I did a lot of media on my “Silent Scream of the Asparagus” piece in the Weekly Standard. But I am certainly not alone in noticing the extremes to which the Swiss are now going, not only with plant “dignity,” but also with certain “rights” for social animals—including goldfish—about which I also commented here at SHS. And now Michael Cook, the creator of the splendid bioethics news clearing house BioEge, has weighed in with “The Dignity of Swiss Goldfish.” From his column:Switzerland’s passion for the dignity of all creatures great and small, however, rings hollow in view of its treatment of human beings. It is one of the few countries in the world where assisted suicide is legal. The best-known agency for DIY [do it yourself] euthanasia, a Zurich-based group called—what else?—Dignitas, recently opened its thanatorium in the same building as Switzerland’s biggest legal brothel. Surely that violates one of the numerous provisions in the constitution guaranteeing human dignity. As it is now, there seems to be about as much bureaucracy involved in killing a Swiss goldfish as there is in killing a human being. (Special chemicals are required since flushing fish down the toilet has been deemed undignified.) The poor, befuddled Swiss have clearly lost the plot on what dignity is and who is entitled to it.
Well, the Swiss folderol suggests we will all be very sorry when “human dignity” is eliminated. The scope of human dignity in Switzerland has shrunk to the point that international death tourism there has become a boutique business. At the same time, the scope of non-human dignity has expanded. This is to be expected. For years the radical fringe of animal rights activists has attacked violence against animals by using violence against humans.
Precisely. Defining ourselves down to roughly the moral value of flora and fauna is not good for the human race. Nor, in the end, will it be good for flora and fauna.
What is unexpected is that there seems to be no brake on the ever-expanding circle of non-human dignity. Somewhere above spiders and slugs, perhaps. But the Swiss experience suggests otherwise. Once the DNA of human dignity has been tampered with, it keeps expanding by some crazy logic, unfettered by common sense, until it includes plants, and even “other organisms”.
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