brutal and barbaric" however the consensus was that it would have been more brutal and barbaric to allow the animal to suffer for 2 hours needlessly.

 

Rather than being about not causing any suffering to an animal, it's about not causing needless suffering.

 

CaptainPanic, I hope to be in Heaven just long enough to give Noah a serious beating for taking the damn things with him on the Ark. Might I suggest that it is equally as satisfying to see just how thin a smear you can make them? To see a mosquito turned into a large and very, very thin stain on the wall has great therapeutic benefits. Your adversary is not merely killed but virtually unrecognisable as ever being a living entity.

[CaptainPanic]

Nobody here has argued that "animal suffering is recognized as such a significant moral problem that we must avoid causing any animal suffering in the choices we make", simply that suffering should be minimised. If an animal needs to be put down and there is both a fast and slow way to do it the fast way should be chosen.

What about the suffering of the cat who can never play with a live mouse, and lives indoors all the time?

 

Can I propose that the ethical thing to do is not to prevent the cat from playing with the mouse, but instead to have no cats at all?

CaptainPanic, I hope to be in Heaven just long enough to give Noah a serious beating for taking the damn things with him on the Ark. Might I suggest that it is equally as satisfying to see just how thin a smear you can make them? To see a mosquito turned into a large and very, very thin stain on the wall has great therapeutic benefits. Your adversary is not merely killed but virtually unrecognisable as ever being a living entity.

The bastards probably weren't invited. They're parasitic, and they probably acted as stowaways. After all, looking at fossils, Noah had little moral objections to let thousands of animals go extinct... but I fear that I have just opened up multiple ways to derail this thread... Sorry! Stay on topic!

[imatfaal]

Might I suggest that it is equally as satisfying to see just how thin a smear you can make them? To see a mosquito turned into a large and very, very thin stain on the wall has great therapeutic benefits. Your adversary is not merely killed but virtually unrecognisable as ever being a living entity.

 

 

I was given an amazing device - it allows you to electrocute the flying menaces. Its like a tennis racquet but with wires instead of strings and a power source

 

 

[Marat]

If you put the mouse's interest in living and avoiding horrible suffering in the balance against the cat's interest in torturing the mouse to death by 'playing' with it before eating it, then obviously the mouse's interest is nearly infinitely greater than that of the cat. So if ethics requires us to respect all beings, then the greater interests of the mouse must be preserved against the lesser interests of the cat, and while we cannot ethically require cats to starve to death by denying them mice to eat, we do have an ethical duty to ensure that no cat tortures a mouse to death, since as John B says, this would represent 'unnecessary suffering' to the mouse.

 

But having to scour through all of nature to prevent all the unnecessary suffering of animals (must we liberate aphids enslaved by ants?) is ridiculous, so by this reducto ad absurdem, we see we can dismiss as preposterous the supposed ethical requirement that we not allow unnecessary suffering among animals.

 

A problem with putting this into effect would be how you define 'necessary' in this context? E.g., a human can survive, though often only in a hideous way, with diabetes, so does it represent the imposition of unnecessary suffering on laboratory mice to make them suffer in an experiment to cure diabetes, especially if the mice's suffering is much greater than that of human diabetics, or even kills them? What about the extension of human urban environments which results in countless foxes suffering horribly by starving to death due to the resulting reduction of their hunting range? Is it really necessary for us to have a four-person family living in a seven-room house if it imposes this suffering on foxes to build adequate housing at the expense of animal hunting grounds? Perhaps we should try to live with twelve people packed into a seven-room house to avoid this 'unnecessary' animal suffering. The whole animal rights demand simply dissolves itself once you take it seriously.

[Mr Skeptic]

If you put the mouse's interest in living and avoiding horrible suffering in the balance against the cat's interest in torturing the mouse to death by 'playing' with it before eating it, then obviously the mouse's interest is nearly infinitely greater than that of the cat. So if ethics requires us to respect all beings, then the greater interests of the mouse must be preserved against the lesser interests of the cat, and while we cannot ethically require cats to starve to death by denying them mice to eat, we do have an ethical duty to ensure that no cat tortures a mouse to death, since as John B says, this would represent 'unnecessary suffering' to the mouse.

 

For bonus points, what would be the justification for allowing the cat to torture the mouse (which we allow), yet preventing a human from doing the same thing (which we try to prevent)? Do humans perhaps have less rights than animals? I mean, we can say that the cat torturing the mouse is being unethical but that we must allow them to act freely, yet I doubt that would be justification to allow a human the same.

[CaptainPanic]

For bonus points, what would be the justification for allowing the cat to torture the mouse (which we allow), yet preventing a human from doing the same thing (which we try to prevent)? Do humans perhaps have less rights than animals? I mean, we can say that the cat torturing the mouse is being unethical but that we must allow them to act freely, yet I doubt that would be justification to allow a human the same.

