Businesses and professions must stay in accord with social ethics, or risk losing their autonomy.A major social ethical issue that has emerged in the past four decades is the treatment of animals in various areas of human use. Society's moral concern has outgrown the traditional ethic of animal cruelty that began in biblical times and is encoded in the laws of all civilized societies. There are...

Since emotions give contradictory signals about animal experimentation in medical science, man's relationship to animals must be based upon reason. Thomas Aquinas argues that man is essentially different from animals because man's intellectual processes show evidence of an abstract mechanism not possessed by animals. Man's rights arise in association with this essential difference. The conseque...

The British government has blocked entry to a key American animal rights campaigner but there are growing concerns about local developments.

The simple, but quite unusual plan, promised much: two leading academics (Gary Francione and Robert Garner) prepared to make their respective cases with conviction and candour, followed by a lively debate between them, during which no stone need be left unturned. In prospect, then, was an opportunity for nuances to be clarified, misunderstandings dispelled and some common ground established. Bu...

For biographical information on Warren, see her reading in Chapter 2. Warren explains and then attacks Regan's strong animal rights position, the view that nonhuman animals have the same basic moral rights as humans. She makes two criticisms of Regan's position: It rests on an obscure concept of inherent value, and it fails to draw a sharp line between living things which have inherent value an...