If you go back in time you'll find tribes that were essentially only concerned with their own tribal members. If you were a member of another tribe, you could be killed with impunity.

After 9/11, the American Red Cross received more than half a billion dollars in donations to help the victims of the terrorist attacks. The families of the victims were already well-provided for by various government funds, so Red Cross simply drew a line across lower Manhattan and offered everyone there financial assistance, whether they needed it or not.

My fear is that that's what's going to happen with robotics and the military. Importantly, this discussion has to involve not just the scientists, but also the political scientists. It's got to be a multidisciplinary discussion. You can't have it be another repeat of what happened with the people working on the atomic bomb.

We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product.

The most callous, stupid things were done just because regulations required them...It was not until 1983, for example, that U.S. federal agencies stated that substances known to be caustic irritants such as lye, ammonia, and oven cleaners, did not need to be tested on the eyes of conscious rabbits.

The animal liberation movement is saying that where animals and humans have similar interests - we might take the interest in avoiding physical pain as an example, for it is an interest that humans clearly share with other animals - those interests are to be counted equally, with no automatic discount just because one of the beings is not human.

All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.