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A failure to help that polar bear – or any individual animal in a comparable condition, regardless of our responsibility for that suffering – is. Nor can lack of action be defended by some alleged concern for the course of nature or the gene pool of the species . Consider someone who would use those same arguments to justify not intervening to help relieve the suffering of particular human beings during a famine or after a tsunami, or someone who would use such arguments to say that we should not give antibiotics to a child with pneumonia. Such an attitude, reminiscent of various Charles Dickens characters, would be rejected out of hand as immoral. If the only morally relevant factor is 'can they suffer?', there is no relevant moral difference when animals suffer pain that we can alleviate. (en) |
