Animal Experimentation Quotes

“When we say that humans have a “right” not to be used for these purposes, this means simply that the interest of humans in not being used as non-consenting subjects in experiments will be protected even if the consequences of using them would be very beneficial for the rest of us. The question, then, is why do we think that it is morally acceptable to use nonhumans in experiments but not to use humans?

Vivisection, Part Two: The Moral Justification of Vivisection | Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach”
― GaryLFrancione

“At the end, in Harry’s handiwork, there’s nothing sentimental about love, no sunlit clouds and glory notes—it’s a substantial, earthbound connection, grounded in effort, kindness, and decency. Learning to love, Harry liked to say, is really about learning to live. Perhaps everyday affection seems a small facet of love. Perhaps, though, it is the modest, steady responses that see us through day after day, that stretch into a life of close and loving relationships.”
― Deborah Blum, Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection

“Just as a rat can be conditioned to press a lever in return for a reward of food, so a human being can be conditioned by professional rewards to ignore the ethical issues raised by animal experiments.”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

“In the racist, sexist, speciesist United States, non-white racialized minorities and women are subjected to more than their share of horrific violence, but no human being would wish to trade places with nonhuman animals in a factory farm or laboratory.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice

“In the racist, sexist United States, nonwhite racialized minorities—and women in particular—are subjected to more than their share of horrific violence, but no human being would wish to trade places with nonhuman animals in factory farms or laboratories. . . .
The legal status of women and nonwhite racialized
minorities has improved markedly in the past fifty years; matters have grown considerably worse for nonhuman animals.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice

“There is no such creature as a “farm animal,” except human beings, who have spent considerable time farming down through history. Other species, such as turkeys and pigs, are exploited on farms, by humans. As such, they are “farmed” animals. Similarly, there is no such thing as a “veal calf” or a “lab animal,” though there are millions of calves and mice who are systematically exploited by ranchers, experimenters, and consumers. There is also no such thing as seafood, only sea creatures who are exploited by others for food or profit.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice

“Those who stand within one of the world’s largest religious traditions, if they are sincere in their religious commitment, must not buy flesh, nursing milk products, or hen’s reproductive eggs in any form, or support any industry that profits at the expense of anymals, including zoos, circuses, aquariums, horse and dog racing, rodeos, and movies. Furthermore, those who stand within one of the world’s largest religious traditions must assist and defend anymals who are exploited in any of these industries, as well as anymals who are exploited to gather or disseminate information, whether for medicine, biology, pharmaceuticals, veterinary science, pathology, psychology, sociology, anymal behavior, or weaponry, to name just a few. These requirements are not particularly stringent when we realize that these products and activities not only harm anymals, but also have been proven to harm human health and prevent us from gathering more pertinent information.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions

“. . . no human being would wish to trade places with nonhuman animals in factory farms or laboratories. . . . The legal status of women and nonwhite racialized minorities has improved markedly in the past fifty years; matters have grown considerably worse for nonhuman animals.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice

“Many humans would experiment on nonhumans in the hope of saving a loved one, and they would just as readily experiment on humans to sustain that same hope.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary

“We are morally required to stop systematically exploiting others, whether chimpanzees or pygmy lemurs, chickens or chinchillas. Nonhuman animals are also persons who fare better or worse depending on the way we treat them, we must begin to give them the respect and dignity that persons deserve”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary

“Scientists treat animals like petri dishes—recording emotional distress and physiological terror like weather fluctuations on a barometer.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary

“Might does not make right; self-interest—even desperate self-interest—does not justify exploiting others.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary

“International trade in primates flourishes because we exploit primates for science.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary

“What megalomania led us to believe it would be morally acceptable to exploit individuals from other species for scientific experimentation?”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary

“Increasingly we come to understand that any difference between human and nonhuman primates does not necessarily show humans in a complimentary light.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary

“You were the seed and the leaf and the fruit.
You were the earth and you were the root.

You were the song in the echoing dark.
You were not the snake. You were never the rock.

You were the needle and bark, and you were the river.
You were not winter. You were fresh water.

You were not locked door or slammed door or rattle.
You were not metal. You were not empty bottle.

You were treetop and grassland and night sky and star.
Oh you were warm, you were rain, you were air.

You were the oak leaf and honey and clover
and you were forest and you were my mother.

You were the shore where no crocodiles are.
You were not wire. You were not wire.

- Monkey Writes a Poem About His Mother”
― Clare Shaw, Towards a General Theory of Love

“If you view monkeys as operating on basic stimulus and response—and a lot of people still do that—then that's all you're going to get out of them," Rumbaugh says. "If you don't even look for intelligence, there's no way you're going to see it.”
― Deborah Blum, The Monkey Wars

“The field relies on monkeys; there are few human volunteers for brain-injury experiments. Zola-Morgan admits that he couldn't do the work if monkeys weren't so smart. "I hesitate to talk about how smart monkeys are because it tends to feed the animal rights movement," says Zola-Morgan. "But as a scientist you have to honor what you see. I wouldn't say monkeys have simple brains. Not simple at all.”
― Deborah Blum, The Monkey Wars