Progress at what cost?

Rashi18, re medical progress, would you be okay with the government deciding to test drugs or surgery or chemicals on intellectually handicapped humans If the Government made it legal ? There would be no doubt about medical progress being made. Their awareness is less than most animals . Their potentiality would be nil. Would you be okay with that? The cost benefit analysis would prove to be worthwhile and worthy of the sacrifice. If not why not? How do they differ from the sentient animals that are currently being tested on? Any reasonable intellectual debate Rashi18, on who should or shouldnt have rights means nothing without first looking at what those rights mean to any particular group, notwithstanding that some rights should be universal. To an animal, rights will mean generally the right to natural behaviours ( one thing that any animal in a cage is denied ), the right to have access to food and water , the right to be handled kindly, handled with respect but the main right would be the right to not be made to bear pain and suffering. I watched a video where some researcher took the skull off a monkey and implanted electrodes for some reason. The video showed this dazed monkey trying to scratch where the top of his head used to be. Having had operations myself and pain for up to four weeks after in some cases, I can tell you this chap was suffering. Monkeys can be taught to communicate and do so fluently using sign. They can problem solve, which means they can think. They can make moral judgements as seen in documented experiments where monkeys have decided to go hungry when they learn tripping a lever brings pain to a fellow monkey. To say that because we dont percieve that they can enter a contract ( debatable to any human with awareness ), means that we dont have to consider the above rights for them simply means that we, if we trade on that premise, are willing to devalue beings even when we know they are in pain. Is that who you want to be? Do you want your community to be like that? Cruelty is not about who we are doing something to, for instance but rather that we know its hurting and we are still willing to do it. This is cruelty whether the subjects have rights or not. And if we can devalue animals, for instance, in order to exploit them without considering their rights we raise other concerns i.e. are we not teaching ourselves that we can devalue anything if the basis of that devaluation seems logical in the context of the situation? Didnt Germany devalue the Jews when they decided that the Jews were the cause of all their ills and fears? And didnt this allow researchers like Joseph Mengels to conclude logically that they now had no rights therefore they were no longer part of the contract, therefore, he could test on them? Perform surgeries on them. Pour chemicals down their throats like they do to dogs today in the United States. Sew babys eyelids shut to study the denial of light on the development of sight like they are doing to baby kittens in Canada today. Jan Narveson may be okay with being such a person but I believe that for the human race to evolve we have to live with empathy and consider all those we share the planet with. I believe the rights we give others we gift ourselves. Otherwise tomorrow based on some argument we leave ourselves open to being devalued and losing the basic rights we think we have.