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From Today's Los Angeles Times

Animal Ethics

In light of this horrible incident, is it right for the zoo to carry on a breeding program that subjects more animals to such unnatural lives? Lisa Edmondson, Los Angeles The zoo, surely, carries responsibility for deficiencies in its enclosure. Finally, what of the audience?

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Tom Regan on the Animal-Rights Movement

Animal Ethics

In issuing its condemnation of established cultural practices, the rights view is not antibusiness, not antifreedom of the individual, not antiscience, not antihuman. It is simply projustice, insisting only that the scope of justice be seen to include respect for the rights of animals. Might does not make right; might does make law.

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Tom Regan on the Use of Animals in Science

Animal Ethics

All that the rights view prohibits is science that violates individual rights. There are also some things we cannot learn by using humans, if we respect their rights. The rights view merely requires moral consistency in this regard. ( If that means that there are some things we cannot learn, then so be it.

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Tom Regan on Utilitarianism

Animal Ethics

The initial attractiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory on which to rest the call for the better treatment of animals was noted in an earlier context. But utilitarianism is not the theory its initial reception by the animal rights movement may have suggested. Because animals are sentient (i.e., Because animals are sentient (i.e.,

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Tom Regan on Endangered Species

Animal Ethics

The rights view is not opposed to efforts to save endangered species. If people are encouraged to believe that the harm done to animals matters morally only when these animals belong to endangered species, then these same people will be encouraged to regard the harm done to other animals as morally acceptable.

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Tom Regan on Kant's View of Animals

Animal Ethics

That Kant should hold such a view should not be surprising; it is a direct consequence of his moral theory, the main outlines of which may be briefly, albeit crudely, summarized. As such, no moral agent is ever to be treated merely as a means. Moral agents are not nonrational, do not have "only a relative value," and are not things.

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Tom Regan on Rights

Animal Ethics

Whether individuals have legal rights depends on the laws and other legal background (e.g., the United States) citizens meeting certain requirements have the legal right to vote or run for elected office; in other countries (e.g., Libya) citizens do not have these rights. First, moral rights, if there are any, are universal.

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