Let’s now try to live healthily and ecologically

IN this Covid crisis, if we cut through the political confusion, we put a lot of faith in science. And that’s largely what it is: faith.

Intellectually above the valuable scientific endeavour is philosophy: the inquiry into the concepts, assumptions and ideas we base our research on. This includes ethics.

Is it OK to use macaque and marmoset monkeys in developing vaccines?

With new flavours of vaccine appearing at unprecedented rates, are corners being cut in the lab?

Mice don’t contract Covid but are genetically engineered to acquire it to test vaccines. We may regard laboratory-bred mice as expendable.

Hamsters and ferrets are also used to study the effects of Covid on lung tissues, theirs being similar to human.

Pigs are even used to test ventilator design.

Yes, medical science has a long history using animals to develop drugs, vaccines and treatments, with, hopefully, progress in consideration of their welfare.

Many do, and will, argue this is necessary and vital work. But perhaps we should move to computer modeling and testing on humans.

If we have so much in common with our fellow mammalian tissue samples, surely we are just, philosophically speaking, animals as well.

When humans suffer, it seems we disregard all else and are driven on by a science unguided by its superior cousin, philosophy and ethics.

Many of our perceived plights are self-inflicted. Our assumptions of continuous economic growth and rising prosperity.

Perhaps we were rich already, in the natural world.

Covid is a lesson in encroachment into pristine habitats, mass travel and complacent greed.

Let’s not go back to normal and abuse our close animal relatives to dig our way out of a crisis.

Let’s make a fresh go of things and try and live healthily and ecologically.