Having no predators in nature is no option, because prey would just grow out of control, and eventually starve to death as a result of a population that became unsustainably large. And starving to death is also unnecessarily painful.

 

So, in a way, cats are doing the mice a favor by keeping their population under control. Some mice suffer a horrible death, in order to prevent much greater suffering of the entire population. That's nature's way of ensuring the 'least cumulative suffering'.

 

Why then, should the cat play? Playing is a vital element of becoming a good hunter. It's a chance to study the prey.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[Marat]

I think the bonus point question really captures the essence of our concern over animal welfare. What really strikes us as unethical is humans deriving pleasure from inflicting pain on animals. It is an easy but mistaken inference to move from that basis to assuming that that means that animals must also have rights against the infliction of unnecessary pain on them. In fact, it is only humans who, because of their capacity for free moral choice, also have the capacity to deserve moral blame, and only within the moral order, which is restricted to beings with the capacity for morally significant free choice, do concepts like 'blame,' 'duty,' and 'rights' have application. Thus a human should not torture an animal without sufficient good to counterbalance that action because in that act the human abases his own moral dignity by deriving pleasure from the infliction of needless pain on an object whose response is analogous to that of humans suffering pain. This prohibition has everything to do with what human moral dignity requires, but does not derive from the animal having a moral right limiting human actions against it.

 

Once we adopt this human-centered perspective on the mistreatment of animals, it becomes easy to distinguish the cases we want to prohibit -- like whipping an ape in a zoo to serve someone's sadistic pleasure -- from the cases we want to allow -- like Banting and Best making dogs suffer by making them diabetic in order to make the discovery of insulin possible.

[lemur]

For bonus points, what would be the justification for allowing the cat to torture the mouse (which we allow), yet preventing a human from doing the same thing (which we try to prevent)? Do humans perhaps have less rights than animals? I mean, we can say that the cat torturing the mouse is being unethical but that we must allow them to act freely, yet I doubt that would be justification to allow a human the same.

I think that national socialists felt deprived of their right to eliminate by any means people they viewed as an invasive species of human, but I'm sure the people who fought them felt completely entitled to intervene in the situation. Maybe to this thread should be added the ethics and rights of defining species as artificially invasive or naturally migratory in the first place. After all, humans are naturally migratory, and other animals also naturally migrated via the technological vectors of human migration.

 

A more artificial form of species invasion might be when exotic plants and pets are intentionally popularized as being exotic and interesting, and as a result become a threat to other species. But how would it be any different to a native plant or animal that is losing resources to the invasive species if the "invader" was brought intentionally or by the species' own effort. Further, what about something like a palm tree whose seeds float across oceans without humans bringing them? Also, what happens if as a result of pruning invasive species, the natural biodiversity that evolves through migration is stifled? Can that have any negative ecological effects?

Edited February 23, 2011 by lemur

[Marat]

Defining a species as 'invasive' to justify your destroying it seems like an arbitrary fiat to exempt your own species from the laws of evolution. That is of course unless there are other reasons for giving primacy to your own species, such as that it is the only species which can voluntarily obey moral laws by recognizing them as moral duties, which then elevates that species into the realm where it can make a moral claim to have its existence respected. Species which just live to eat and eat to live are entirely outside the world of morality where rights and duties operate, so their only claim to survive has to be based in pure force and brute luck.

 

Interesting, the Nazis made a film analogizing Jews to rats, showing rats swarming into the crevices of a building while the voice-over talked about inferior races of people overflowing the cramped living quarters available to Aryans surrounded in the middle of Europe. While the Nazis restricted the range of human ontology by excising Jews, Roma, the seriously disabled, and even Slavs (to a limited extent) from it, they widened the ontological range of beings to whom moral duties are owed by making their first legislative act the passing of extraordinary strict laws to protect animals against cruelty! Odd combination.

[lemur]

That is of course unless there are other reasons for giving primacy to your own species, such as that it is the only species which can voluntarily obey moral laws by recognizing them as moral duties, which then elevates that species into the realm where it can make a moral claim to have its existence respected. Species which just live to eat and eat to live are entirely outside the world of morality where rights and duties operate, so their only claim to survive has to be based in pure force and brute luck.

Why is it necessary to have a reason NOT to commit violence? Wouldn't it make more sense to talk in terms of reason TO commit violence? Then, if such reason to commit violence are valid, doesn't it always make sense to keep violence to a minimum or reduce/resist it as much as possible? What reason is there to simply liberate violence without due cause purely on the basis of how you regard a species or individual organism?