A RATIONAL Defense of Animal EXPERIMENTATION

nathan nobis

University of alabama, birmingham

Abstract: Many people involved in the life sciences and related fields and industries routinely cause mice, rats, dogs, cats, primates and other non-human animals to experience pain, suffering and an early death, harming these animals greatly and not for their own benefit. Harms, however, require moral justification, reasons that pass critical scrutiny. Animal experimenters and dissectors might suspect that strong moral justification has been given for this kind of treatment of animals. I survey some recent attempts to provide such a justification and show that they do not succeed: they provide no rational defense of animal experimentation and related activities. Thus, the need for a rational defense of animal experimentation remains.

Each hour of each day in the United States, many people involved in the life sciences and related fields kill approximately three to six thousand mice, rats, dogs, cats, primates and other non-human animals.[1] These animals are killed for education and training,[2] product safety testing and medical and psychological experimentation, among other uses. These animals typically experience at least some significant pain and suffering in the course of such experimentation and procurement. In the unlikely event that they do not, they are still killed. And this killing is a harm: their early deaths are bad for them even if they are killed painlessly: they are deprived of experiencing whatever goods they would have experienced, had they lived. A recent scientific review even suggests that just being in a lab is harmful for animals: the data suggests “significant fear, stress, and possibly distress are predictable consequences of routine laboratory procedures.”[3]

Thus, lab life and death is bad for animals: it harms them, and harms them greatly in that everything is taken from them and they gain nothing in the process. Harms, however, require moral justification, good reasons for why they are morally permissible. Animal experimentation thus requires moral justification. Most animal experimenters agree. We might suspect that they tend to think that a strong justification has been articulated: after all, we tend to think that scientists think that we should have good reasons for what we believe and good reasons for what we do. So we might suspect that they believe there are such good reasons that explain why animal experimentation is morally justified.

In this paper I survey some recent attempts by both philosophers and scientists to provide such moral justification, i.e., the good reasons that explain why such harms are permissible to inflict. I argue that these defenses do not succeed: they do not show why animal experimentation is morally permissible. Moral and intellectual integrity thereby requires, at least, the development of such a defense. My hope here is to encourage advocates of animal experimentation to accept this challenge and provide some insight into how they might better respond to it.

1. Empirical Motivations, Moral Responses

Before I survey the recent discussion, let me briefly provide some empirical information about what happens to animals and then sketch a common kind of reasoning given in favor of the conclusion that it is morally wrong to treat animals in these harmful ways.

Experimental procedures that animal routinely endure include drowning, suffocating, starving, and burning; blinding animals and destroying their ability to hear; damaging their brains, severing their limbs, crushing their organs; inducing heart attacks, ulcers, paralysis, seizures; forcing them to inhale tobacco smoke, drink alcohol, and ingest various chemicals, poisons and drugs, such as heroine and cocaine.[4]

For some readers, this list of procedures may seem a bit “pale” as mere words often fail to convey enough of the relevant information. For those for whom this is true, I encourage them to view some of the readily available photos and video documentary footage that documents this treatment; many are now available online. A picture often does speak a thousand words in the sense that more information is conveyed that way. Nobody can responsibly discuss these issues unless they have seen such footage, and a lot of it, including the small amounts of footage made available by industry groups: if they haven’t, they are simply missing essentially relevant information.[5]

Mere descriptions of these actions do not entail a moral evaluation, however. Are these actions of harming animals morally permissible, or are they wrong? To answer this we need to do some philosophy. A helpful methodology in philosophy is to start with clear cases and see if the insights gained in understanding them can help us understand a not-so-clear case. This methodology is useful here. To discern the morality of treating animals these ways, we might first ask whether it would be wrong to treat us these ways and, if so, why. Our most carefully reasoned and defensible responses about us, i.e., our best hypothesis about which properties we possess that makes it such that it is (or would be) wrong to treat us these ways, might have implications for some animals.

But who is “us”? Who is the “we” or “ourselves” here that we might first think about? This is an important question and the answer is not obvious since there are so many ways ‘we’ can be grouped. Historically, for example, “we” often only included members of our own race, or ethnic group, or religion or sex. But if one considered “us” to be “conscious, sentient beings,” then many animals are like us, certainly the ones mentioned above, mammals, birds and other vertebrates. So if it’s wrong to treat “us” in those ways, then it’s wrong to treat many animals those ways also.

If one thinks “us” is “humans,” problems arise, due to ambiguity in the term “human”: is the suggestion that anything that is biologically human is wrong to treat those ways? If that’s the suggestion (and the method of treatment here we might describe as “destruction”) that would seem to imply that it’s seriously wrong to destroy (living) cells, tissues and organs that are biologically human, and that all abortions – even very early ones – are seriously wrong.

At least some of these implications force us to be more precise in who we are initially referring to when we think about whether it would be wrong to treat “us” these ways. Let us begin by considering those who are hearing or reading this paper: I presume that nobody reading this paper would want to be treated the ways animals are treated in labs. I suppose that you think it would be wrong for one of your colleagues to treat you the way animals are treated, and you think that’s true even if you were killed so called-“humanely,” i.e., painlessly.[6]

Let’s suppose that’s true, but let’s ask why it’s true: what makes it true? Philosophy is similar to science at least in that they both involve hypotheses or explanations. So what best explains the fact that it would be wrong to treat you these ways? If the explanation is along the lines of “I am rational” or “intelligent’ or “autonomous,” that would suggest a theory about the basis of what I’ll (loosely) call “moral rights” to the effect that a being has moral rights – especially the right to be treated with respect and not harmed, against their will, for the benefit of others – only if that being is rational, or autonomous, or meets some other highly intellectualized condition.

