How about cases where PETA representatives explicitly compare keeping animals to slavery:
http://news.yahoo.com/peta-lawsuit-seeks-expand-animal-rights-222219887.html
PETA opposes the treatment of orcas at seaworld, which they believe is cruel. PETA opposes animal cruelty, what exactly is your point?
Or some direct quotes:
"Let us allow the dog to disappear from our brick and concrete jungles- from our firesides, from the leather nooses and chains by which we enslave it." John Bryant, Fettered Kingdoms: An Examination of A Changing Ethic (Washington DC, PeTA, 1982). p. 15
"As John Bryant has written in his book Fettered Kingdoms, they [pets] are like slaves, even if well-kept slaves." -PeTA's Statement on Companion Animals
John Bryant's statement is represented correctly, but it needs some explanation: he holds an interesting rights-based view which contrasts with welfarist views, he believes that animal rights and human rights are equal, but animal and human relationships are always prejudiced against animals, so animals are never treated with equal rights. He's leveled complaints similar to PETA regarding docking tails, debarking noisy dogs, declawing cats to spare furniture, cats and dogs being abandoned, animals being neglected or mistreated. He states that if we cared for humans in the same way we care for animals, we would rightfully say that we infringe those humans rights and consider them enslaved, an argument which applies to nonhuman animals. Bryant holds a minority view, though I've not seen any references to it later than 1990.
I'm unable to find "Statement on Companion Animals" cited above, but my best guess is that you're probably referring to
PETA's article on doing what's best for our companion animals, which states
In a perfect world, animals would be free to live their lives to the fullest, raising their young and following their natural instincts in their native environments. Domesticated dogs and cats, however, cannot live “free” in our concrete jungles, so we are responsible for their care. People with the time, money, love, and patience to make a lifetime commitment to an animal can make an enormous difference by adopting an animal from a shelter or rescuing an animal from a perilous life on the streets.
"In the end, I think it would be lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether." Ingrid Newkirk PeTA (Newsday, Feb. 21, 1988)
"I don't use the word 'pet.' I think it's speciest language. I prefer 'companion animal.' We would no longer allow... pet shops... Eventually companion animals would be phased out." Ingrid Newkirk PeTA (Harper's Magazine, Aug. 1988)
"Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation." Ingrid Newkirk, PeTA, "Just Like Us? Toward a Notion of Animal Rights" (symposium) Harper's, August 1988, p. 50.
Are you aware that animal rights activists, PETA especially, often make a distinction between "pets" and companion animals? They believe the word "pet" is a pejorative which diminishes their value, that a "pet" is little more than a toy you have to feed, and like toys you can chuck them away when they're broken. The believe the very concept of "buying" and "owning" an animal reduces them to the status of property.
PETA has advocated nomenclature which raises animals status to feeling beings with emotional lives, and raises the status of relationships between animals and humans. That's why, for decades, they've advocated
companion animal in place of
pet,
adopting in place of
buying, and
guardian or
caretaker in place of
owner.
They even
spell this point out explicitly:
Pet names: good. The designation "pet": bad. The Journal of Animal Ethics has released a report from three top universities that confirms what PETA has been saying for three decades: The way people talk about animals directly affects how we think about and treat them. Researchers determined that
words like "critter," "beast," and "pet" are derogatory and suggests using the much more respectful "companion."
The journal goes on to recommend dropping "owner" from our vernacular and instead calling ourselves "human carers" (we like “guardians” too).
You may have noticed that we are always careful about our language usage here at the PETA Files, and, just for the record, we believe the term "sugar lumpkin" is still a-OK.
Even if you disagree with PETA's conception of "pet", it suddenly makes sense that that their desire to "stop this whole notion of pets altogether pets" or why they view "pet ownership" with disdain is a
criticism of animals status as property, not opposition to people caring for animals in principle. That's why they've been such huge advocates of adopting animal companions from shelters for the past 3 decades.
The only thing which stands out above is the phrase "Eventually companion animals would be phased out". My best guess is that it mirrors the view described
here that, in addition to adopting homeless animals and caring for them, we should spay and neuter them to avoid accidentally creating more homeless animals and forcing them to depend on humans for any semblance of a decent life. Note that this position is
not opposition to caring for animals in principle. I would love to see the quote in context with the full text of the article if you have it.
