Links between human and animal life in the Age of Anthropocene: From molecules, through reactions to cells, development and ethical implications

Asante Msimang, Roman Tandlich
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Rhodes University, Faculty of Pharmacy, Artillery Road, P.O. Box 94, Grahamstown/Makhanda 6140, South Africa

In the last two hundred years, discoveries in animal and human physiology, disease, and drug development have been made. Animals stood at the centre of the experiments to optimise the drug doses and administration routes. Human progress has been driven by various anthropogenic aims and desires. The knowledge development and discoveries continue to increase about the fundamental reality of human existence and the ontological realm in which the socio-ecological systems continue to evolve. Members of Homo sapiens have now reached an understanding, power of knowledge and actions which have the ability to influence the Earth’s ecosystem. This produces the by-products of human progress, e.g. CO2 and these have started to alter the fundamental/situational reality boundary of human existence and the ontological realm of the socio-ecological systems. Benefits and suffering of humans and animals, separately and together, can be viewed through various lenses, e.g. the precautionary principle. The current article uses the methodology which is a combination of bioethical analysis and a theoretical biology analysis of the precautionary principle and its implications into the relationship between human and broader socio-ecological systems. The principle can provide some guidance on ethical understanding of the duality of human actions during Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration and how it is linked to the very chemical essence of life. Humans develop their knowledge about the fundamental reality as part of their search for truth, for understanding of the chemical and other dimensions of the nature of life. This is ‘normal science’, i.e. the search for ‘truth’ or human understanding of fundamental reality of existence, moves humanity forward. However, its deployment for human development creates by-products that require ‘regulatory science’, or settings of rules for regulation of the deployment of the normal-science-derived knowledge. An examples of this can be the need to take action and to mitigate the climate change impacts across the globe, impacts on both human and animal life.

Key words: precautionary principle, levels of biological organisation, 4R/12R framework