I was glad to see the articles on animal experimentation otherwise known as vivisection on the front page of the DE (Nov. 21). Vivisection is an important and controversial issue that few people think about or are even aware of. However, the subject was presented in a somewhat one-sided manner. The articles dealt mainly with the researchers’ ideas about their own work with very little discussion of what they’re actually doing to the animal, and no attempt to answer any of the ethical questions raised by this type of work.

Proponents of vivisection usually justify the use of non-animals in painful experiments on the grounds that humans receive great benefits from these experiments. For example, new medicines, surgery techniques and floor polishes are developed and safety-tested on animals.

But if one is to accept the sacrifice of other species for the improvement of our own species, one must show beyond a doubt that human life is more valuable than that of lower animals.

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Characteristics such as intelligence, ability to communicate and self-awareness often are used as benchmarks to distinguish humans from non-human animals. But these qualities exist along a continuum, with some animals being more intelligent and self-aware than some humans. In fact, the reason animals are used in experiments is because they so closely resemble people.

A normal chimpanzee obviously has more intelligence and self-awareness than a human in an irreversible coma or even a human infant. Why do we not use these people in experiments as well? The reason is animals are seen as other. They don’t look like us, they don’t talk like us, and they don’t act like us. This is the same sort of thinking used to justify cruel experiments on Jews in the Holocaust and the infamous syphilis experiments on African- Americans earlier this century.

Just as we would not allow such cruelty to happen to our children, we must not allow it to happen to other species. Alternatives to animal experimentation exist. Vivisection must cease if we are to make this a moral and compassionate society.