Results

This is an overview of issues regarding feral cats. Concerns about feral cat populations include the spread of disease and predation of endangered or protected species of birds. There is disagreement over how best to deal with cat overpopulation.

Controversy has arisen over how best to deal with populations of feral cats. While cat advocates fight against killing cats, bird advocates and others see them as destructive to protected species. Legal issues of property ownership, causation, and classification of cats are central to the question of human liability for feral cats.

Conventional wisdom tells us that animal experimentation is a relevant precursor to human experimentation. The failings of human experimentation to protect human subjects, however, raise serious questions as to the safety and appropriateness of experimentation on animals. The federal government and medical community, since World War II, have used the Nuremberg Code and the federal “Common Rule” to determine how to conduct human experimentation ethically. Due to political or economic factors, government entities, hospitals, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies have continued to conduct human experimentation without the informed consent of their subjects. These human experiments have often achieved meaningless—or worse—devastating results. Because safeguards have failed with human experimentation, the federal and local governments, in conjunction with animal advocacy organizations, should take a series of concrete steps to eliminate an experimenter’s ability to cause pain, suffering, and unnecessary death to animals.