The Prolonged Agony Argument

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VII, p. 109 of the PDF edition · English translation

33.1. The objection that extending lifespan is worse for animals

Consider the following objection to the proposal to help animals living in the wild. By helping these animals, we are saving them from a given threat of death and therefore prolonging their lives. However, having one's life prolonged is a benefit only when that life is at least minimally meaningful. But, the objection continues, almost all animals born in the wild are born only to experience suffering. Thus, by saving these animals, we would achieve the opposite of the intended effect: we would prolong their agony. Therefore, the objection concludes, what best fulfills the goal of achieving the least bad state of affairs for animals is not to try to help them. Below we will discuss this objection.

33.2. Is prolonging the lives of animals living in the wild always worse for them?

Although they are the vast majority, not all animals in the wild have lives that fail to be even minimally meaningful. We saw in Chapter 3 that the maximization of lives dominated by suffering occurs in the case of species that reproduce by maximizing the number of offspring. In the case of animals who reproduce by having few offspring per litter (for example, large animals such as elephants, zebras, deer, etc.), there is a greater chance that the young will have lives with an acceptable level of well-being. Of course, even these animals will face an environment where food and water may be scarce, and they will be vulnerable to disease, parasitism, predation and other conflicts with animals. However, if we help them (for example, by providing water, food, vaccines and medical treatment), we will help increase the likelihood that their lives will be at least minimally meaningful.

It could be objected that these animals are a very tiny minority of those living in the wild, and that we should therefore intervene only in a very limited number of cases. However, it is important to bear in mind that, regarding animals who reproduce by maximizing offspring, the fact that their lives are full of suffering is due to their being in an environment where the conditions for anyone to survive for long are completely unfavorable. If we intervene by creating conditions in which these animals can survive longer, their chances of having an at least minimally meaningful life would increase¹⁵⁹. Prolonging their lives only results in something worse (compared with their dying now) if we do nothing to prevent other forms of suffering to which they will be subject.

Moreover, an important detail is that, for the vast majority of animals in the wild, what causes them suffering generally also causes their death (for example, starvation and disease). Thus, if we save an animal from death, we prolong its existence, but at the same time we ensure that it is no longer suffering from that cause. And, given that the things that make them suffer normally also cause their deaths, if we offer treatment for these ills, we will be prolonging their lives but also eliminating sources of suffering for them, thereby increasing their levels of well-being. The only case in which this does not happen is when an animal suffers from an ailment that makes it suffer but does not cause its death (but such cases are very rare).

One of the reasons why suffering predominates in the lives of animals in the wild is that the vast majority of animals normally die very early. That is, if they have longer lives, the chances that positive experiences will outweigh the suffering in their lives increase. Thus, in the vast majority of cases, preventing the cause of an animal's death is not prolonging its suffering: rather, it is preventing it. So, in the case of the vast majority of animals in the wild (and not only in the case of animals who reproduce by having few offspring), prolonging their lives benefits them.

33.3. Does intervening to help animals in the wild always prolong their lives?

It is also false that all interventions prolong animals' lives: many merely prevent new births. And, given that most of the suffering and premature death in the wild arises from the maximization of reproduction, preventing births would be the central focus of interventions. In this way, even if increasing animals' lifespan prolonged their agony (which, as we have seen, is false), there would still be strong reasons for us to reduce the number of births.