Destroying Nature To Study Nature: Scientific Violence and Scientific Progress

So I had a discussion with my friend, a neurobiologist. She studies chinchillas and their hearing. Apparently, chinchillas have similar auditory systems as humans do. In the daily course of her studies, she kills dozens of chinchillas a day. Maybe 75-125 a week! A week! And that's once scientist, doing one experiment, in one lab.

My problem, is that she loves nature. She's devoted her life to it. So why does she have to kill nature to study nature?

It makes no sense to me. Nothing needs to die in order for us to study. And my problem with this mass murder is that the scientific project may or may not succeed in proving its hypothesis. All this killing may be for nothing! Not only that, but if the project does prove whatever important thing its trying to prove, then OTHER SCIENTISTS are going to have to perform the same experiment and kill dozens of animals to confirm the initial findings.

It's not even like food, where animals die and we eat them and there is a definite, immediate nutritional, life giving benefit. No, all these chinchillas die for perhaps, maybe, hopefully the chance that this hypothesis about human ears can be confirmed.

Confirmed for what, in the end? All this death, so that maybe, perhaps, one day, a medical company will use these findings and create a better hearing aid? More toys? More crap thats going to be thrown away when a better one comes around?

Have we reached a point where science is only good for making toys? I mean, if we're having to create things like CERN, giant labs where we bash nature into itself, what the hell are we trying to prove? What are we studying anymore? Seriously, science has gotten so remote and distant from reality that they're bashing atoms against atoms and saying, "This is what happened at the beginning of the universe". What does that have to do with our day to day lives? I mean, what is the end goal of all this "scientific progress"? To know everything? To manipulate space and time however we choose? Science sounds a bit like a God complex for people that don't believe in God.

I just don't understand. Scientists, can you help me out on this one? I know you're all logical people, but why do you kill nature to study nature and how do you justify that? How do you still call yourself a good person if you're zapping monkeys exposed brains with electricity day in day out? Is what you're learning really worth it?

reply to post by doctornamtab

Really good questions. Funny too. I sense your feelings about killing animals. I am the same way. My bottom line attitude is nature knows best how to take care of itself. Wild life should remain wild and free. When man messes with it he ruins it mostly. I know all the corporate and ecological pet project people will flame this attitude, but really just leave well enough alone already. You've done enough harm in the name of improving it.

Thats just me, though.

reply to post by doctornamtab


I, personally, would probably come off as a jerk for stating my opinions about animal testing in scientific settings, but, my stance is this: I will personally kill every single (insert species here) myself, if it helps us cure (cancer/AIDs).

I think that is one of the big problem with groups like PETA, or other animal rights advocates. They only ever include the useless, pointless, or blatant animal abuse scenarios in their petitions and videos. They seldom include the fact that animal testing saves lives, as well as "makes toys," or whatever else it does.

Without animal testing, we wouldn't have the medicine, surgical, or practical knowledge of disease which we do now. We might even still be using leeches, or treating mental illness as if it were demons. So, say what you will about killing Nature to study Nature, but as long as it keeps moving us closer to getting rid of diseases like cancer or AIDs, then I will always support it.

As for projects like those occurring at CERN, they probe the very core of the human condition. CERN is for the people who aren't content to say "God did it!" but really want to know the what, when, where, why, and how of reality.

Maybe you're not interested in the life cycle of our sun, or how star systems form. Maybe you don't care about why climate changes are happening, or if the water on Mercury and Mars might have one day supported life. Maybe you're not interested in knowing whether or not another planet somewhere out there might be home to other beings experiencing evolution.

But that doesn't mean you speak for all of us.

If we could understand how the Universe began, how star's are created, age, and destroy themselves, or what conditions are necessary for life to exist on a planet, then think of what we could accomplish. Inter-stellar travel, cultivation of new worlds, proactive avoidance of global catastrophes.

Simply put, consider all of the animals we could save, the Nature we could preserve, if we understood how, and why, Nature operates the way it does.

In order to do so, we need to cut it open, smash it together, and see how it reacts, and why it reacts the way it does.

