Animal tested, doctor approved

One thing that really bothered me about Cohen's piece was that (so far) he has mentioned nothing about being against useless experiments, only focusing on countering the arguments of liberationists and animal rightists. He says that their arguments that the tests are useless is completely false, however, I think they may be referring to different experiments.

Maybe what we read about in Animal Liberation by Peter Singer was not the same as what Carl Cohen was talking about, however, I think he still needs to clarify what he means by 'not useless' because clearly SOME of the experiments were extremely useless and unnecessary. When Cohen says we have obligations to animals, but no need to consider their rights, he is getting at my point. In this sense, our obligations towards animals would be to use as few as possible in experimentation, make completely certain that the experiments were necessary, and make sure the animals suffered as little as possible from such experiments. He does not go into so much detail as to our obligations to animals as much as he continues refuting the arguments of others.

By the end, it is clear that he believes that animals most certainly do NOT have rights and cannot possibly exists in the same moral situations as humans, therefore, human interest should trump animal interest he says. I don't deny that animal experimentation has been useful in developing medications necessary for human survival, but I wish Cohen would discuss in more depth what, exactly, our obligations to animals are? 

philosophical squirrel