Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!whuxl!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!pesnta!amd!amdcad!amdimage!prls!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!brl-tgr!wmartin From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) Newsgroups: net.bio Subject: Re: Suffering and CNS Message-ID: <2398@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Thu, 24-Oct-85 18:52:09 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.2398 Posted: Thu Oct 24 18:52:09 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 29-Oct-85 04:25:38 EST References: <2375@sjuvax.UUCP> <2120@amdahl.UUCP> Reply-To: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin (DRXAL-RI)) Distribution: net Organization: USAMC ALMSA, St. Louis, MO Lines: 26 I believe the SPCA has some specific guidelines on this issue, designed to be used to determine whether certain behavior is "cruel" or not. A call to your local office or representative should produce a copy of such info. I recall reading, many years ago, some such criteria; I do not believe that it had much scientific basis, but was more subjective (e.g., the usual concept of "the farther away an organism is from human, the less that anything that happens to it matters"). The net result was that they cared about mammals and birds, and not much else. (I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong... :-) It usually works out so that our usual behavior is approved as being all right -- eating raw (living) oysters, cooking lobsters/crayfish while they are still alive, catching fish with hooks and then releasing them, etc. No point in "rocking the boat", as it were... I'm not "holier-than-thou" about this -- I admit to doing (or eating the result of) the above. However I believe that I am not a hypocrite about it -- life is pain, and we live by causing pain and misery to other things. It is inevitable. We can avoid gratuitous pain-causing, though. Will PS -- this reminds me of something I heard in some PBS program about fish or fisheries -- there is a fish called the "grunt". It is called that because of the sound it makes when the fishermen pull the hook out. (It is caught commercially.) Hell, I'd grunt, too! WM