At present scientists do not look for alternatives simply because they do not care enough about the animals they are using.

I suppose what's happened recently has confirmed suspicions I voiced in the book, and I think made clearer some of those things that I point out. For instance I have a section of the book where I talk about the possibility of torture.

Surely there will be some nonhuman animals whose lives, by any standards, are more valuable than the lives of some humans.

So why don't we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required - we could party our way into extinction!

Once we ask why it should be that all human beings - including infants, the intellectually disabled, criminal psychopaths, Hitler, Stalin, and the rest - have some kind of dignity or worth that no elephant, pig, or chimpanzee can ever achieve, we see that this question is as difficult to answer as our original request for some relevant fact that justifies the inequality of humans and other animals.

Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.

Of those who die from avoidable, poverty-related causes, nearly 10 million, according to UNICEF, are children under five. They die from diseases such as measles, diarrhoea, and malaria that are easy and inexpensive to treat or prevent.