~ Wandering Scribe

reply to post by Wandering Scribe


But here's another idea. What's so good about saving human lives? People are supposed to die. We're all GOING to die. Cancer is incurable simply because it is the natural breakdown of your cells. Your cells split millions of times in your life, eventually they do it wrong, and THAT cell reproduces and that's cancer. That's it. It's you're natural bodily processes. We're overpopulated because of modern medicine. Look at someone who is 90. You want to live like that? That's what we're killing all these animals for? So we can all be 90 and falling apart at the seams? You are supposed to die. You are going to die. Science can never change that.

Something else I don't understand about animal testing is the big logical leap to assume, "This animal is sort of like a human in this regard, lets study it and then apply our findings to a completely humans, a different species. In fact, let's apply these animal findings on a species that acts like no other animal on the planet, humans." To science, that's logical. That makes sense. But to me, that's a huge leap that really makes little sense.

reply to post by doctornamtab

But here's another idea. What's so good about saving human lives? People are supposed to die. We're all GOING to die. Cancer is incurable simply because it is the natural breakdown of your cells. Your cells split millions of times in your life, eventually they do it wrong, and THAT cell reproduces and that's cancer. That's it. It's you're natural bodily processes. We're overpopulated because of modern medicine. Look at someone who is 90. You want to live like that? That's what we're killing all these animals for? So we can all be 90 and falling apart at the seams? You are supposed to die. You are going to die. Science can never change that.

What right do you, or I, have to tell another human being when they should, or shouldn't die?

You see a 90 year old body, and fear for your own superficiality when you're 90 years old. I see a 90 year old body and think about the history that individual has seen. I think about the world they were born into, the world they grew up in, and the world they'll be leaving behind when they do finally stop. I think about everything that person has experienced: the love, the pain, the awe, the fear, the wonder and excitement of a life lived in 9 whole decades.

And I would be honored to live long enough for my whole body to be completely used up.

Something else I don't understand about animal testing is the big logical leap to assume, "This animal is sort of like a human in this regard, lets study it and then apply our findings to a completely humans, a different species. In fact, let's apply these animal findings on a species that acts like no other animal on the planet, humans." To science, that's logical. That makes sense. But to me, that's a huge leap that really makes little sense.

This would require a discourse on evolutionary theory, and the genealogical family tree which unites us with similar species across time and space. Contrary to popular belief, it is not something which can be discussed in a single reply-post on any forum. You need to study, take classes, and devote a serious amount of energy into understanding how, and why, species on Earth are related to one another. Try looking up some videos on youtube which cover Phylogenetics for the best start.

If you do, then it will become much clearer to you why studying a monkey helps both gorillas and humans. Or why studying a tasmanian devil helps us treat wombats and kangaroos. Genetics unite us all. The closer a species is to another, the more likely genetic information is shared between them, regardless of whether or not they physically look the same.

~ Wandering Scribe

Hippocritic Oath

reply to post by Wandering Scribe


Studying phylogenetics brings me back to one of my original points, look how far removed science has become from our everyday logic. I have to study an entirely new discipline in order to answer a question about one basic scientific principle, namely how do you make the logical leap from animal testing to human benefit? Besides, regular people aren't meant to read that scientific jargon anyway. It's like our modern version of medieval mass in Latin, where no one speaks Latin but the priests. How convenient for the priests. Scientists control the ideas by controlling the language around the ideas. Can the average person even pronouce "phylogenetics"? Is he supposed to?

Even more illogical, you're sitting here telling me how interconnected all these other species are, and in the same breath, telling me how its ok to torture and murder them for our scientific benefit, because it might save a human life. If we're so similar to chimps and monkeys, its EVEN WORSE to torture them for "scientific progress"?

reply to post by doctornamtab


Why exactly are they trying to ascertain? Surely if it is to look at the hearing function they could use computer modelling to reconstruct a facsimile after a given number of dissections to show the parameters of the chinchilla's auditory system?

Seems like wanton destruction to me and as you say, not 'nature loving'.