This story was originally published by HuffPost and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The heat dome roasting millions of people across the Pacific Northwest and swaths of Canada, sending temperatures in usually temperate places into record-breaking triple digits, has already claimed hundreds of lives. And those are just the ones we can count so far.
July 6th 2021
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W. Lawrence Kenney: “That’s because we can’t ethically study [heat stroke] in humans in the laboratory. A lot of what we know comes from studies on animal models, like mice and rats."
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The mice and rats would argue that we can’t ethically study heat stroke on them either.
Mice and rats and rabbits and dogs and cats and cows and sheep and chickens and horses … are not people. Ergo, they are expendable. Their lives and suffering do not matter. Classic speciesism.
Only one species matters — ours. Other species are unimportant. And within our species, only some groups matter. Mine. Other species and other human tribes stand outside my ethical boundaries and concern. Like mice and rats, the poor are dispensable. Endless circles of exclusion.