Do Fish Feel Pain?

"YES" - that's the theme of new book Do Fish Feel Pain? by Victoria Braithwaite. Empathy declared it is true long time before science even scratched the surface but overwhelming majority of us try to refute the idea because of convenience (and yes, sea food is the cheapest source of food for poor in lot of third world countries). Critical review of the book- here:

"For Braithwaite, a defining aspect of pain is that pain is a conscious experience. She repeatedly distinguishes pain from nociception on the grounds that nociception is unconscious and reflexive. Her views on these definitions seem idiosyncratic. My impression is that for many researchers, nociception is a description of a behavioural response, with nothing said about consciousness one way or the other.

By recasting that the question of whether fish feel pain into the question of whether fish are conscious, Braithwaite’s arguments become harder to assail, but lose some of their force. Consciousness is a very tricky subject. We don’t have a good scientific theory of human consciousness, let alone animal consciousness.

Given her definition, a large chunk of her book is aimed at proving fish have consciousness; that they are, as she puts it, “sentient beings.” For the last bit of evidence she needs to say fish are conscious, sentient beings, Braithwaite draws almost exclusively onone example of cooperative hunting that can occur between individuals in two species, groupers and moray eels."

My favorite lines from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography:

 I believe I have omitted mentioning that in my first Voyage from Boston, being becalm'd off Block Island, our People set about catching Cod & hawl'd up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my Resolution of not eating animal Food; and on this Occasion, I consider'd with my Master Tryon, the taking every Fish as a kind of unprovoked Murder, since none of them had or ever could do us any Injury that might justify the Slaughter.--All this seem'd very reasonable.--But I had formerly been a great Lover of Fish, & when this came hot out of the Frying Pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between Principle & inclination: till I recollected, that when the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs:--Then, thought I, if you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you. So I din'd upon Cod very heartily and continu'd to eat with other People, returning only now & then occasionally to a vegetable Diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for every thing one has a mind to do.