Quick takes

The RSPCA is holding a "big conversation", culminating in a citizens' assembly. If you have opinions about how animals in the UK are treated (which you probably do), you can contribute your takes here. A lot of the contributions are very low quality, so I think EA voices have a good chance of standing out and having their opinions shared with a broader audience. 

Quick Take: In most educational settings or even healthcare campaigns for the general public, the only mosquito-borne disease highlighted prominently in the UK tends to be malaria, and most mosquito-borne diseases may be non-domestic in countries we'd consider HICs and with healthcare infrastructure, and yet turns out quite a few are considered now natively established in regions such as Spain, France, US, Croatia. Currently doing a lit review on different methods of reducing populations, transmission or exposure to bites to control mosquito borne diseases, and that has more context, information and sources, but if anyone was considering doing some cause prio on types/vectors of disease we may want to work on/should consider, then here are some key mosquito-borne diseases that I feel get mentioned less. Working on a longer write up but if it helps anyone considering wrapping their head around mosquito borne diseases, here is a short list of the most prominent diseases in terms of the burden of morbidity and mortality from worldwide disease, with a mention of endemic to HICs diseases: Malaria * Protist Plasmodium spread by female Anopheles mosquitos * Spread directly during bites, minority spread through contaminated needles with infected blood and congenital in utero * Agnostic to most innate risk factors but sickle cell uni-recessive carriers appear to be immune, and external factors are mainly climatic region (living in endemic countries, near equator, international travel), malnutrition, working outdoors especially during evenings, working with animals * children or elderly are more susceptible * 90% of malarial deaths occur in Africa south of the Sahara and most are in children under 5 * Testing is recommended after suspected bites or during local outbreaks, through microscopic blood smears or RDTs (expensive but can detect small pieces of malarial parasites), or lab PCR testing (most accurate especially to determine species but highly rare, specialis

During the animal welfare vs global health debate week, I was very reluctant to make a post or argument in favor of global health, the cause I work in and that animates me. Here are some reflections on why, that may or may not apply to other people: 1. Moral weights are tiresome to debate. If you (like me) do not have a good grasp of philosophy, it's an uphill struggle to grasp what RP's moral weights project means exactly, and where I would or would not buy into its assumptions. 2. I don't choose my donations/actions based on impartial cause prioritization. I think impartially within GHD (e.g. I don't prioritize interventions in India just because I'm from there, I treat health vs income moral weights much more analytically than species moral weights) but not for cross-cause comparison. I am okay with this. But it doesn't make for a persuasive case to other people. 3. It doesn't feel good to post something that you know will provoke a large volume of (friendly!) disagreement. I think of myself as a pretty disagreeable person, but I am still very averse to posting things that go against what almost everyone around me is saying, at least when I don't feel 100% confident in my thesis. I have found previous arguments about global health vs animal welfare to be especially exhausting and they did not lead to any convergence, so I don't see the upside that justifies the downside. 4. I don't fundamentally disagree with the narrow thesis that marginal money can do more good in animal welfare. I just feel disillusioned with the larger implications that global health is overfunded and not really worth the money we spend on it. I'm deliberately focusing on emotional/psychological inhibitions as opposed to analytical doubts I have about animal welfare. I do have some analytical doubts, but I think of them as secondary to the personal relationship I have with GHD.

I'd love to see an 'Animal Welfare vs. AI Safety/Governance Debate Week' happening on the Forum. The risks from AI cause has grown massively in importance in recent years, and has become a priority career choice for many in the community. At the same time, the Animal Welfare vs Global Health Debate Week demonstrated just how important and neglected the cause of animal welfare remains. I know several people (including myself) who are uncertain/torn about whether to pursue careers focused on reducing animal suffering or mitigating existential risks related to AI. It would help to have rich discussions comparing both causes's current priorities and bottlenecks, and a debate week would hopefully expose some useful crucial considerations.

Has anybody changed their behaviour after the animal welfare vs global health debate week? A month or so on, I'm curious if anybody is planning to donate differently, considering a career pivot, etc. If anybody doesn't want to share publicly but would share privately, please feel free to message me. Linking @Angelina Li's post asking how people would change their behaviour, and tagging @Toby Tremlett🔹 who might have thought about tracking this.

Animal Justice Appreciation Note Animal Justice et al. v A.G of Ontario 2024 was recently decided and struck down large portions of Ontario's ag-gag law. A blog post is here. The suit was partially funded by ACE, which presumably means that many of the people reading this deserve partial credit for donating to support it. Thanks to Animal Justice (Andrea Gonsalves, Fredrick Schumann, Kaitlyn Mitchell, Scott Tinney), co-applicants Jessica Scott-Reid and Louise Jorgensen, and everyone who supported this work!

I think people working on animal welfare have more incentives to post during debate week than people working on global health. The animal space feels (when you are in it) very funding constrained, especially compared to working in the global health and development space (and I expect gets a higher % of funding from EA / EA-adjacent sources). So along comes debate week and all the animal folk are very motivated to post and make their case and hopefully shift a few $. This could somewhat bias the balance of the debate. (Of course the fact that one side of the debate feels they needs funding so much more is in itself relevant to the debate.) 

Are you an EU citizen? If so, please sign this citizen’s initiative to phase out factory farms (this is an approved EU citizen’s initiative, so if it gets enough signatures the EU has to respond): stopcrueltystopslaughter.com It also calls for reducing the number of animal farms over time, and introducing more incentives for the production of plant proteins. (If initiatives like these interest you, I occasionally share more of them on my blog) EDIT: If it doesn't work, try again in a couple hours/days. The collection has just started and the site may be overloaded. The deadline is in a year, so no need to worry about running out of time.