Amazing Discovery: Stress Affects Fertility
A stunning discovery was revealed at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology’s annual meeting: stress affects the female ovulatory cycle. Did the rigorous research that led to this amazing conclusion involve, I don’t know, asking any human female what happens to her ovulatory cycle when she’s stressed? Did it involve asking couples who tried, unsuccessfully, to get pregnant, and then who started adoption procedures, only to get pregnant shortly thereafter? Did it involve speaking with a fertility doctor, whose most basic conversation with new patients highlights how stress affects the female ovulatory cycle?
No.
Shockingly, it was zoologists, studying African naked mole-rat colonies, who (re)discovered what we’ve all known for quite some time.
Evidently the queen mole bullies the others and the resulting stress wreaks havoc on everyone’s reproductive systems. Zoologists brilliantly extrapolated their findings back to humans, whom we already know have reproductive systems that are adversely affected by stress. According to Chris Faulkes, a zoologist at the University of London:
[N]aked mole-rats aren’t alone in their odd ways, Faulkes noted. “Social suppression of reproduction in marmoset monkeys is very similar to that in naked mole-rats,” he said, “and as these are primates the applications to understanding human stress-related infertility aren’t so far fetched.”
Faulkes thinks stress and fertility areas of the brain are closely related in most mammals, so careful comparisons of mole-rats to humans could reveal how genes, environment, up-bringing and culture contribute to human infertility.
In my opinion, animal experimentation is probably the one use of animals that you can make a legitimate argument for. Not that I support it, but its supporters can actually claim it has resulted in some benefits for humans and animals (no, not the animals being experimented on). But this kind of research, if it was designed and manipulated by humans, is useless to all concerned because it doesn’t provide anyone with new information. And somebody’s tax dollars or donation dollars funded it, so it’s doubly disconcerting. Finally, that last sentence in the quote above sets the stage for more invasive experiments, again, to study a question we already have the answer to. We don’t need to do any experiments on anybody. And if we want to know about human fertility, the answers are all under our noses, without ever having to disturb a nonhuman animal.
"In my opinion, animal experimentation is probably the one use of animals that you can make a legitimate argument for".
No, unconsented experimentation in a sentient being to benefit other beings is never legitimate, no matter its positive results. The only uses of sentient beings that can be justified by humans are related with self-defense (like capturing and studing poisonous animais to find the antidote for their poison) or desperate state-of-necessity situations (like eating a crab or even a human fellow in a desert island).
What I'm referring to is THE ARGUMENT by others that it might be useful or necessary. Using animals for food or clothing or sport are clearly unjustifiable and there's no way around that. That's a no-brainer. But the usage for experimentation purposes, particularly considering such research has produced some results that have benefited people and animals (again, I'm not endorsing, I'm just saying what has occurred), though those results are profoundly exaggerated in the media, is a slightly different story. It's the only SEEMINGLY legitimate usage that warrants a response. No one needs to eat, wear or use animals for entertainment, but the argument that we need them to experiment on to discover things that would help us and them is the only one, in my opinion, that remotely SOUNDS LIKE IT MIGHT BE LEGITIMATE and in need of a thorough response. The problem is that we'd be foolish to say that NOTHING has ever come of experimenting on animals (again, I'm not talking about justice and using them as objects). That's simply not the case. But that's different from: Do we have the right to? Nothing good for animals has come from circuses, meat-eating, the Iditarod, or greyhound racing, but do you see that experimentation might require a slightly different approach?
I'm sorry about the capitals. There's no way to do italics and I feel like it looks like I'm yelling rather than emphasizing.
That's why the only approach to human-nonhuman relationship should be rights-based, because it prevents the use of other animals by humans EVEN if it can be justified in terms of necessity. For instance, we don't think it's OK to use a human being as a forced organ donor, even if his sacrifice can save other humans who need desperately a new heart, a new liver and new kidneys. If we consider other animals as rightholders, the situation is exactly the same.
I don't disagree, Claudio. I'm simply addressing that if someone is using an argument of necessity, experimentation is the only use that they could ever build a case for.
After rereading the comments above, I figured out that apparently there is no difference beetwen the humans without food in a desert island and the humans in a desperate need for an organ donation. In both situations, their survival depends on the instrumental use of another sentient being who was not responsible for their ordeal (except in the case of the human who was responsible for the shipwreck). However, in the case of the desert island, all humans are in a life-boat situation: if no one sacrifices himself to feed the other ones, everybody is going to die. But what about the crabs or turtles who have the bad luck to showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time? We can't say that they are in a life-boat situation with the castaways but, at the same time, the humans wouldn't hesitate to eat them first. What if a vivissector uses the same logic to justify his experiments?
I'm not sure I follow, but vivisectors can, and do, use all kinds of logic and nonlogic to justify what they do. It doesn't matter what they say, though, as we are likely to never agree. What matters, as you rightly pointed out, is how WE frame our beliefs (in terms of rights, rather than, say suffering and cruelty).