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A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.
The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.
But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.
I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:
Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.
Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.
To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.
Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?
Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.
Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.
Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?
For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?
A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.
The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.
But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.
I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:
Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.
Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.
To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.
Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?
Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.
Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.
Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?
For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?
A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.
The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.
But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.
I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:
Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.
Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.
To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.
Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?
Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.
Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.
Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?
For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?
A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.
The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.
But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.
I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:
Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.
Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.
To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.
Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?
Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.
Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.
Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?
For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?
A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.
The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.
But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.
I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:
Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.
Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.
To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.
Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?
Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.
Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.
Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?
For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?
A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.
The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.
But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.
I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:
Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.
Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.
To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.
Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?
Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.
Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.
Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?
For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?
A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.
The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.
But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.
I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:
Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.
Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.
To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.
Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?
Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.
Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.
Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?
For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?
A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.
The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.
But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.
I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:
Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.
Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.
To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.
Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?
Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.
Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.
Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?
For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?
A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.
The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.
But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.
I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:
Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.
Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.
To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.
Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?
Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.
Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.
Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?
For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?
A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.
The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.
But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.
I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:
Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.
Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.
To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.
Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?
Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.
Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.
Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?
For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?
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