And finally, a quote from PETA guru Peter Singer"
Here's the thing about Peter Singer: I own or have read everything he's ever written. I really admire him because he has a heart of gold, his philosophy is watertight. I've been reading his work for a long time, and have basically committed his philosophy to memory.
Unfortunately, he takes a lot of heat because a huge part of his philosophy recognizes the suffering of animals and argues that it should be considered equal to human suffering. He takes a lot of heat from pro-life groups because he dabbles in controversial topics, such as euthanasia and the ethical implications of severely handicapped infants. Not surprisingly, people crib his comments out of context to make his comments seem outrageous, when in context they are not.
So, about those Singer quotes...
"We are not especially 'interested in' animals. Neither of us had ever been inordinately fond of dogs, cats, or horses in the way that many people are. We didn't 'love' animals." -- Peter Singer*, Animal Liberation: A New Ethic for Our Treatment of Animals, 2nd ed. (New York Review of Books, 1990), Preface, p. ii.
Context: Singer is replying to the claim that animal rights activists are overly sentimental about animals. Here's the next few sentences:
Peter Singer said:
The portrayal of those who protest against cruelty to animals as sentimentl, emotional "animal lovers" has had the effect of excluding the entire issue of our treatment of nonhumans from serious political and moral discussion. It is easy to see why we do this. If we did give the issue serious consideration, if, for instance, we looked closely at the conditions in which animals live in modern "factory farms" that produce our meat, we might be made uncomfortable about ham sandwiches, roast beef, fried chicken and all those other items in our diet that we prefer not to think of as dead animals.
This book makes no sentimantal appeals for sympathy toward "cute" animals. I am no more outraged by the slaughter of horses or dogs for meat than the slaughter of pigs for this purpose. When the United States Defense Department finds that its use of beagles to test lethal gases has evoked a howl of protest and offers to use rats intead, I am not appeased.
This book is an attempt to think through, carefully and consistently, the question of how we ought to treat nonhuman animals. In the process it exposes the prejudices that lie behind our present attitudes and behavior. In the chapters that describe what these attitudes mean in practical terms -- how animals suffer from the tyranny of human beings -- there are passages that will arouse some emotions. These will, I hope, be emotions of anger and outrage, coupled with a determination to do something about the practices described. Nowhere in this book, however, do I appeal to the reader's emotions where they cannot be supported by reason. When there are unpleasant things to be described it would be dishonest to try to describe them in some neutral way that hid their real unpleasantness. You cannot write objectively about the experiments of Nazi concentration camp "doctors" on those they considered "subhuman" without stirring emotions; and the same is true of a description of some of the experiments performed today on nonhumans in laboratories in America, Britain, and elsewhere. The ultimate justification for opposition to both these kinds of experiments, though, is not emotional. It is an appeal to basic moral principles which we all accept, and the application of these principles to the victims of both kinds of experiment is demanded by reason, not emotion.
The whole point of the passage you cited out of context is to explain that compassion for animals is a matter of principle and a commitment to consistency in our application our moral principles.
"Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person, Sometimes it is not wrong at all." – Peter Singer "Practical Ethics" (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
I can quote my copy of Practical Ethics if you like, but I think I did a fairly good job summarizing Singer's position on exactly that topic over the past few months:
Here:
Note the reference for that citation:
#3 Kuhse H, Singer P. Should the Baby live? The Problem of Handicapped Infants. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985:143.
I own most of the books Singer has written, including
Should the Baby Live. I'm at work and don't have book on hand to cite directly, but I can paraphrase the thesis as follows:
Sometimes children are born with severe, terminal abnormalities which cause them to suffer excruciatingly before they eventually expire, or never attain consciousness. A few examples would be a child
born without a forebrain which will never attain consciousness, or a child born without intestines which will never extra nourishment from food and will eventually starve to death. (Neither of these are hypothetical cases. Several case studies like this are described in detail in the book.)
Since modern medicine is at a point where we can keep most any person alive regardless of injury, we really have to rethink the whole notion that human life is sacred and must always be protected. Realistic issues, such as a person's quality of life, affect the ethics of protecting life for the sake of life itself, since a hardline sanctity of life ethic has the unfortunate side-effect of prolonging suffering for these kinds of infants. Given the examples above, what possible advantage is there to an infant born without intestine to starve to death?
