Yeah this is something I've also tried to grapple with.
I think you have a point with the rats - they're clearly very intelligent creatures, which is unfortunately also makes them so valuable for this kind of research. So it comes down to a trade off between improving human lives at the cost of another less intelligent but nonetheless very much aware creature.
While norms will likely shift over time, I don't think it's really possible to establish consensus view on this sort of thing - everyone will have the own level of comfort, just like eating meat.
Making absolute statements about the sanctity of life I think I'm a little more comfortable making a concrete statement on. If you embrace an absolutely view sanctity of life, just existing basically becomes impossible - how do you deal with the insects you accidentally kill when you walk on grass? What about the bacteria that your body kills during an infection? It's just not workable.
As for experimenting on people on death row, my gut is that to the extent that Capital Punishment Exists (something I'm against for what it's worth), it cannot have any external utility derived from the process. Rather it needs to exist purely as part of the justice system.
If there's an exogenous utility being derived from Capital Punishment, I think there's an unacceptably high risk that the motivations for capital punishment will become twisted. To put forward a hypothetical, but not infeasible scenario:
- We allow scientific experimentation on death row inmates
- Then, a lobby group points out that we could save even more innocent lives by using the inmate's organs for donation rather than experimentation. It's the same fundamental thing, just a different use.
- Then, there's a small but meaningful pressure on the justice system to find more people guilty in order to keep the flow of life saving organs strong. (We already know what the justice system is susceptible to this sort of pressure, see forced labour)
As a flow on effect, this makes it much harder to roll back capital punishment in the future if a society decide it's harmful, because there's a flow on effect of loss aversion towards that exogenous utility. I've seen this happen in my own state (Victoria, Australia) when it comes to gambling - we broadly acknowledge slot machines are extremely harmful, but the government struggles to curtail their use even slightly, because the tax revenue generated from them is used to fund important services. The harm is greater than the gain, but the loss aversion of those services is too powerful.
Your illustrative scenario is the background to several of the early Known Space stories by Larry Niven, who explores some of the consequences, including the disruptive effects of improving medical technology (artificial organs)
I am looking forward to the day when AI surpasses us in intelligence and arrives at the same easy-gooing conclusion as you do. All it has to do is copy our behaviour.
𒄈: Hey 𒋚, have you had your pet humans spayed and neutered yet?
𒋚: Nah, I think that's cruel. Look how happy they are!
𒄈: They may look cute now, but you don't want them breeding out of control. Look at 𒁑 — built an entire Dyson swarm to make more room for them, and by the end the humans were so out of control that the neighbours had to call in the exterminators to blow up the star with a Trih Xeem. Nobody will even lend 𒁑 a simple VN probe these days in case they do it again.
I think you have a point with the rats - they're clearly very intelligent creatures, which is unfortunately also makes them so valuable for this kind of research. So it comes down to a trade off between improving human lives at the cost of another less intelligent but nonetheless very much aware creature.
While norms will likely shift over time, I don't think it's really possible to establish consensus view on this sort of thing - everyone will have the own level of comfort, just like eating meat.
Making absolute statements about the sanctity of life I think I'm a little more comfortable making a concrete statement on. If you embrace an absolutely view sanctity of life, just existing basically becomes impossible - how do you deal with the insects you accidentally kill when you walk on grass? What about the bacteria that your body kills during an infection? It's just not workable.
As for experimenting on people on death row, my gut is that to the extent that Capital Punishment Exists (something I'm against for what it's worth), it cannot have any external utility derived from the process. Rather it needs to exist purely as part of the justice system.
If there's an exogenous utility being derived from Capital Punishment, I think there's an unacceptably high risk that the motivations for capital punishment will become twisted. To put forward a hypothetical, but not infeasible scenario:
As a flow on effect, this makes it much harder to roll back capital punishment in the future if a society decide it's harmful, because there's a flow on effect of loss aversion towards that exogenous utility. I've seen this happen in my own state (Victoria, Australia) when it comes to gambling - we broadly acknowledge slot machines are extremely harmful, but the government struggles to curtail their use even slightly, because the tax revenue generated from them is used to fund important services. The harm is greater than the gain, but the loss aversion of those services is too powerful.