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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!sunny
From: sunny@sun.uucp (Sunny Kirsten)
Newsgroups: net.veg
Subject: Re: Moral Dillema (sic)
Message-ID: <1590@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 27-Jul-84 16:12:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.1590
Posted: Fri Jul 27 16:12:26 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jul-84 21:23:02 EDT
References: <2909@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 32

I always thought that the simple fact that it's healthier for you to not eat
meats was good enough justification for vegetarian tendencies, without needing
to justify it by the "I don't kill animals" approach.  I'm perfectly serious
in suggesting that there are just as equal moral questions involved in killing
plants as there are in killing animals.  I'm not trying to be destructive,
but constructive, in suggesting that you ought to consider that plants have
consciousness before you feel that you've solved all the moral dilemmas by
eating only plants instead of plants plus animals.  At what point is the
life form you eat sufficiently primitive and removed from the human level
that you can be morally absolved of killing what you eat?  What foods are
there to eat which are not killed plants or animals?  Only ones which had
otherwise died before you reclassify them from plant or animal to food.

There has been some research which indicated that plants were sufficiently
conscious as to know when you merely *intend* to do them harm, and react so
violently to being injured or having other nearby plants killed or injured,
that you could measure their response on a galvanometer.  The researcher who
measured this response once had another scientist visit his laboratory, and
happened to still have one of his plants wired up, and the plant just totally
freaked out when this other scientist came into the laboratory, and it 
turned out that the visiting scientist routinely incinerated plants in
laboratory crucibles to assay their chemical composition.  The plant knew!
And when the scientist merely approached another plant and thought about
harming it, the other plant went into another fit!

Oh, you don't believe in PSI phenomena?  Well, then you probably won't believe
plants are capable of it either.  Eat heartily.  Enjoy.  I do.
I've accepted the harsh reality of the jungle.  I don't fool myself into false
superiority just because I'm a human compared to other life forms.
{ucbvax|decvax|ihnp4}!sun!sunny(Sunny Kirsten of Sun Microsystems)
-- 
{ucbvax|decvax|ihnp4}!sun!sunny(Sunny Kirsten of Sun Microsystems)