Peter Singer argues that whaling and lethal whale research are unethical

The Japan Times ran this opinion piece under the rather inapt title Hypocrisy weakens West's whaling protests.

 

Peter Singer, an Australian professor of bioethics at Princeton University, wrote this:

"I did not argue that whaling should stop because whales are endangered. I knew that many expert ecologists and marine biologists would make that claim. Instead, I argued that whales are social mammals with big brains, capable of enjoying life and of feeling pain — and not only physical pain, but very likely also distress at the loss of one of their group.

Whales cannot be humanely killed — they are too large, and even with an explosive harpoon, it is difficult to hit the whale in the right spot. Moreover, whalers do not want to use a large amount of explosive, because that would blow the whale to pieces, while the whole point is to recover valuable oil or flesh. So harpooned whales typically die slowly and painfully.

Causing suffering to innocent beings without an extremely weighty reason for doing so is wrong. If there were some life-or-death need that humans could meet only by killing whales, perhaps the ethical case against it could be countered. But there is no essential human need that requires us to kill whales. Everything we get from whales can be obtained without cruelty elsewhere. Thus, whaling is unethical."