But then we need to think again about who “we” are. Most of us count (some) humans who are not rational, intelligent or autonomous among “us.” Severely mentally challenged individuals, the senile and seriously demented, newborn babies, and even babies that – due to some damage – lack the potential to have sophisticated mental lives; they are all considered to be among the morally significant “us.”

If they are, however, then the “bar” for basic moral rights must be set rather low. It cannot be set at “being biologically human,” however, since, again, human cells and organs alone don’t meet it: they have no rights. The most plausible place seem to be at consciousness, the ability to feel pleasure and pain, and having a perspective on the world that can go better and worse from one’s own point of view. It’s these psychological features that put us in “the moral ballgame,” so to speak.

But since this is the case, since many non-human animals are like that, many animals are in the ballgame as much as comparably-minded humans are. Since like cases should be treated as like cases, unless there is a morally relevant difference that would justify failing to give animals’ interests equal consideration to comparable humans’ interests, it follows that – since it would be wrong to treat any humans these ways – it is wrong to treat comparably minded animals these ways also. What is morally relevant, in itself, is not the species the individual is a member of, but rather the mental life of the individual; comparable mental lives deserve equal respect and equal consideration and thus, nearly all animal experimentation is wrong, since such experimentation on comparably-minded beings that are biologically human is also.

This kind of reasoning has been developed and defended by many philosophers, from a wide range of theoretical perspectives: utilitarianism and other consequentialisms, rights-based deontology, ideal-contractarianisms and golden-rule ethics, virtue ethics, common-sense morality, religious moralities, feminist ethics, among others.[7] As a matter of fact, not many professional philosophers have criticized it: most criticisms come from public relations organizations that are well-paid to paint advocates of such reasoning in a bad light. But that is sophistry, not science or good reasoning, and it remains to be explained why so few philosophers – people trained in formal logic and the identification and evaluation of arguments for (and against) moral conclusions – have disagreed with this reasoning. One explanation is this: serious faults have not been found since the reasoning is sound.

Here, however, I wish to consider some recent objections to this kind of reasoning, however, and show how these objections are unsuccessful. I hope to encourage people to take these issues seriously and engage the debate in a more intellectually serious and responsible manner.

2. So Why Does Animal Experimentation Matter?

The first work I wish to discuss is a collection from 2001 entitled Why Animal Experimentation Matters: The Use of Animals in Medical Research. The authors of these eight essays attempt to defend animal research on both moral and scientific grounds. The book flap says that its authors “mount a vigorous and long-overdue defense of animal experimentation,” show “that the case for animal rights—in both its philosophical and activist guises—is deeply flawed” and provide a “much-needed corrective to an extremist cause that has up until now been too rarely challenged.” But advocates of animal experimentation should find the book a serious disappointment. I will explain why; perhaps these explanations will lead to stronger work on these issues, work that avoids the flaws of this book.

Philosopher R.G. Frey’s essay, “Justifying Animal Experimentation: The Starting Point,” should have been at the start of the book. However, his contribution is hidden as the last chapter, perhaps because it is the strongest contribution, philosophically, in that it accepts much of the basic reasoning given in defense of animals above. Frey notes that most supporters of vivisection attempt to justify it by appealing to its benefits for humans. But, he argues, this defense is subject to serious objections, suggested above. He notes:

Whatever benefits animal experimentation is thought to hold in store for us, those very same benefits could be obtained through experimenting on humans instead of animals. Indeed, given that problems exist because scientists must extrapolate from animal models to humans, one might think there are good scientific reasons for preferring human subjects.[8]

Thus, Frey sees what far too few experimenters seem unable to see, namely, that the premises of their defenses of animal experimentation obviously and straightforwardly imply that experimentation on vulnerable humans is permissible also. Frey thus sets the moral challenge for the other authors: to explain why, morally, no humans can be subject to the kinds of experiments that animals are subject to, and to do this by identifying the morally relevant properties that animals lack and humans have. He also raises the scientific challenge to explain how researchers can reliably use animal models to understand and cure human disease. He thinks that the first challenge has not been met; the second important scientific challenge was, unfortunately, not directly addressed in this book. Important scientific details on exactly how “animal models” are reliably used to gain information applicable to humans, by reliably predicting humans’ responses, are unfortunately not provided.

In responding to philosophers like Frey, Scientist Adrian Morrison states that he “abhors” Frey’s position and those of other philosophers who accept the kind of reasoning developed in favor of animals above. He asserts that all “human beings stand apart in a moral sense from all other species” and that all are worthy of “special consideration.”[9] Such a view might be true, but regrettably Morrison does not defend his claims by identifying the morally-relevant characteristics that all humans (even those with less intelligence, sentience and autonomy than animals) possess and all animals lack that might make his claim true. That omission prevents him from rationally criticizing opposing views; he does not provide any plausible reason to think that what animal advocates say is false or their arguments unsound: he merely states his “opinion,” in the worst sense of the term.