Do animals have right?

Do animals have right?

            Humans depend on animals for many things but the way we treat them raises some important moral question. There are more than one hundred thousand animals dead in Taiwan because of experiments. In modern times, there are many issues of animal rights. However, the concept of animal rights doesn’t mean they should have all the same right human. For instance, animals naturally can’t vote. So animal right only ensure them by laws in order to avoid people who abuse animals.

            Dr. Jane Goodall is a famous animal conservationist who has been investigating chimpanzee life for fifty years and has corrected many academic misunderstandings about chimpanzees. She realized that chimpanzees are not as docile as we once thought, sometimes, they will make a group in order to hunt others prey which is strikingly similar to what human beings, and chimpanzees also have a social class in their society. However they will try to strive for higher social class just like us. Once, Goodall found that chimpanzees made tools to retrieve ants from an anthill. This discovery shattered the concept that “only humans can make tools”. As Goodall states, there’s a close relationship between humans and chimpanzees. She also said the similarity between chimpanzees and human’s genes are above 98.5%. In 1977, Dr. Goodall established a research center in order to spread wild animal conservation and environmental education to the whole world. In 1984, Dr. Goodall has set up a zoo in order to keep chimpanzees that were illegally hunted by hunters, and this is also the biggest chimpanzee research center in the world. As we know, Dr. Jane Goodall has strived many rights for chimpanzees which let others people know we should be respectful to animals, because some of them have feelings just like us.  

            The issue of animal experiment action can be discussed very widely, as we know from dissect frogs to duplicate sheep Dolly. According to G.KUsters (1933) states, until 1900, there were sixty Nobel Prizes giving to people who invented new medicine successfully and discovered the function of medicine. However, animals have participated in every experiment which means animals had big contributions for us to resist diseases and prolong our life. In contrast, their sacrifices for our health become our reasons to keep doing animal experiment. Thus, scientists have noticed this moral problem, and they spend lot of money to replace animal experiment. In this way scientists can get the same result of research as well. Actually, in 1959, Russel and Burch published a book called “The Principles of Human Experimental Technique”. In this book, they contend three points of doing animal experiment: replacement, reduction, and refinement. Three points basically mean scientists will try to replace animal experiments by spending lot of money, reduce animal experiments as many as they can, and make experiments more refined. As awareness of animal rights developed, scientists began to follow these three points in America and Europe.

            Even though laws don’t endow animal right as same as humans, there are many laws designed to ensure that animals are mistreated by people. In England, America and France, after people die, they can establish a philanthropic fund to ensure their pets’ life. In 1992, Switzerland has passed a law that states that animals are “beings” and not “things”, and Germany has ingrained animal rights in their constitution. Moreover, in Israel, the government prohibits students from dissecting animals and forbids animal performances in circuses. Most people think chimpanzees have high wisdom, and chimpanzees are able to determine their situations. If their freedom limited by someone, they will feel depress as same as us, conversely, there are some animals that only have simple nerve system such as jellyfish. Jellyfish’s structure is only kind of more complicate than a mechanical arm, which means they are unable to make decisions or they don’t even know if they have rights or not. Strictly, if we are talking about animal rights, there is no harm in grouping jellyfish with vegetables. How do we judge what kind of animals should have rights? So far, there are no specific standards, but we can say with certainty that we have to respect to animals without mistreating and abusing them.

            Believe it or not, people are similar to some animals such as chimpanzees, and we should be respect to animals because some of them have emotion and feelings just like us. Many organizations and people have strived for animal rights. However the concept of animal rights is not the same as human rights. Nowadays, scientists spend much money in order to use other experiment to replace animal experiment. Not only scientists but also we as the public have to respect to animals and protect them from being mistreated or abused. In this way, the argument of animal rights will reduce and our society will be more harmonious and satisfactory. .