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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
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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