A Response to Donna Haraway's "Sharing Suffering"

In reading Haraway's "Sharing Suffering," I was most struck by the process of the article: her search for what would constitute humane treatment of animals in the lab. What can humans possibly do to share or lessen the impact of suffering and trials upon animals used in the lab? We see the use of animals as a necessity, as they might lessen human suffering. Is there a way for us to put ourselves on equal footing with the animals that we experiment on in the lab? Haraway maintains that we cannot imitate the animals or place ourselves directly in their position, but that we must adopt an attitude of caring and responsibility for our actions towards the animals. She uses an example towards the end of the text, on page 83 (or on page 49 of the reader) of dogs used for hemophilia research, and poses questions and actions that might be taken in order to lessen the suffering of the dogs. "...What sorts of lab arrangements would minimize the number of dogs needed?" she asks. "Make the dogs' lives as full as possible? Engage them as mindful bodies, in relationships of response?"

I was a little skeptical of this section of Haraway's writing. Though taking these types of precautions and asking these sorts of questions can minimize the suffering of the animals involved, I find it hard to accept that there is any recourse to make a lab animal's life "as full as possible." A dog bred to have hemophilia and sent to a lab for the express purpose of dying under experimentation does not have a "full life." It is a predetermined destiny, a specific purpose that humans have bred him for. He is a tool for the lab. Though Haraway, I think, is trying to suggest that we need to abandon the idea that the animals are tools, there still is the sticky problem (which she addresses through a letter at the end of the text) that the animals are bred expressly for being killed, and we are the ones that kill them. How do we deal with the fact that we kill them? What is there to say to that?

I do like the point that Haraway makes in the essay, however, that we need to abandon the differentiation between "murder" and "killing." She suggests that we have adopted a mindset where only humans can be mudered and animals can be merely "killed." Our sense of responsibility for our actions changes drastically if we either drop the notion of murder or apply it to all species.

At the end of the reading, I was still left with the question of how we can share in the suffering of animals, though a little more skeptical that it was possible.