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ethereality
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While awaiting a response from contacting the National Catholic Bioethics Center (I emailed the address given out on “Catholic Answers Live” many days ago), I thought I would ask a new question here as a followup to my previous thread. Instead of trying to tackle the issue head-on as I did there, here I’d like to pose a question which seems to guide one in obtaining the answer: Are animals to be regarded as God’s pets (i.e. respecting their nature as animals at all times)?
I may soon begin biological experiments giving mice cancer, etc. Trying to justify this practice, I supposed it could be justified as long as I regarded them as mice, rather than as objects (e.g. a glass vial containing a solution). It seemed to me perhaps the sin was objectifying the mouse to be nothing more than a solution – or tissue matrix – for the item of interest. For example, I saw a photograph in a presentation of what the researcher described as “a cost-efficient way to irradiate mice”: The experimenter had basically lined them up in a constricted fashion like a series of vials and shot the radiation beam through them all linearly. In his case, he was giving them brain damage to see how radiation could kill brain cells and affect cognitive function (particularly memory loss). I found the image profane, shocking, offensive: It was very easy to forget they were actually mice, because of their sprawled out limbs rigidly constrained essentially tied to poles – they were, as I said, being treated as nothing more than chemistry vials. (See this image for clarification, from a Google Image search for ‘chemistry vials’.)
So, if we answer the aforementioned question as, “No, they’re here for us to do whatever we want with,” then we can justify basically anything. If we answer that question as, “Yes, but God has given us permission to eat them,” then it seems more difficult to justify damaging them – but that we could proceed with God’s permission after prayerful consideration asking for it with the understanding that we’re respecting His property.
Does this distinction make sense? Am I communicating clearly? It’s one thing to harm animals for science while respecting their nature as animals; it’s another thing to regard them as “useful objects”. Perhaps it is as subtle as the sin that can occur in natural family planning: If you approach it with a contraceptive mentality, then you’re sinning by abusing (misusing) the fertility cycle God gave women, but if you approach it as a physical prayer for God to withhold additional children, but willing to accept them if God deems otherwise, then it’s fine.
So it seems to me now that if you give animals cancer but maintain a certain empathy and respect for the animal as an animal, that it won’t offend God – that what offends God is disregarding the animal’s nature, its needs, and treating it as an object. Do you agree?
I may soon begin biological experiments giving mice cancer, etc. Trying to justify this practice, I supposed it could be justified as long as I regarded them as mice, rather than as objects (e.g. a glass vial containing a solution). It seemed to me perhaps the sin was objectifying the mouse to be nothing more than a solution – or tissue matrix – for the item of interest. For example, I saw a photograph in a presentation of what the researcher described as “a cost-efficient way to irradiate mice”: The experimenter had basically lined them up in a constricted fashion like a series of vials and shot the radiation beam through them all linearly. In his case, he was giving them brain damage to see how radiation could kill brain cells and affect cognitive function (particularly memory loss). I found the image profane, shocking, offensive: It was very easy to forget they were actually mice, because of their sprawled out limbs rigidly constrained essentially tied to poles – they were, as I said, being treated as nothing more than chemistry vials. (See this image for clarification, from a Google Image search for ‘chemistry vials’.)
So, if we answer the aforementioned question as, “No, they’re here for us to do whatever we want with,” then we can justify basically anything. If we answer that question as, “Yes, but God has given us permission to eat them,” then it seems more difficult to justify damaging them – but that we could proceed with God’s permission after prayerful consideration asking for it with the understanding that we’re respecting His property.
Does this distinction make sense? Am I communicating clearly? It’s one thing to harm animals for science while respecting their nature as animals; it’s another thing to regard them as “useful objects”. Perhaps it is as subtle as the sin that can occur in natural family planning: If you approach it with a contraceptive mentality, then you’re sinning by abusing (misusing) the fertility cycle God gave women, but if you approach it as a physical prayer for God to withhold additional children, but willing to accept them if God deems otherwise, then it’s fine.
So it seems to me now that if you give animals cancer but maintain a certain empathy and respect for the animal as an animal, that it won’t offend God – that what offends God is disregarding the animal’s nature, its needs, and treating it as an object. Do you agree?