On the other hand, there are many good reasons for this very narrow case to justify infant euthanasia:
- starving to death is torture, an outcome most people want to avoid.
- even if the infant were sedated, parents suffer an incredible emotional ordeal watching their child dehydrate starve to death.
A good case of non-voluntary euthanasia exists for certain severely handicapped infants who will never attain consciousness or will expire after a brief existence of extreme suffering. Like arguments for non-voluntary euthanasia involving terminally ill adults, arguments for euthanizing severely handicapped infants do not generalize very easily to healthy infants.
Most infants will have a capacity to suffer. Not all.
Anencephalics are born without a cerebral cortex; some suffer catastrophic brain injuries, like burst cerebral blood vessels, which leave them cortically dead. These infants will never gain consciousness, never experience social contact, never have emotions, goals, or feel anything. Most die within a few hours, but some can be kept alive with or without medical support for weeks or years, while never having a spark of consciousness. I would say, in the strictest sense, it would be much better euthanize these infants. (As an aside, I don't think the euthanasia recommendation is necessarily objectionable to abortion opponents, it really is hard to argue that continued existence that they'll never experience is of any advantage to these particular infants at all. The underlying principles however, that the absolute prohibition against taking innocent human life is not as absolute as it seems, has interesting implications on the abortion debate.)
Out of context, the quote you cited makes Singer seem pretty callous in regard to human life. In context, its readily evident that his view is justified by extreme compassion for infant suffering, and I believe his argument for euthanasia is watertight.
Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong." --Peter Singer, as quoted in Josephine Donovan, "Animal Rights and Feminist Theory," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Winter 1990, p. 357.
Why on earth would you reference
Animal Rights and Feminist Theory, which is quoted in
Journal of Women in Culture and Society, which quotes his book
Animal Liberation? Why not quote Animal Liberation directly?
In any case, here it for you, page 84-85 (2009 Edition):
Peter Singer said:
Experimentation on subjects outside the experimenter's own group is a story that constantly repeats itself with different victims. In the United States the most notorious twentieth-century instance of human experimentation was the deliberate nontreatment of syphilis patients at Tuskegee, Alabama, so that the natural course of the disesase could be observed. This was continued long after pnincillin was shown to be an effective treatment for syphilis. The untreated victims of the experiment were, of course, blacks. Perhaps the major international human experimentation scandal of the past decade came to light in New Zealand in 1987. A respected doctor at a leading Auckland hospital decided not to treat patients with early signs of cancer. He was trying to prove his unorthodox theory that this form of cancer would not develop, but he did not tell the patients that they were part of an experiment. His theory was wong, and twenty-seven of his patients died. This time the victims were women.
Whe such events come to light, the public reaction makes it clear that our sphere of moral concern is wider than that of the Nazis, and we are no longer prepared to countenance a lesser degree of concern for other human beings; but there are still many sentient beings for whom we appear to have no real concern at all.
We have still not answered the question of when an experiment might be justifiable. It will not do to say "Never!" Putting morality in such black and white terms is appealing, because it eliminates the need to think about particular cases; but in extreme circumstances, such absolutist answers always break down. Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong. If torture were the only way in which we could discover the location of an uclear bomb hidden in a New York City basement and timed to go off within the hour, then torture would be justifiable. Similarly, if a single experiment could cure a disease like leukemia, that experiment would be justifiable. But in actual life the benefits are almost always more remote, and more often than not they are nonexistent. So how do we decided when an experiment is justifiable?
We have seen that experimenters reveal a bias in favor of their own species whenever they carry out experiments on nonhumans for purposes that they would not think justified them in using human beings, even brain-damaged ones. This principles gives us a guide toward an answer to our question. Since a speciesist bias, like a racist bias, is unjustifiable, an experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so importannt that the use of a brain-damaged human would also be justifiable.
Singer goes on like this for several more pages. He's laying down the principles of utilitarianism, and making a concession that black-and-white thinking is non-productive.
The original quote you have is underlined above -- you can very readily see that Singer's view is not at all callous, and you'd be hardpressed to disagree with it. Exactly what point were you trying to make by citing that particular comment by Singer?
So 3 Singer quotes and you've completely and absolutely misrepresented every one of them. At most, I gather that you feel the need to criticize the work of a guy who you've never read nor know anything about.
