Taxonomy vs. ethics

[Dennis Paulson]

Andrew Mitchell wrote:

>On the other hand, very few biologists and other scientists have been
>"educated well enough", as you put it, about ethical and philosophical
>issues.  Indeed, scientists are usually so wrapped up in thinking about
>what they CAN do that they don't bother to ask whether they SHOULD do it.
>A good example is the story I read recently about a researcher planning to
>artificially inseminate captive elephants with frozen wooly mammoth sperm
>in an attempt to "bring the mammoth back from extinction" (sic) (and sick,
>IMHO).
>
>> I mention the importance of this to museum studies because in one local
>> example, an animal-rights group (PETA) mounted a substantial publicity
>> campaign to stop a bird- and mammal-collecting expedition (to Siberia, of
>> all things, where a lot of birds and mammals end up in stews).
>
>The above line of reasoning is a case in point:  The usual fate of birds
>and mammals in Siberia is quite irrelevant - the question is not "Will I
>be doing anything worse than anyone else", it is "Will I be doing anything
>immoral or unjustifiable?"  (As an aside, apartheid apologists in 1980's
>South Africa used to say: "But Blacks in South Africa have work and food,
>unlike the rest of Africa, so it's no big deal that they cannot vote!")
>
>I certainly don't think the question of the ethics of collecting should be
>glibly dismissed by patting ourselves on the back and saying "we're okay".
>It's a complex question with a complex, situation-specific answer.  Us
>biologists need to familiarize ourselves with philosophical issues as much
>as PETA-fanatics need education on some biological issues.


I appreciate your response, Andrew, but I hope you aren't comparing an
ornithologist going out and shooting a bird for a museum collection with
South Africa's treatment of blacks.  Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but,
notwithstanding my being an evolutionary biologist, I *do* consider people
different from other animals, I guess mostly because they are my own
species.  I personally very much draw the line between killing an animal
(for food if I were starving, to defend myself against a grizzly bear, or
for a scientific study) and killing a person.  I suspect you do too, and
maybe your example was chosen without thinking about this issue.

I guess I'm not turned off by the woolly mammoth attempt.  It seems a
reasonable thing to attempt, if at all logistically possible, and I can't
see that it does any harm to the elephant or anyone else (any objections I
can think up border on the metaphysical or spiritual).  One might argue
that we caused the demise of the species, so we have a certain right, or
even prerogative, to try to bring it back if our science and technology
allow it.  Would you have the same attitude if it were an extinct insect?

And I don't agree at all that the fate of birds/mammals in Siberia is
irrelevant.  There are many species becoming rarer and rarer because of the
multitude of environmental problems in Russia and elsewhere, including
overhunting, and I think it is essential that as many specimens as possible
be saved of these species.  The Russian expedition was to gather tissues
for molecular studies of species for which that has never been done and
probably won't be done by Russian scientists, who don't have the
werewithal.

These animals of course won't die out because of collecting, they'll
disappear because of the many other pressures people put on them, and, in
the worst-case scenario, all that will be left will be in museums (or zoos,
but you can't keep big series from all populations of a species in zoos).
If all people considered these animals sacred and untouchable, I don't
think the vast majority of scientists--no matter how much they wanted
to--would "harass" them, but there might be the same number of "poachers"
as in any section of society.  In fact (and, yes, I'm saying "we're okay")
I can think of only a few justifiable reasons to kill animals, and the
search for the truth (as we like to say we're doing in science) is one of
them.  As scientists kill (statistically) *no* animals in comparison to all
the other ways people do them in, there should be no general concern
except, of course, by anyone who doesn't like the thought of *any* animal
being killed.  And I'm speaking of the extreme case of killing, here; of
course I agree with you and with animal-rights activists that we should
treat animals with maximal concern with ethics and compassion.

I notice you didn't respond as an entomologist to my hypothetical butterfly
vs. mosquito example.  Do *you* think it's fine to swat mosquitos but not
to capture butterflies?  Or to cause international incidents about the
killing of dolphins in tuna nets but not give a second thought to the
millions of tunas that are dying to go in cans in our supermarkets, even
for pet food?  I can frankly say I'm ambivalent about both of these, and I
agree with you that the "complex, situation-specific answer" is appropriate
here.

I hope most biologists understand the philosophical issue about ethical
treatment of animals (and act accordingly), but you're right in that some
of them probably don't.  But, speaking of the need for those on each side
to understand the viewpoint of the other, I have a funny feeling that it
may be impossible to have a dialogue between a person who values the life
of each and every animal and one who believes it is worth sacrificing some
of those lives to better understand the animal (or for medical research,
another but perhaps not too different issue).  I think we still need to
keep trying.

Thanks again for your response.

Dennis Paulson, Director                           phone 206-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History                 fax 206-756-3352
University of Puget Sound                       e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416