Animals have the right to be treated as beings of value in themselves

the end of cruelty to animals

animals are not routinely treated well by animal experimenters

Animals not only react differently than humans to different drugs, vaccines, and experiments, they also react differently from one another. Ignoring this difference has been and continues to be very costly to human health.

Thalidomide tragedy of the 1960s and 1970s

Clioquinol

Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

he Geneva Conventions do not apply to interrogation of terrorists and suspected terrorists held by U.S. soldiers because they are not prisoners of war. They are illegal, enemy combatants, not subject to such protection.

But just for the sake of discussion, let’s bring the whole issue closer to home. Suppose your son or your daughter is, for some reason, the target of kidnappers and that they’ve put your child in a hidden location with a bomb scheduled to go off if you don’t pay them a million dollars. Now, suppose you have one of the kidnappers in custody. What would you be willing to do, assuming you couldn’t get the money, to find out where your child was being held and get him or her away from the bomb? Whoops, you can’t slap the kidnapper! That would be torture! You can’t even threaten to shoot him if he doesn’t tell you what you need to know! Again, that would be torture! Do you think you might be inclined to take whatever action necessary to save your child? Or would you let your child die to avoid torture? The world is, and always has been, a vicious place and its fine and grand and noble to talk about never using torture or the threat of torture – in the abstract. I would contend, however, that if the life of your child or your spouse or your best friend was on the line, you might not look on a slap as the unlawful infliction of severe physical pain in quite the same light. In the abstract, we can call it torture. When the lives of loved ones are at stake, I submit that being slapped around seems relatively mild – but I could be wrong.