All Animals Are Equal

In our world, protests occur each day on the issues of animal cruelty and human rights, but when the issues are put together which will reign over the other? The author Peter Singer of “All Animals are Equal” and “Tools for Research” presents his argument for determining when animal experiments are justified. The author starts his paper with a counter argument, questioning if one would be willing to let thousands of people die if those people could be saved by experimentation on a single animal. The answer is a unanimous no; in our culture we value human life over everything else. The author follows by asking the reader if they would be prepared to carry out their experiments on humans who are mentally retarded or orphaned babies, if that were the only way to save thousands of lives? To Singer, if one is unprepared to experiment on humans then they have revealed a form of discrimination on the basis of species, known as speciesism.
In this paper the condition for justified experimentation using animals is discussed. Singer states that if an experiment is truly important it would be acceptable to use a human patient, which shares the same cognitive level with an animal. In such a case, Singer considers it acceptable to substitute an animal. However, he realizes that, even though the only difference between the two is that one is a member of our species and the other is not, the animal would be the preferred choice for research purposes. This bias is what Singer refers to as being a speciesist. Speciesism is defined by him as a, “prejudice or attitude of bias favour of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species” (Page 6, All Animals are Equal).
To better understand speciesism as defined by Singer one needs to better understand the commonalities between humans and animals. To the author, animals should be viewed as living beings that have feelings, can feel pain and feel fear. The author explains that animals (mammals