Speciesism: A Response to Skyla

Skyla asks: Topics such as racism and sexism are serious in our society but why do people push speciesism under the rug as if it is unimportant or a nonexistant problem?

I believe it is because humans may not see their treatment of animals as speciesist, or may not even realize that their treatment of animals is wrong in some way or that they are treating animals differently than they deserve to be treated. They don't think that animals should get as much care, love, and attention as a human and so ignore the animals, as well as ignore speciesism. Sad to say, many people do not see animals as equals but as something lesser than humans. Since that is the norm, they may not even second-guess that there is a name for this, or that it is wrong.

My question now is this: How can we make these kinds of people see that they are being speciesist? Would they even care if they knew?

Ethical Examples in Modern Media

Forgive me for sounding like a total dork here, but as we were sitting in class the other day and talking about the "yuck factor", I couldn't help but note some similarities between what we are talking about now and two anime series, Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Both of the series have the same premise, but from what I have heard Brotherhood is closer to the manga than is the original Fullmetal Alchemist.

In the series we have the two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric. They lost their mother to sickness, and so they made a plan to use alchemy to bring their mother back to life, by using human transmutation. Their father is an alchemist, but he has been out of the picture for quite some time. After years of studying alchemy (which does exist in their world; it's a world parallel to ours) they make the attempt, but it goes horribly wrong. A portal to another dimension opens, reaching out for a toll because, in alchemy, there is a law of equivalent exchange: you cannot create something out of nothing. At first, Ed loses his leg below the knee, and his brother is taken and rendered apart. In their place is a creature, maybe female, that is supposed to be human but is only human in the barest of senses: it is made out of blood, with sunken areas where the eyes and mouth would be. Viewers do not see what happens to this creature, but in desperation, Ed crawls over to a suit of armor and knocks it over. (When a state official goes to investigate after all of these events, viewers do see a dark stain on the floor.) At the cost of his arm, he is able to rend Alphonse's soul to the armor. From then on, any time anyone encounters the brothers without knowing them already, if they find out about Al, that he's not just wearing the suit of armor, they recoil because, to them, it is unnatural.

This made me think greatly of transgenesis, taking genes from one species and transferring it to another, like with taking Al's soul and binding it to the suit of armor. Also, how everyone recoiled from him definitely reminded me of the so-called "yuck factor".

My question now is: Are there other parallels between what we've been discussing in class and what has been discussed here?

Growth Hormones

Now that we're talking about Bio-Tech, I thought this would be a good time to post this blog. On the sides of certain food products nowadays, there will be disclaimers of "No growth hormones have been used in this product..." The places I've seen them the most are on Ben & Jerry's ice cream and on the side of Odwalla bottles. With so many foods being produced with growth hormones or some kind of hormones, so it's nice to see some companies sticking to natural products. Of course, some of these claims may not be true. I was told of a story with Snapple Apple by my friend, and how the bottle claims that there were real apples in the drink. Yet when he looked at the ingredients, there were no apples in sight.

My question now is: How many of these "no hormones" claims can be believed from these big companies?