Gods of the petridish

From The Scotsman, a look at potential ethical minefields in the animal testing arena:

A quarter of all experiments now involve genetically modified animals - mainly mice, which are easy to alter genetically - but also horses, cats and monkeys. According to the magazine Nature, Britain is facing a "deluge" of mutant mice. They are the currency of cancer research, and new phrases have sprung up to describe them. A "knock-out" mouse has a gene missing, a "knock-in" mouse has had one changed or substituted. In addition to the celebrated "oncomouse", which is primed to get cancer (and had a patent case fought over it), there are mice which have been genetically altered to make them deaf or to give them the mouse version of Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.
The question of whether a mouse's suffering can be justified is no different if that suffering is induced from the outside, by experiments, or from the inside, by genetic engineering.
The difference arises when genetic engineering changes the nature of the animal. Is a chicken still a chicken if it is bred to have no feathers, as has been done in Israel and in India? A dog is still a dog with a docked tail, but would a sheep be a sheep without wool? Woolliness, surely, is what a sheep is all about.
This idea of a clear species identity is what makes the idea of hybrids or chimeras so disturbing. Mixing human and animal cells is a hot topic in bioethics and beyond. The government is asking for views on whether scientists should be allowed to create hybrid embryos, which would have to be destroyed after 14 days.
But the focus is entirely on the human side of the process: the implications of injecting a monkey with human brain cells or creating a human-mouse embryo. Whether it makes the monkey less of a monkey or the mouse less of a mouse is rarely mentioned. Just as we looked at Dolly and saw human clones, we look at chimeras and see talking monkeys, or Jeff Goldblum as a giant fly. The ethics of altering animal nature have been subsumed by the ethics of altering human nature.

The rights of circus animals...

...are so limited it's not funny. This report is about the Apollo Circus, currently in Chandigarh, where the Deputy Commissioner has directed a vet to check the conditions of the animals performing. This is where the circus's responsibility ends:

Jain had lodged a complaint with UT District Magistrate-cum-Deputy Commissioner R.K. Rao. He said the circus owner should ensure proper watering and feeding of animals besides proper care.
The owner should also ensure that the animals are not inflicted any unnecessary pain or suffering before or during or after its training and exhibition, he said.
The Inspecting Authority added that animals should not be made to fight with each other and that the Circus owner should ensure that sedatives or tranquilisers or steroids or any other artificial enhancers are not administered to the animals.
Besides, the owner shall not deprive the animal of food or water in order to compel an animal to perform any trick.
The owner shall ensure that the animal shall not be transported or be kept or confined in cages and receptacles which do not measure in height, length or breadth as specified under the Transportation of Animal Rules, 1978, the complainant said.

It's pretty much like saying don't torture them, feed them gruel, and let them stretch--not even, you'll note, let them have comfortable living quarters, let them get proper exercise, make sure they're happy, none of that. Just make sure the scars don't show and that they're not too thin.