In the case of laboratory testing of animals, all but the most radical animal people are willing to balance the human benefit against the cost to the animals. That’s because the unique qualities of human consciousness carry weight in the utilitarian calculus of pleasure and pain: Human pain counts for more than that of a mouse, since our pain is amplified by emotions like dread; similarly, our deaths are worse than an animal’s because we understand what death is in a way that they don’t. So the argument around animal testing is in the details: Is that particular animal experiment really
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