(unrelated)

This isn't a blog post for class persay, but I wanted to share a short story I found by Neil Gaiman that seems to support Singer's argument...

Babycakes by Neil Gaiman

A few years back all the animals went away.
We woke up one morning, and they just weren't there
anymore. They didn't even leave us a note, or say good
bye. We never figured out quite where they'd gone.
We missed them.
Some of us thought that the world had ended, but it
hadn't. There just weren't any more animals. No cats or
rabbits, no dogs or whales, no fish in the seas, no birds
in the skies.
We were all alone.
We didn't know what to do.
We wandered around lost, for a time, and then some
one pointed out that just because we didn't have animals anymore, that was no reason to change our lives. No reason to change our diets or to cease testing products that might cause us harm.
After all, there were still babies.
Babies can't talk. They can hardly move. A baby is
not a rational, thinking creature.
We made babies.
And we used them.
Some of them we ate. Baby flesh is tender and succulent.
We flayed their skin and decorated ourselves in it.
Baby leather is soft and comfortable.


Some of them we tested.
We taped open their eyes, dripped detergents and
shampoos in, a drop at a time.
We scarred them and scalded them. We burnt them.
We clamped them and planted electrodes into their
brains. We grafted, and we froze, and we irradiated.
The babies breathed our smoke, and the babies' veins
flowed with our medicines and drugs, until they stopped
breathing or until their blood ceased to flow.
It was hard, of course, but it was necessary.
No one could deny that.
With the animals gone, what else could we do?
Some people complained, of course. But then, they
always do.
And everything went back to normal.
Only.. .
Yesterday, all the babies were gone.
We don't know where they went. We didn't even see
them go.
We don't know what we're going to do without them.
But we'll think of something. Humans are smart. It's
what makes us superior to the animals and the babies.
We'll figure something out.