My personal opinion is simple. Humans have the same right to eat other species as other carnivores or omnivores. Moral vegetarians often claim that humans have a choice which is true for some humans, but it should be noted that nutrition studies show less good health for vegetarians and vegans than omnivores, especially children. I do think it is justified to eat other species to keep your health. I do not think it is justified to make your living lunch suffer.
I call myself a carnivore; I prefer eating meat over any other kind of food, and most meals I eat have to contain meat in them. I don't like the arguement moral vegetarians make about eating animals, because quite honestly I don't think they've thought it through. They've basically decided that it's not okay to eat one kind of living creature, but it is okay to eat another (plant matter). They make the claim that it's wrong to treat animals that way, but who made them the referees of morality? Who says eating a plant is any less cruel than eating an animal?
I do think medical reseach on animals are justified, as well as medical research on humans. Unnecessary suffering must be excluded though.
I agree, although I'd rather see more medical research on humans. After all, if the research is going to benefit humans, we have to know how such products will affect humans, and sometimes using animals as test subjects doesn't work out quite so well.
The "free will" of humanity is an illusion made up by our higher cognitive functions that enable us to visualise and think things that are not. We are only partly free, and as a group, because we are a group living species, we are not especially free at all.
I'm only quoting this because I thought it was a good line.
CE, you're too eloquent.
