Vivisection

1. What about the question of whether or not vivisection actually helps reduce human suffering?
2. How has the debate changed today with the advances in technology?
3. What is a middle ground in this debate?

Perhaps the question now is less relevant than it was back then, because in all likelihood as time goes on, vivisection's helpfulness decreases as we discover more and more about the working's of the human body with every year. I've heard some grim statistics about the accuracy of conclusions about the human body reached through vivisection, and I'd certainly like to believe that today we have new, better, more effective ways to make these kind of medical breakthroughs.

The author focuses on the weighing of pity, which I think is an important factor, but not the most important. After all, before you can even weigh who should pain inflicted upon them you must first ascertain that 1) someone must have pain inflicted on them and 2) that the common good is in fact served by that pain.

I would not be able to have an intelligent debate about the ethics of vivisection unless I had the facts on its effectiveness. After all, if vivisection is proven to be an unreliable source of information, the debate evaporates entirely.