1 result for (book:nome AND session:850 AND stemmed:anim)

NoME Part Three: Chapter 7: Session 850, May 2, 1979 4/38 (11%) idealists idealism kill shalt Thou
– The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events
– © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts
– Part Three: People Who Are Frightened of Themselves
– Chapter 7: The Good, the Bad, and the Catastrophic. Jonestown, Harrisburg, and When Is an Idealist a Fanatic?
– Session 850, May 2, 1979 9:49 P.M. Wednesday

[... 26 paragraphs ...]

What does that mean? In practical terms it would mean that you would not wage war for the sake of peace. It would mean that you did not kill animals in experiments, taking their lives in order to protect the sacredness of human life. That would be a prime directive: “Thou shalt not kill even in the pursuit of your ideals” — for man has killed for the sake of his ideals as much as he has ever killed for greed, or lust, or even the pursuit of power on its own merits.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

(10:53.) It means that you are not willing to take the actual steps in physical reality to achieve the ideal, but that you believe that the end justifies the means: “Certainly some lives may be lost along the way, but overall, mankind will benefit.” That is the usual argument. The sacredness of life cannot be sacrificed for life’s convenience, or the quality of life itself will suffer. In the same manner, say, the ideal is to protect human life, and in the pursuit of that ideal you give generations of various animals deadly diseases, and sacrifice their lives.3 Your justification may be that people have souls and animals do not, or that the quality of life is less in the animals, but regardless of those arguments this is fanaticism — and the quality of human life itself suffers as a result, for those who sacrifice any kind of life along the way lose some respect for all life, human life included. The ends do not justify the means (all very emphatically).

[... 5 paragraphs ...]

Small amounts of radiation are still leaking from the plant, and Pennsylvania and federal health agencies have announced long-range studies of its effects upon the human and animal populations living nearby. At the same time, Jane and I hear and read conflicting and confusing reports on the whole business at TMI. True or false, we wonder: There never was any danger that the bubble of radioactive hydrogen gas in the core of the disabled reactor would explode; there never was any danger of a meltdown of the core’s uranium fuel; an act of sabotage against the reactor’s primary cooling system set in motion the whole chain of unfortunate events, with their national and worldwide repercussions….

[... 1 paragraph ...]

3. Seth referred to the way mice, rats, rabbits, and other animals are raised in laboratory captivity, to be sold to scientific researchers who conduct experiments with them that would be considered “unethical” to do in human beings. Mice, for example, are inbred in a sanitized environment for many generations until genetically “pure” strains are obtained; these ideal “models” for research into human defects may be born with — or develop — obesity, various cancers (including leukemia), epilepsy, different anemias, muscular dystrophy, and so forth. Some are born as dwarfs, or hairless, or with deformed or missing limbs. Inbred mice are also used now to test human environmental hazards.

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