frandroid

Had you read anything I've written, you'd notice that I've already rejected a calculus of suffering. I don't accept any argument that justifies the suffering of one on the basis of the benefit of another. And, further, I've argued - which no one has disputed - that vertebrates experience pain in more or less the same way, hence, there are no grounds upon which to dismiss animal suffering. A calculus of suffering is a deficient moral position because it opens the door to huge problems that you've clearly ignored. From the perspective of cognition, a human with retrograde amnesia is identical to a what the most severe critiques of animal consciousness will claim: they have no sense of identity, they have have no sense of past and future, and they have no memory. It would seem that a human with retrograde amnesia is an excellent candidate for research - afterall, with the exception of not having an identity, which isn't essential to research as it is, the amnesiac is a perfect model of the human. Compare that to the standard lab rat: the metabolism and basic organic function works far more quickly on rats than it does on humans, consequently, cancer research continually runs into a problem: the protocol works perfectly on rats, but does absolutely nothing on humans. But, like I said, I'm not interested in economic arguments - apparently you are.