Ethics of Research involving animals
The relationship between moral status and morally relevant features - continuation II
3.45 This approach is plausible in that at least some rights and duties emerge in the context of social cooperation. But the argument can be developed in more than one way. One version has been highlighted in the following response to the Consultation:
‘There are…animals which have established links with us and come to share our lives and our fate in historically complex ways – particularly dog, cat and horse. I think these links should be respected, even if the animals themselves have no knowledge of them or of their social and cultural significance. For, in disrespecting these links, we disrespect ourselves.’
Roger Scruton The view that humans have special responsibilities towards beings that form part of a community with them could also explain why some people have a special affinity for pets and working animals, and perhaps also why the A(SP)A requires special justification for the use of animals such as cats and dogs (see paragraph 13.5).
3.46 According to another version of the approach it could also be argued that not only the relationship to humans establishes certain responsibilities, but also relationships that animals have among themselves. This becomes perhaps most clear in considering animals such as primates. Since the species-specific capacities that these animals normally develop also include complex social interactions with other animals, many argue that expression of this behaviour is usually severely restricted in research.17 Such infringements, it is feared, cannot be alleviated in the same way as physiological pain and suffering, the effects of which may be mitigated by pain relieving medicines (for a discussion of issues arising in relation to assessing pain and suffering in animals see Chapter 4). Although proponents of the use of primates would point out that housing of animals in groups or in pairs can allow for acceptable levels of welfare, opponents are often not persuaded. They argue that the cage sizes that can be provided in conventional laboratories will always be inadequate. There are also concerns about how these social animals might potentially experience the death of other research animals with which they have established relationships. Similar arguments could be made with regard to other social animals, such as dogs. It seems plausible that sociability may interact with other features in that, if social dislocation causes distress or suffering or interferes with flourishing to a significant degree, then the overall effect on the animal could be potentially serious.
Possession of a life
3.47 A perhaps more difficult morally relevant criterion is possession of a life. Is life itself of value? It may seem that if we think that killing is wrong, then we must be committed to the view that life itself is valuable. However, this need not be the case. Some philosophers have argued that life, as such, has no value, as distinct from the experiences that happen within life. Given this view, it is entirely reasonable to treat pain, suffering and other harms within a life with great moral seriousness without attributing a similar level of concern to death. For it can be the case that there are animals that have no sense of themselves as existing in time, although they may have highly developed capacities of sensory experience. In such cases it could be argued that to the animals concerned it matters less whether they exist but more how their moment-to-moment existence is characterised.
3.48 This line of thought raises the question of why we treat human life with special consideration and, in particular, why we experiment on animals precisely to find ways of prolonging the lives both of humans and animals. One possible answer, although not necessarily endorsed here, draws on two earlier points. First, most humans, and perhaps some other animals, exhibit self-consciousness and an ability to anticipate, reflect upon and fear their own death. Hence, the prospect of death usually has a significant secondary effect on the quality of lived experience. Secondly, humans, and perhaps some other animals, care about each other in the sense that the death of others is often considered a tragedy. Hence, death has special significance for highly social beings. It could therefore be argued that preserving the lives of humans and of relevant other animals should take precedence, with less regard being given to those animals that either lack self-consciousness or do not live in social groups.
3.49 A simpler response is to revert to an argument implied above according to which some higher cognitive capacity generates a right to life; most humans and those animals that closely share similar features in this respect have such a right, while other animals do not. Many attempts have been made to provide a philosophical foundation for this view, although none commands wide agreement (see paragraph 3.20 and Box 3.4).
Summary of the discussion about morally relevant features
3.50 We have suggested that the proper moral treatment of a being depends on the characteristics it possesses, rather than simply on the species to which it belongs.18 In this regard, we have focused on sentience, higher cognitive capacities, capacity for flourishing, sociability and possession of a life. With the possible exception of the last feature, each provides reasons for moral concern, and hence it can plausibly be argued that animals in possession of one, or several, of these features are moral subjects, and that any treatment infringing on one of the features requires careful justification. The three initially attractive approaches often encountered in arguments about whether or not it is acceptable for humans to use animals for potentially harmful purposes (the clear-line view, the moral sliding-scale view and the moral-equality view) are therefore less helpful.
