That's the question that Jeremy Hsu asks, given innovations in genetic engineering:
Due the concern among some meat-eaters that the animals that provide their food suffer physical pain while being raised and slaughtered, Hsu wonders if geneticists may be able to create animals that cannot feel pain. Would it be ethical to do so? What do you think?
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-09/ethical-debate-pain-free-beef
Image: Mitch Romanowski Design
In 2006, researchers found six Pakistani children who felt no pain due to an inactivated gene, and who constantly had bruises and cuts. One fell into the habit of putting knives through his hand and walking barefoot on coals, before his untimely death.
Still, scientists already know that humans can intellectually dissociate the sensation of pain from how much it bothers them. Lab experiments with mice have also suggested a way to disconnect that pain sensation without totally leaving animals vulnerable to a world of hurt.
Due the concern among some meat-eaters that the animals that provide their food suffer physical pain while being raised and slaughtered, Hsu wonders if geneticists may be able to create animals that cannot feel pain. Would it be ethical to do so? What do you think?
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-09/ethical-debate-pain-free-beef
Image: Mitch Romanowski Design
Something we all agree on: We will always eat meat. Humans will always raise cows, whether they feel pain or not, in order to kill them and eat them.
So if we CAN get a cow that feels no pain - that can only be better than the status quo, right?
I didn't want to erase what I had just written just because it could be thought that I wrote it on purpose to make a pun. I don't mind idiom Nazis, but if you replace the m with a t, then I begin to get annoyed :) It's not complicated. I wrote something, turned to be funny(ish) without me meaning it, I left it.