Imagine life where you were born to die - where someone engineered you, just so you could live a miserable life, and then die for the sake of someone else. There have been all kinds of books and movies where this is the theme. It's crazy to think about it. Would you be ok with being born to die if it meant saving the life of another person? But the idea of being born to die isn't always for a valiant cause. Sometimes it happens because of greed. And sometimes it's not just being born to die; sometimes it's simply being born to suffer.
Take 2 books/movies as examples. In the book/movie, "My Sister's Keeper," Anna was born to help her sister survive. Her sister Kate was diagnosed with cancer as a toddler, and she happened to have a rare blood type, so her doctor suggested that Kate's parents have another child, in hopes that that child would be born with the same blood type as Kate, so that this new child could give Kate the blood, organs, etc. that Kate needed to survive. So they had Anna, simply for the sake of making her suffer her whole life, so she could give Kate whatever she needed from her body. This meant that poor Anna was unable to play sports, spent most of her life in the hospital, and went through tons of painful surgeries, all for the sake of keeping her sister alive. Is this fair? It sounds valiant, but as the book/movie will explain, it was not very fair to Anna. I suggest reading the book or watching the movie. The story is beautiful, and I'd love to spoil the plot and ending here, but I really don't want to do that to you guys. So please go, at least, watch the movie!
My second example is the movie called "Never Let Me Go." I'm sure it's a book too, but I don't know. I only saw the movie. It was an interesting story, although just as heartbreaking as "My Sister's Keeper." Kiera Knightly was one of the main characters. She played one of three friends who were born and raised to die in a world where clones are created, simply to donate organs to people who need them. These clones are not seen as actual people, even though they are. They do not have the same rights as "actual people," so they are born and raised in small institutions where they are kept until they are ready to start donating their vital organs. Usually they go through about 3 donations before they die. This kind of sad world where people are not seen as people, and thus they are born to suffer and die, is unimaginable.
We see this as unimaginable and inhumane for humans. But what about animals? If we're appalled by this idea as it pertains to human lives, aren't we at least a little disturbed by the idea when it comes to animal lives? My point in this note is to bring up the idea of this happening to humans, while also drawing a parallel with how this happens to animals every day in the mass meat production industry. Animals are raised on factory farms, and they are simply born to suffer and die, for the sake of feeding people who could, just as easily, eat something else or eat meat that came from animals that were treated well. These animals are born on nasty farms, treated horribly during their lives, and then slaughtered for meat as soon as possible. This is why I always urge people to buy their meat from actual farms, where animals were born to live, raised well, and killed humanely after living nice lives. You should definitely read more about this in my note, "Dodger Logic #16: Don't Be a Vegetarian; Instead Change the System."
Anyway, yes, my point was definitely to draw that parallel here, but still, wouldn't it be insane if we lived in a world where we were born to suffer and die? Wouldn't it be crazy if our parents actually gave birth to us, just so that we could spend our lives in the hospital, trying to save our siblings' lives? Wouldn't it be insane if we found out we were only born to donate our vital organs to people we didn't even know, and that we would have to spend our adulthoods in hospitals, in extreme pain, and near death until we finally passed on? Wouldn't it be crazy if we had the same rights that animals in factory farms do? Could that potentially happen anywhere, even somewhere other than the United States? All kinds of books and movies pose the idea of keeping certain people oppressed, so they can't overtake the government, or for other purposes, such as this. Just look at 1984, Anthem, The Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, etc. These ideas are just ideas, but even more appalling things have actually happened in this world...
Poor factory farm cows who were born to suffer and die.
One of the books/movies in my examples.
The other movie I used as an example.
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