Taxonomy and ethics

[Andrew Mitchell]

On Wed, 25 Sep 1996, Dennis Paulson wrote:

> 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.

No, of course I'm not comparing museum collecting to apartheid (although
that viewpoint is probably out there somewhere).  The point I am making is
simply that if you're looking for ethical justification for your actions
you cannot get it by comparing your actions to those of other people.
This is a philosophical question and should be addressed within a
philosophical framework.


> 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.

No need to patronize me!  That issue is central to the whole debate, and
there's no way I could have avoided thinking about it.

> 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.

I hadn't considered that viewpoint - I concede it may work.  However, it
is instructive to wonder what will become of the "mammoths"  once a small
population has been reconstituted.  They will of course be highly inbred.
They will of course be captive.  What kind of a life will they have?  It
seems to me they will exist solely for their novelty factor, as extensions
of some scientist's ego.

> Would you have the same attitude if it were an extinct insect?

Certainly.  If entomologists don't look after insects' interests, who
will?

> And I don't agree at all that the fate of birds/mammals in Siberia is
> irrelevant.

I didn't say it was irrelevant, period - I said it was irrelevant to the
question of ethics (as I wrote in my first paragraph, above).

> 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.

Agreed!

>     <paragraph snipped>

> 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?

I regularly kill both mosquitoes (I swat them because they're a nuisance)
and moths/butterflies (I freeze them at -80 C for DNA-sequencing studies).
I think the former is easily justified (Buddhists disagree of course) but
I'm ambivalent about the latter: somewhere there is a line between killing
for recreation (and interest?) on the one extreme, and killing out of
necessity, at the other extreme.  I cannot yet say where I would draw that
line.

> 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).

Meaningful dialogue between the average, placard-waving "animal-rights
activist" and
an equally dogmatic, duck-hunting "sportsman" is impossible, I agree.  But
dialogue between biologists and the less dogmatic of the above can be
productive.  I'm grateful that those "radicals" are out there otherwise we
probably wouldn't even be thinking about these issues... and we need to.

>  I think we still need to keep trying.

Indeed!

***************************************************************************
Andrew Mitchell
Department of Entomology               E-MAIL: moths at phelix.umd.edu
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-5575
U.S.A.
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