Intelligence and the case for animal rights
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Re: "Pain is pain", Letters, October 4.
Eric Bahrt makes a good point that intelligence has nothing to do with rights. In his book “Animal Liberation”, Peter Singer suggests that, if intelligence is based on rights, why not legislate that people with IQs below 100 have to be the slaves of those with IQs above 100?
Once we realise that rights have to do with the capacity to suffer, and have nothing to do with intelligence, the case for animal rights begins to make a great deal of sense.
Steve Gordon
