We’ve been wrong before about how we treat beings we consider “less developed” than ourselves
… and that habit is not showing any signs of letting up.
It’s not malice that leads to things like the following. It’s arrogance, hubris, and the stalwart conviction that we absolutely positively have all the information we need to make serious decisions about serious situations.
It also doesn’t help but we just love to assign inferior status to things that we frankly don’t understand.
From the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/24/science/infants-sense-of-pain-is-recognized-finally.html
“Newborns do feel pain.
Parents don't have to be told that, and many pediatricians don't either. But the contrary belief - that the smallest babies are such primitive organisms that they are oblivious to pain - has persisted for decades among many physicians who have routinely operated on these children with little or no anesthesia.
“They did so for the purest of reasons, fearing that potent anesthetics might kill these seriously ill infants.
. . .
“Typically in the past, an anesthesiologist would simply administer a drug to paralyze the muscles, so that the infant would not thrash around on the operating table during major surgery. Some infants were also given nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, a weak anesthetic that diminishes but does not eliminate pain.
“The practice of withholding drugs was widespread in the United States and other countries from the 1940's until at least the late 1970's. In one survey of medical literature, 77 percent of all the newborns who underwent surgery throughout the world between 1954 and 1983 to repair a serious blood vessel defect called patent ductus arteriosus received only muscle relaxants or relaxants plus intermittent nitrous oxide.”
An OpEd responding to this article https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surgery-without-anesthesia-went-unchallenged-832387.html went on to say:
“. . . surveys of medical professionals indicate that as recently as 1986 infants as old as 15 months were receiving no anesthesia during surgery at most American hospitals.”
The lesson being, running around acting like we’ve got things all figured out, because we believe that we have all the information we need to make her decisions as it really, really bad track record, when it comes to the well-being of others, whether they are animal, mineral, vegetable, or synthetic.
So why do we persist?
It makes no sense.