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Rhetorical Analysis of A Question of Ethics In “A Question of Ethics”, Jane Goodall takes aim at medical research labs for the usage of animals. The animals, such as chimpanzees, dogs, cats, and rats, are used as test subjects for new drugs and vaccines. Goodall expresses her fellowship towards animals. She also questions whether or not it is ethical to use such animals, such “sentient beings”, as test subjects. Goodall wishes to evaluate researchers motives to submit animals into “poor conditions” and “painful procedures”.
One of the more sentimental portions of this essay deals with a personal interaction with a chimpanzee. Goodall explains her trip to Tanzania when she befriends an chimpanzee named David. She shares how she felt a close connection with him. She offered a nut to David but David refused by a very gentle, very similar to a human, squeeze of her hand to let her know he wasn’t interested in the nut. Goodall reasons that chimpanzees are “physiologically close to humans”(157). In other words, chimpanzees think much like humans and express feelings much like humans.
It is cruel to expose these animals to conditions in which no human would want to be, unless voluntarily chosen. The labs do not accommodate for the comfort of the animals. After living separated from other animals, they “grow surly and sometimes violent”(157). Isolation could misconstrue the scientific procedures and researchers will have inaccurate results. There are scientists and researchers alike who have instilled the mind set of allowing animal testing for the benefit of mankind. Instead of considering the lives of the animals, human lives are taken into precedence.
They have “forced themselves to believe that animal testing is the only forward for medical research”(157). The researchers are almost thoughtless to other means and other possibilities to discover new drugs and vaccines. Goodall challenges the usage of animals even though advances in technology can substitute for them. The need of animals as subjects would be lessened. Yet, the researchers beliefs are almost written in stone into their minds. Even if the beliefs may be ethically right or ethically wrong. The alternatives to testing are not being explored enough.
At the end of the essay, Goodall tries to leave a feeling of guilt. She gives guilt to researchers as well as to the general population. Researchers should feel guilty about endangering conscious lives. The lives that were chosen involuntarily to be subjected to elements close to torture. Goodall also gives guilt to the general population because we are allowing for medical research labs to do this. Goodall was ultimately successful in making the reader feel quilt. The underlying message may to respect other “sentient beings” as you would want to be respected.