The Pain Factor

This Sea Kitten thing really bugs me....

The number one argument that PETA has with fishing is that it hurts the fish when they are caught. Well, I know that this is not true from personal experience, but I'm not going to use that as evidence. So, I looked up an article in Reviews of Fisheries Science, Volume 10, Number 1, January-March 2002 , pp. 1-38(38). The Neurobehavioral Nature of Fishes and the Question of Awareness and Pain, is an article written by Dr. James D. Rose of the Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming after more than 30 years of research on the subject.

Dr. Rose came to 3 main conclusions:

(1) Behavioral responses to noxious stimuli are separate
from the psychological experience of pain.

(2) Awareness of pain in humans depends on
functions of specific regions of cerebral cortex.

(3) Fishes lack these essential brain regions
or any functional equivalent, making it untenable that they can experience pain.

He states, "Because the experience of fear, similar to pain, depends on cerebral cortical structures that are absent from fish brains, it is concluded that awareness of fear is impossible for fishes. Although it is implausible that fishes can experience pain or emotions, they display robust, nonconscious, neuroendocrine, and physiological stress responses to noxious stimuli. Thus, avoidance of potentially injurious stress responses is an important issue in considerations about the welfare of fishes."

PETA would not take this for an answer, so they launched their own studies with their own scientists and made up their own results. They argue thing such as "Stupid people feel pain" as evidence that fish feel pain and that Dr. Rose is wrong. It is not a question of intelligence, as I would believe that fish in general are much smarter than some of those on PETA's payroll, but it's a question of neuroscience. Fish lack the brain regions to process pain. But PETA still refuses to believe that fish cannot feel pain after so much incontrovertible evidence was set forth by Dr. Rose. It seems such a mark of stupidity to reject the findings of people who devote their lives to science because you want to prove a point.

If you wish to read the brilliant research on the subject you can read a summary by Dr. Rose here, or if you have access to online science journals look up the 38 page article in full.