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Summary Of Jeremy Rifkin A Change Of Heart About Animals

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Your newspaper recently published an editorial by Jeremy Rifkin author of the Biotech Century “A Change of heart about animals” in which he suggests that animals deserve empathy from humans because they are also capable of intelligence. Rifkin explains many studies on animals that have proven that animals are intelligent and for that reason they deserve empathy(33-34).I'm of two minds about Jeremy Rifkin's claim that empathy should be extended to animals. On the one hand, I agree that animals are more like us than we think, so empathy shall be given to them. On the other hand, I'm not sure if extending empathy to animals is a good idea because it would affect the economy, slow down medical advancements, and hurt humans by having to convert to a meat free diet (vegetarians). …show more content…

Researchers have found animals can not only “feel pain, suffer and experience stress, affection, excitement and even love”(33) but are also capable of intelligence. A study by scientists at oxford university used two crows and gave them a straight wire and hooked wire to snag a piece of meat from a tube. One of them turned the straight wire into a hook to snatch the piece of meat. Animals have repeatedly shown their abilities to actually be able to think so as Rifkin suggests why don’t we give animals more empathy. Victoria braithwaite a behavioral biologist did a study on fish and came to the conclusion that fish do feel pain because they have “nociceptors” which got tested and the fish did not function normally anymore after injecting bee venom(36). Most animals feel pain and we kill them all the time and even do laboratory experiments that are

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