Nuffield Council on Bioethics / Home

Ethics of Research involving animals

IV. Ethical issues raised by animal research

We begin the exploration of ethical issues raised by animal research in Chapter 3 by considering five main types of ethical question (Box 2). For each question, we consider commonly encountered arguments to bring clarity to the debate, to identify agreement where it exists, and to understand the rationale for the remaining disagreement.

The question of moral status
The debate about research involving animals is often reduced to the question of defining the moralstatus (or moral importance) of humans, and animals. We identify three views (paragraph 3.20).

• There is something special about humans, and all humans possess some morally vital property that all animals lack (the clear-line view).

• There is a hierarchy of moral importance with humans at the apex, followed by primates and then other mammalian species such as pigs, dogs, rats and mice and other vertebrates such as zebrafish, with invertebrates (for example fruit flies) and single-celled creatures arranged towards the bottom (the moral sliding scale view).

• There is no categorical distinction between human and non-human animals, and that they are moral equals (the moral equality view).

Box 2: Ethical questions raised by animal research Provided there are substantial benefits associated with research involving animals, why should the use of animals require special justification? Can any use of animals by humans be justified? Which specific issues need to be considered in the context of research? What role does the unavailability of alternatives play in the justification of research involving animals? How does the justification of animal research relate to the justification of other uses, such as food production? What is the appropriate role of regulation for research involving animals?

We conclude that neither consideration of the relative moral status nor reference to the evolutionary order or uses of animals in other contexts (paragraphs 3.21-3.26), settles the question of the permissibility of animal experimentation, or of any other use of animals in a helpful manner. Exclusive focus on the concept of moral status may obscure more than it illuminates (paragraph 3.24).

Footnotes

Animal Procedures Committee (2003) Review of the cost-benefit assessment in the use of animals in research, p26, available
at: http://www.apc.gov.uk/reference/costbenefit.pdf. Accessed on: 4 April 2005.