Reply #78: "it ain't scientists who do animal research"? [View All]

who then? As a scientist, I also do not appreciate specious arguments that malign us, but the truth is that scientists DO test on animals...right now as we speak. Some of it can be defended in the name of lifesaving medicine, but a great deal of it is unnecessarily cruel. But this is a bit off base from the issues I had with your posts, suggesting that we are somehow innately violent, vicious and destructive as a species. I do not appreciate that characterization, and a great deal of contemporary research into human behavior and evolution has had to contend with this socially Darwinistic stereotype of "natural man" sans cultural controls as hordes of murdering, raping, no respect for life(animal and human, if we are to make that dichotomy in the first place; many cultures don't). This view is historically seen in my discipline as a Western construct which simultaneously reinforces and reflects "man" as sexist, violent, and selfish.