Consider the Lobsters

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Are Lobsters Pain-Free? “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” David Foster Wallace, author of “Consider the Lobster” asks this question throughout his article. He explains how lobsters are considered as low class food because of its living conditions. Thus, most people do not consider the lobsters or simply do not care about them. He explains that killing a lobster for our own pleasure is not right; it is unethical. Also, he argues that it is definitely unethical to put a lobster in boiling water because we do not know if lobsters feel pain or not. Throughout the article he suggest that lobster might be actually experiencing some kind of pain when put in boiling water. He aims to prove to readers that killing lobster by putting them into boiling water is unethical, and is not right just to fulfill our gustatory pleasure. In middle of his text, he shows many ways lobster is cruelly killed and why this is not right to do. His main argument is that lobster might actually be vulnerable to pain, and that it is unethical to kill lobsters by putting them into water. To prove his argument, he uses scientific facts, emotions, and comparison. Wallace uses scientific facts to prove his argument that lobsters feel some kind of pain. He provides studies that debates whether the lobsters feel pain or not. He explains, “Lobsters do not, on the other hand, appear to have the equipment for making or absorbing natural opioids like endorphins and encephalin, which are what more advanced nervous systems use to try to handle intense pain. From this fact, though, one could conclude either that lobsters are maybe even more vulnerable to pain, since they lack mammalian nervous systems’ built-in analgesia” (Wallace 63). The absence of endorphins and encephalin in lobsters might conclude that the lobster actually feels more pain than humans

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