I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
—Mark Twain, The Pains of Lowly Life (originally written as a letter to the London Anti-Vivisection Society, May 26, 1899)
Presently the scientist comes along and says to him: "My friend, by a diabolically cruel process I have procured a revoltingly filthy substance. Allow me to inject this under your skin, and you can never get hydrophobia, or enteric fever, or diphtheria, &c. I have even a very choice preparation, of unmentionable nastiness, which will enable you, if not to live for ever (though I think that quite possible), at least to renew in your old age the excesses of your youth."
—George Bernard Shaw, The Conflict Between Science and Common Sense
Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature...and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Part II, Book V. Pro And Contra, Chapter IV. Rebellion
Vaccination is a barbarous practice, and it is one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time, not to be found even among the so-called savage races of the world. Its supporters are not content with its adoption by those who have no objection to it, but seek to impose it with the aid of penal laws and rigorous punishments on all people alike. ... I cannot also help feeling that vaccination is a violation of the dictates of religion and morality.
—Mahatma Gandhi, A Guide to Health (Part II: Some Simple Treatments, Chap. VI. Contagious Diseases: Smallpox)
How the race for a Covid vaccine enriched monkey poachers and endangered macaques: "[T]he trade in research monkeys is cruel and inhumane — and poses a public health risk due to the threat of monkey-borne illnesses spreading to humans."
/misc | Sep 27, 2021