Abstract

Opponents of animal rights maintain that certain types of treatment (e.g. eating, painful involuntary experimentation) are morally justified if animals are the subjects, but reprehensible if paradigmatic humans are the subjects. What implications does the view of the animal rights opponent have for the treatment of noparadigmatic humans? Animal rights opponents prefer to maintain that there is no inconsistency or speciesism in the refusal to treat nonparadigmatic humans as we treat animals. In this paper I discuss the ways in which animal rights opponents have tried or might try to defend this refusal, and I conclude that all such attempts must fail. Finally, I discuss the view that it is not wrong to treat some humans as we now treat animals. I argue that this view, although it does have the advantage of consistency, cannot be justified.