this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Not commenting on the rest of it, but Laika and the dogs before her were sacrificed for no reason. I wouldn't call that one a win. Lots of countries have the capability to launch helpless animals into space if they just turn off their empathy for a minute. Many of them have already done so.
There's plenty of sources for it, but the Sputnik researchers abused dogs to 'train' them for space flight and sent one into orbit knowing it would die. One of the people responsible later regretted it, and now the dog gets statues everywhere acknowledging its noble sacrifice for humans that it had no choice in. They killed it then honored it to make themselves feel better.
France killed a few cats the same way.
The US sent monkeys up a few times and only some of them survived, but if humans can only progress into space by first kidnapping animals, then they don't deserve to see the stars.
would you rather send actual people with sapience in first? What's next, no labrats for medical technology?
Unironically yes if the situation were removed from the profit motive I mentioned in my other comment so that we aren't just shifting the exploitation from animals to people.
Most animal research doesn't yield usable results anyway.
Related to this thread, the researcher who regretted sending Laika to space said it didn't even yield enough knowledge to have been worth doing.
ah okay, this I can more readily accept.
Thank you for the reading.
You probably mean sapience and not sentience, because dogs and monkeys definitely can feel things.
I'm going to give an opinion that some may not agree with. The most ethical form of eating meat is from an animal that can consent. Since we can't ask a dog, monkey, cow, pig, etc. if they want to be consumed, the most ethical meat is humans who consent to it. If you disagree please explain how.
The same goes for sending things into space to die for us.
What if I just don't care. I'm against needless cruelty, but for the near future we will need some amount of meant (until correct substitutes are found). The things bred for centuries to be meat will continue to do so for the near future, until we have the time and effort to spare in order to change it.
As someone above pointed out to me, the testing nor space deployment of animals was not truly necessary for any data, its all needless cruelty that gives no results. That practice should be ended.
edit: and thank you for the correction
You'll probably get flak for this but I agree.
Indeed; I'd have happily volunteered instead of a monkey or a cat for such an endeavour for the benefit of our species; and I'm sure I'm not the only one. There's something far more moral about testing such things with people fully aware of what they're doing and the risks compared to sentient beings not comprehending what's happening to them and likely being in a panic all along the way. There should be a word for it, really.
Oh wait, I think there is: consent
The problem right now is that it's hard to determine if someone is giving fully informed and willing consent for what might be a suicide mission if there's any sort of profit incentive. Perhaps some people would be willing to go anyway, but I would wonder if part of their drive is to escape the current state of the planet, which can be changed. I think researchers should be the ones testing their own inventions and medications instead of doing it on animals, but the more likely scenario is that they'll enlist poor people to do it if they're no longer allowed to use animals. It's a lose/lose scenario until that profit motive is gone.
Damn morally superior people always mentioning their moral superiority while making a morally superior argument. Let me eat my eggs in peace (I still eat eggs but I promise only from farms that have lots of space for their chickens, I'm almost there comrade)
Wasn't Laika really important for finding out how important radiators were?