The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, & Science

Rating:
Summary: Common sense welfare beats scientific justification
Review: FIVE, or even six, stars for the argumentation, but I have given four stars only because it will take a fair amount of scientific knowledge and stamina to read. Rollin is well known in the animal welfare field. His argument, developed in repeated minute detail, is that scientists who experiment on animals are so closed off from reality, and have such a vested interest in deluding themselves that animals don't suffer, that they are the only people who can't see the blindingly obvious - that animals feel pain pretty much the same way that we do.

For scientists, and especially anyone dealing with animals in any way, I would consider this book mandatory reading. It counterbalances all the dry science about how animals work with a a good look at how they think.

For non-graduates it's too technical. Words like paradigmatic and ontological come thick and fast.