Vanda Kadas

“When it comes to animals, we suffer from moral schizophrenia.”
― Gary L. Francione, Eat Like You Care: An Examination of the Morality of Eating Animals

“In sum, reliance on cognitive characteristics beyond sentience to justify the use of nonhumans in experiments requires either that we assume that these characteristics are morally relevant or that we ignore the fact that we do not regard the lack of such characteristics as morally relevant where humans are concerned. We are left with one and only one reason to explain our differential treatment of animals: We are human and they are not, and species difference alone justifies differential treatment. But this criterion is entirely arbitrary and no different from maintaining that, although there is no special characteristic possessed only by whites, or no defect possessed by blacks that is not also possessed by whites, we may treat blacks as inferior to whites merely on the basis of race. It is also no different from saying that, although there is no special characteristic possessed only by men or no defect possessed only by women, we may treat women as inferior to men based merely on sex.”
― Francione, Gary L., Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation

“As discussed earlier, humans who lack the reflective self-awareness of normal adults, such as those with particular forms of amnesia or very young children or those with certain mental disabilities, still are self-aware and still have an interest in continuing to live. There may, of course, be a difference between the self-awareness of normal adult humans and that of other animals. But even if that is the case, it does not mean that the latter have no interest in continuing to live, and it does not justify treating the latter as commodities.”
― Francione, Gary L., Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation

“After all, in the nineteenth century, racists relied on phrenology, or the “science” of determining personality traits based on the shape of the head, to declare that people of color, Jews, and others had different minds. Thus, even having an identical mind is not sufficient if there is a reason and desire to discriminate.”
― Francione, Gary L., Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation