Colin Blakemore Animal Rights Summary

Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist, and an advertisement advisor to the Food Standard Agency (FSA) of Great Britain. Gave his perspective during an interview on the issues of animal rights. He support the use of animals in medical research and suggested that drugs should be tested on humans because it will cut the time and cost of new drugs. Blakemore showed his contentment that animals do not have rights because they don’t earn them and they can’t be responsible for themselves by their own behavior. We give them rights, but they don’t know about it. Blackmore asked, “Where we draw the line if not between humans and animals.” He believes that instead of people debating on animal rights they rather talk about responsibilities. The reason for

this is because people don’t mistreat their pets because they have rights.

It’s because they are trying to be decent people. To elaborate on his point, he made an ironic comparison of what we do when we come in contact with mosquitoes. We smack them because they are blood-sucking animal that carry disease. With a lot animals like that in the world, our primary responsibility should be our own species. As a result of his decision on animal rights, Blakemore faces challenges such as threats from animal liberation terrorists attempting to bomb his house on several occasions and mobs trying to attack his house, but they were unsuccessful. Animal liberators are violent when it comes to the animal rights they attack labs and invade people’s home all in the name of rights. (Sholto, 28-30.)
Born To Be Wild by Drew Fellman is a short documentary about orphaned orangutan in Indonesia and elephants in Kenya. The orphanages were built by two independent organizations with the sole aim to help preserve species, and to help orphans

heal from there wounds, both physically and mentally, which was caused by humans their mothers have been killed. The documentary showed how a rescue group helped raise these orphan, babies’ orangutans by using humans as the surrogate mother; these babies need lots of care and attention because they are just as fragile as human babies. Despite the care and love provided by humans, these orangutans are being prepared to go back to the wild by developing activity such as jungle gym to enable them acquire skills they need in the wild. Also, they are under human care but not controlled, as they need to maintain their wildness. The documentary shows scenes of how intelligent, safe, and friendly living with elephants and orangutans can be. For example, in some scenes are the orangutans giving themselves a bath after learning from humans and the baby elephants were playing football with humans; this enable the animals adapt to their new environment. Humans can give animals good life by taking care of them and teaching them how to adapt to their environment rather than using them for self-benefits. Peter Singer, an animal liberator, argued that animals should have rights because they have the ability to experience suffering. One of the scenes show is how a baby elephant is finding it difficult to sleep at night as a result of the trauma he faced at the jungle: elephant was having a nightmare of how his mum was killed. This shows that elephants have the memory of everything that happens to them which can sometimes lead to suffering.
Humans must make sure animal rights have been well established and followed among us.

This is because animals have feeling and families like we do even though they are genetically different. They are struggling to survive with no power and researchers think it is ok to torture these creatures for the advancement of science and medicine. Blakemore suggested that drugs should be tested on humans because it will cut the time and cost of new drugs. Humans should consider this suggestion because this will stop the killing and experimenting on animals. Slaughterhouses are one of the major violators of these laws, mistreat, and animal abuse. A study done on slaughterhouse by Flinders University, a senior sociology lecturer Dr. Nik Taylor, showed that “the more positive a person's attitude to animals, the lower their aggression levels, and that the reverse is also true – if you're cruel to animals, you're more likely to be violent to humans.” Also, research has found that towns with slaughterhouse have higher rates of domestic violence and violent crimes including murder and rape, which prompted the Australian team to investigate the situation. (Tory Shepherd.) To reduce the violations and violence done by workers at slaughterhouses and meat industries, constant examination, inspections should be done, and psychological therapy should be organized for workers because they are work with live animals coming in and killing them. This will help to improve the condition of both the

workers and animals. Another way we can put a stop to animal cruelty is by writing comic books about our experiences with animals rather than writing about the usual human stories. An example of this kind of comic book is Championing Animal Rights by Matt Miner, a member of Redemption Rescue, who used his experiences with animals to write his stories. The comic book mini-series is about female vigilantes fighting animal abusers and dog fighters. One of the scenarios he used in a chapter is about how pit bulls are depict as aggressive dogs. He created a heroic story of how pit bulls save lives of humans, other animals, and put themselves in harm’s way to help. (George. G.) Therefore, as morally straight organisms, humans must do what they can to prevent the death of animals, since we must be compassionate.