Indirectly helping others do animal experimentation

[明安 Myoan]

I'm a captioner for the deaf and hard of hearing, usually TV news and sports.
I transcribe words as they're spoken in realtime so people who can't hear can access live information.
Sometimes, I'm called to do this work in person, where I set up my laptop and a deaf person can participate in a seminar, class, presentation, meeting, etc.

My work also has a client involved in animal experimentation.
Once a month, several deaf/HoH doctors attend the meeting of a board that oversees "ethical" treatment of animals being experimented upon.
Their job is primarily to approve/reject experiments, and do oversight and inspections.
They are directly responsible for allowing or disallowing many experiments that involve animals dying or undergoing forced trauma/pain for research. Sometimes, these animals number in the hundreds.
Board members sometimes make light of the animals' suffering, such as saying a pig who had been tattooed with an ID mark would fit right in with Portland's counterculture.

My professional organization says we have to disqualify ourselves from jobs like this if we feel we cannot be impartial. I did so in the past, but circumstances changed and I wasn't needed after all.
However, now and then I am the only person who can do this job, given its highly technical nature.
Given that my work knows my impartiality concerns, I doubt raising it again would change the fact that no one else can do the job this time.
I'm very, very hesitant to make this a civil rights issue of refusing to do it because of religion.

I was hoping to get some insight from others regarding the ethics of my position, where I am helping two or more doctors participate in this board. I'm very mixed up about this and have to let my boss know soon, since I've been assigned this board again next month.

Thanks for any insight.

[Gyurme Kundrol]

I feel like these animals will go through this regardless. These beings will joke about it regardless. People wont respect life regardless. So first we can think to ourselves that we are doing this thing out of compassion for another person. Whoever would be in your place instead, you are there. You are there because you wish for all beings to achieve enlightenment and for them to be free from suffering, so by being there you take on whatever negative karma might be accrued onto yourself, rather than letting another being acquire it. On the other hand by having this view and compassion you actually increase your merit and good karma, since you are not doing this to actually harm animals or even help others harm animals, but instead if your intention is to prevent others from getting negative karma then what you are doing is good.

Secondly these animals are doomed regardless. Even if you physically stopped this from happening, it will just happen later after they remove you from the program or you are fired or whatever. So you can wish that even though your connection to these animals is indirect, that even this indirect connection with you brings them to the door of Dharma in some way. For their sake you can say mantras and wish for a fortunate rebirth for them. This connection cant happen if you aren't the one doing this job.

Its not our actions which are good or bad, but our intentions behind them.

[Johnny Dangerous]

I can see lots of approaches here. If it were me personally, (and it was possible to do realistically and without great consequence) i'd make it a civil rights/religion issue I think, more so that this did not continue to be an issue in the future, what if you become the "go to" person for these groups, is that a possibility?

I'm unclear on how that would effect your position exactly, though...is it that no one else could do your job, or that you don't want to mess up your general standing by turning this one down?

It seems that you don't have any direct interaction/effect on policies such as these though, right? If that's the case, perhaps the best you can do is what was suggested, prayer, mantra, aspiration etc.

[Fortyeightvows]

It would probably be a very good idea to do some animal liberation

[Jim1]

Yeah my question would also be, could disqualifying yourself again from this particular job cause you to be fired? Or hurt your standing with the company? I think it's great that you don't want to be a party to that kind of animal cruelty but as others have said, it's important to be practical as well. Losing your job and thus having no money, when those animals would likely be treated just the same anyway might not be the wise thing to do here.

You may want to talk all of this over with your boss beforehand. I don't know what your working relationship with him/her is like but if talking it over with this person wouldn't jeopardize your position in any way then it might be a good idea.

[Dan74]

I guess the Mahayana approach is not be an active facilitator of cruelty, but it's good to be involved and bring respect and compassion to a situation sorely lacking in both.

[Fortyeightvows]

Either way i really suggest doing some animal liberation practices. Earthworms are very easy to buy from fishing supply places and you can chant to them. Of your temple has a stupa or a statue that you can circumambulate them would also be very good.

[Icy]

Either way i really suggest doing some animal liberation practices. Earthworms are very easy to buy from fishing supply places and you can chant to them. Of your temple has a stupa or a statue that you can circumambulate them would also be very good.

The issue I have with animal liberation is that by buying them, you are contributing to the demand for that animal, leading to the company capturing more animals to meet the demand.

[Fortyeightvows]

I totally hear that.

But what about this hypothetical, buying and releasing slaves. Or paying someone's bail or ransom. Same thing as far as contributing to more of these things right? But still the right thing to do right?
But I do get what you mean.
I suggested animal liberation because it seemed that the op was worried about their karma created due to their work and I thought that maybe doing that Buddhist practice would help to off-set the karma and their worry over the matter.


https://lamayeshe.com/index.php?sect=article&id=759

[Icy]

Yes, it does release a life (or many lives). It helps plenty of suffering beings, but so does vegetarianism. I understand that releasing lives is one way to help sentient beings, but there are alternatives that don't result in perpetuating the capture of lives. The other thing about releasing lives is that it has to be done wisely. I remember an NPR piece about fisherman hiding out downstream from a liberation site to catch the liberated fishand take them back to market. Horrible. I don't remember where, but apparently a couple decided to release fish and ended up dumping them into the wrong area where they became an invasive species that screwed up the entire ecosystem. That one sounds a bit farfetched, and I don't remember the source, so feel free to disregard it.

Anyways, in regards to the OP, there's not much that can realistically be done about job related issues unless you change fields. It's good that you feel compassion for these animals, and I think choosing more vegetarian meals (if you haven't yet already) would be a good choice to lessen the suffering of animals.

[tlee]

Monlam, you could perhaps use the position to make an inquiry as to whether all applicants have evaluated alternatives such as human cell cultures. Since experimentation is typically used to gauge risk and potential efficacy in humans, animal models have considerable draw backs due to differences in gene regulation and protein composition and structure. Rats are cheap, but they jeopardize the applicability of research. Skilled tissue culturing also has the side benefit of potentially generating a profitable cell line.

I concur on animal releasing.
Animal releasing has firmly established "companies" that profit from the releasing and recapture of animals, which is arguably more traumatic than slaughter.
I am also opposed to the convenient notion that you can abdicate guilt with a couple of dollars and a drive to a park.

[amanitamusc]

I have heard Garchen Rinpoche say that some Bodhisattva's choose to be reborn as lab animals to burn karma.