The functional role of morally relevant features: absolute constraints or factors to be balanced?
3.51 We have not yet considered what weight the individual morally relevant features should have in deciding the acceptability of research. To anticipate the discussion, let us consider the capacity to feel pain. There is little disagreement that this provides a clear moral constraint on how a being may be treated. But is it merely one factor to be taken into account, which is to be weighed against others? Or does it create an absolute protection on how the being may be treated, in the form of an inviolable right? These two possibilities are reflective of different philosophical approaches which are summarised in Box 3.3. Someone arguing from a consequentialist view, where the moral value of individual actions is based primarily on their outcome, would emphasise the first possibility, and accept a ‘weighing’ of different goods.
A proponent of a rights-based or deontological view might argue in terms of the second possibility, asserting that certain factors establish absolute constraints, which ‘trump’ or ‘outweigh’ other factors (see Box 3.4). We now explore in more detail the three principal options of how to consider the morally relevant features in relation to animal research: the weighing of consequences (consequentialism); the setting of absolute prohibitions (rights-based) or incorporating elements of both in a hybrid approach.
| Box 3.3: Three paradigms of normative ethics Normative theory is a branch of philosophical ethics which seeks to develop theoretical frameworks that can help to determine whether actions are right or wrong. Three important approaches are consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics. Some take the view that they are mutually exclusive, and constitute competing frameworks. Others point out that they can be seen as overlapping and complementary, emphasising different aspects of the complex interactions of humans between each other and with the environment. Consequentialism According to this approach, the moral value of individual human actions, or rules for such actions, is determined primarily by their outcome. Such approaches do not usually put strong emphasis on the inviolable rights of moral agents or moral subjects. One important type of consequentialism is utilitarianism, developed most prominently by the British philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill in the 18th and 19th centuries.* For utilitarians, the best actions are those that produce most overall happiness or pleasure (see paragraphs 3.52–3.55). Deontology The name of this theory is derived from the Greek deon, which means duty or obligation. In this theory, certain actions are right or wrong independent of their outcome. Instead, their rightness or wrongness is defined by a formal system, which defines certain actions as intrinsically right or wrong. Moral agents have a duty to respect the principles derived from this system and to act according to it. Rights of other moral agents or subjects can be violated if they are not treated accordingly. Historically, deontology is associated with the work of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804; see paragraphs 3.56–3.57).† A separate form of deontology advocates the concept of animal rights (see Box 3.4). Virtue ethics According to this approach, first developed by early philosophers such as Aristotle around 2,300 years ago, moral value depends less on the duty to follow rules given by formal systems, or on the duty to maximise beneficial consequences, than on the character of the moral agent. A virtuous moral agent is someone who deliberates and acts in a way which displays virtues such as justice, truthfulness and courage. According to this view, morality is closer to the exercise of a skill than the following of standardised formulae or rules.‡<>hr> |
Footnotes
16 Other issues relating to the consequences of producing GM animals arise from the possibility that research animals, such as
rodents, fish or insects, may escape and interbreed with wild animals, leading to potentially irreversible changes in the gene pool of the species. These issues are outside the scope of this Report.
17 See Smith JA and Boyd KM (Editors) (2002) The Boyd Group Papers on The use of Non-Human Primates in Research and
Testing (Leicester: The British Psychological Society), available at: http://www.boydgroup.
demon.co.uk/Prefaceandsummary.pdf. Accessed on: 18 Apr 2005.
18 It could be argued that a focus on morally relevant features would also have implications for the treatment of humans who lack some, or all, of these features. For example, it could follow that embryos, some infants or severely disabled people could be used for research without consent by proxy. However, such inferences are not straightforward and require additional arguments. It could furthermore reasonably be argued that the involvement in research of humans who lack morally relevant features is not acceptable because such a treatment may be perceived as undignified by friends and family members, thus disrupting important social institutions. Trust in healthcare practitioners may also be eroded, and, for example, people might become afraid of hospital treatments, fearing that physicians will not always act in their best interest. Addressing the wider implications of approaches that draw on morally relevant features is beyond the scope of this Report.