Fur Back in Fashion?

[semi-pro waster]

Originally Posted by chumpychops

Nope, but if you're only against animals being bred for food/fur etc because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside then one can hardly expect others to autmatically agree with you.

Simply saying 'Killing animals for fur is wrong', and then expecting others to agree isnt the most convincing of arguments, and if someone expects mankind to stop doing what it has done for millenia then they need to do better than specious 'Wont someone think of teh kittens' arguments.

I happy to think the "warm and fuzzies" is a good enough reason as a standalone and it does meet the benefit criteria you were searching for but I wouldn't argue solely on that basis.

Most people aren't simply saying that killing animals for fur is wrong and to state they are is misrepresenting the case. From a quick scan through most are saying that fur is not a necessity but if people feel they must have fur then why take it in an unnecessarily cruel way? It serves no real purpose that I can determine so does that mean that people either desire to make animals suffer or that they simply cannot empathise in any way with the animals suffering?

Originally Posted by SidewinderINC

Not targetting you here MB, but that comment reminded me of other products that require animal testing/killing

Here's another side to think about..

do you use medicines when you're ill? or have you had diagnostic tests done in hospital at all?

I will guarantee that some animals have been killed in a painful way at some stage in the manufacture/testing of the medicines and the manufacture of the diagnostic kits used.

People seem to be concerned with eating preferences and vanity, but have overlooked the 'bleeding out' of (usually) rabbits for serum/globulins in manufacturing diagnostic kits, or the use of primates in testing meds.

I feel this one is a bit of a red herring (no pun intended), do you need to eat meat/wear cosmetics/wear fur? Ideally no animals would need to be killed for the manufacture of medicines for us but unfortunately, as I understand it, we are not at the stage yet where it can be entirely replaced by simulations and possibly never will be. Incidentally animal testing is not a guarantee of safety for use with humans either, some drugs are fatal to certain species yet extremely beneficial to humans and vice versa.

I'm also not entirely happy with the comparison because you're asking if we should not make use of medicines/treatments that already exist which renders the life of the animal who suffered for it even more pointless. There is nothing I can do about that now so there are two options, we either a) use the medicine and acknowledge the debt we owe to the animals who died to prove the safety or b) reject the medicine, waste that the animal has died anyway and have more people suffering or even dying from an unwillingness to utilise something we have produced. Please excuse the heavily weighted options there but my rejection of medicine* that already exists does not bring the animal back to life or mean it has not already suffered and died.

*For the little it matters I very rarely use any form of medicine, a cough syrup or lozenge is about as far as I've needed to go in the past 10 odd years and for that I'm extremely grateful.