The Ethics of Research involving Animals
Workshop: Ethics and research involving animals (9)
Background on ethical issues
The debate about the moral status of animals was heightened with the publication of Animal Liberation by Peter Singer in the late 1970s. Singer drew an analogy with racism, suggesting that our treatment of animals could be seen as a similar form of unwarranted exploitation and disregard for suffering.
Tom Regan enhanced this argument in the 1980s by applying the language of rights to animals. There were and still are numerous critics of this development. Rights were originally developed in the context of human political communities and bring with them a commitment to corresponding duties that humans have to each other. To transfer these ideas to the realm of animal communities could entail the imposition of implausible duties on humans to intervene in the natural world to prevent animal suffering, for example by preventing lions from killing antelopes. Thus, it is preferable to focus on the duties humans have to animals as a result of the interests of those animals, rather than attributing them rights. For example, humans have a duty not to be cruel to animals or to cause them unnecessary suffering.
There are two general approaches one can take towards human duties to animals. The first is to invoke strict prohibitions in our treatment of animals, such as vegetarianism. The second is to focus on the idea of balance, and to allow utilitarian trade-offs. Both these approaches can be identified in the UK regulation of animals in scientific procedures. There is a strict ban on the use of primates in research, whatever the beneficial consequences to humans that would therefore be lost. But there is also the cost-benefit assessment in relation to experiments involving other animals.
A thought experiment often used in philosophical writings about animal rights was described during the Workshop. In this thought experiment, one is asked to imagine that a race of aliens descends to earth, and that these aliens are substantially superior to humans in their cognitive capacities and abilities. If it turned out that the aliens happened to like the taste of human flesh, why would it be wrong for them to kill and eat us? Attempts to answer this problem usually refer to the idea of the interruption of a worthwhile life and the imposition of psychological and physical suffering.
An important concept in the debate is telos, or the idea of the purpose, end, or goal of a life. For humans, it could be suggested that this is embodied in happiness and self-fulfilment. For mice, it is less clear, but one possibility is that the telos for mice would consist in a life worth living. To prevent a life from achieving its goal would seem to be ethically unacceptable.
Last Updated Thu, 10 June 2004