Atlas Moral Acceptability Poll

[LBJer]

In general, I'd say that all are morally acceptable except the death penalty, buying fur, cloning humans, and medical testing on animals.  

When I say the death penalty is wrong, I mean that it's wrong as legal, public policy.  There are times when it's clear someone is guilty of a horrible crime even if they haven't been put on trial, and if that's so I don't think it's necessarily wrong for a private person to get retribution by killing them.  For example, I don't think Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS was wrong to kill the drug dealer who killed his family.  But if death is a legally mandated punishment available for all cases of a particular crime, the potential for someone innocent to be executed makes it morally unacceptable, in my view.

I remember looking at pictures of fur coats as a child and finding them glamorous.  If I had been an adult when I was growing up (the 80s) or earlier and could afford it, and if I didn't have a mother who loved animals and sensitized me to them, I'd probably have bought a girlfriend (I don't say wife because I don't want to get married) a mink coat.  But living when I do, and given how I was raised and feel now, I can't justify it and wouldn't do it.  However, I certainly would never say that people who use fur for clothing because they have to for survival are doing anything wrong.

Cloning humans seems to have too much potential for "master race" overtones.

I find the idea of medical testing on animals horrifying on its face; there would have to be clear and convincing evidence that doing so was necessary to prevent even greater suffering/death than it would cause for me to say it was acceptable.