Q J Med 2000; 93: 831-835
© 2000 Association of Physicians
Commentary |
Duty and the beast: animal experimentation and neglected interests
From the Department of Philosophy, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
 |
Introduction |
|---|
 Top Introduction References |
|---|
Ethical issues are now regularly debated in medical and scientific journals. Much has been written, for instance, about euthanasia and assisted-suicide, about resource allocation and health-care systems, about drug trials and experimentation involving human subjects. By contrast, relatively little attention has been devoted by medical and scientific journals to probing and debating one issue that is an integral part of contemporary medical science—experimentation on non-human animals.1 This is cause for concern, given how much suffering and loss of life such experimentation involves—despite the many regulations and restrictions that have been imposed.
To attribute this neglect—as well as the continuation of experimentation on animals—to general indifference to animal suffering, appears uncharitable. An alternative explanation is that though medical and other biological scientists are not insensitive to the costs of their research to animals, there is a consensus among them that such costs are overridden by the benefits for humans which such research yields. But even this explanation is worrying. When so much suffering and other costs to animals are at stake, can it be assumed, without ongoing debate, that the benefits do indeed outweigh the costs? Surely such an assumption, unless subject to ongoing critical evaluation, does reflect a kind of moral indifference or at least a troubling form of moral self-confidence?
Opponents of animal experimentation have argued that its benefits are vastly overrated.2 Defenders of the practice either deny this or claim that the value of such experimentation is nonetheless very great. Rather than pursuing this debate, let us grant, for the sake of argument, that animal experimentation does substantially benefit humanity. Granting this is not to concede the conclusion that animal experimentation is morally acceptable, even if we assume, for present purposes, a consequentialist approach to morality—whereby actions are assessed exclusively by weighing their negative effects against their positive ones. Further information is required to determine whether or not animal experimentation is morally justifiable. We need to know how beneficial it is. And we need to know how great the costs are, including the costs to those animals on whom the experiments are performed.
I take it that the moral dilemma many people feel about animal experimentation is that they value its benefits yet simultaneously recognise that these benefits are at considerable cost to animals. The question then becomes: Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Glib answers to this difficult question are frequently offered from both sides of the animal experimentation dispute. For many opponents of animal experimentation, the answer is obviously negative. For many animal experimenters and their defenders, the answer is obviously affirmative.
Now, irrespective of whether proponents of animal experimentation are correct in saying that the benefits outweigh the costs, there is excellent reason to doubt that most people employ morally reliable measures to make the assessment. That is to say, there are strong grounds for doubting that most people give due weight to animal interests, even if they do accurately assess the benefits to humans of animal experimentation. The evidence for this is that most people—though thankfully fewer than in the past—think that the strongest animal interests may be sacrificed for even minimal human benefits. This is the judgement that people make (even if only implicitly) when they accept that animals may be made to suffer and die in order to provide meat for human consumption. In most circumstances, eating animals is not necessary for a person's survival. The judgement implicit in the acceptance of meat-eating in such circumstances, is that the suffering and death of animals is outweighed by the resultant gastronomic pleasures for humans.3 Although meat has nutritional benefits, these are attainable by other means. Thus it is merely the pleasure of consuming flesh—surely a very weak human interest—that is thought to warrant the (substantial) costs of meat-eating to animals.
This sort of judgement suggests that most people—namely meat eaters, or at least those whose carnivorous habits are not attributable to weakness of will—systematically give very little weight to animal interests (and proportionally very great weight to even the weakest of human interests with which these conflict). Surely if animal interests have any significant weight, these cannot be outweighed by human interests in what are culinary luxuries rather than necessities? If that is so, then we have good reason to doubt that most people employ reasonably calibrated scales when they do the cost-benefit analysis of animal experimentation. It would be much like an emperor who regularly sends conscripted troops off to war where thousands die or are maimed, claiming that though these costs are great, the benefits to (his) society are still greater. A heavy dose of cynicism regarding his ability to make this assessment reliably would be warranted if the emperor were to entertain himself with gladiatorial fights to the death by some of his infantrymen. His visits to the gladiators' circus would suggest that he accorded very little weight to his soldiers' interests and thus did not really appreciate the costs of his wars. We should, I suggest, be similarly cynical of assessments about the net value of animal experimentation when these are made according to standards which accord almost no value to animal interests.
In response to this argument, it might be objected that some (but, of course, not all) people who are vegetarians on moral grounds, think that the costs of animal experimentation to animals are outweighed by the accompanying benefits to humans. Given that meat-eaters make the same judgement about animal experimentation as these vegetarians, is it really the case that meat-eaters' underrating of animal interests is as significant as I have suggested? Perhaps even if they better recognised the weight of animal interests, they, like some vegetarians, would still endorse animal experimentation. There are a few reasons why this response is inadequate, but perhaps the most important is that societal views can have powerful influences even on those who reject those views. For instance, even people who are extremely enlightened for their times are seen by later generations not to have escaped some of the prejudices of their age. Thus many tireless opponents of slavery, for instance, still thought racial segregation to be acceptable. It could well be the case that many vegetarians oppose the most obvious wrongs to animals without having escaped all the contemporary prejudice against animal interests. More specifically, they might recognise that the most important interests of animals are not overridden by the weakest human ones, without their having recognised that the animal interests violated by experimentation are so strong as to outweigh even considerable benefits to humans.
One might hope that those who defend animal experimentation on the grounds that its benefits (for humans) outweigh its (considerable) costs to animals would acknowledge, when faced with the observation that the eating of meat involves sacrificing the most basic animal interests for extremely minor human ones, that the eating of animals cannot be justified in this way and thus ought to be forsworn. In fact, however, the reaction is usually quite different. Rather than recognising that the widespread acceptance of eating animals falls foul of even the consequentialist cost-benefit calculus, the matter is sometimes turned on its head.4 The acceptance of meat eating is taken as a given. It is then argued that if we are justified in eating animals then a fortiori are we justified in experimenting on them, given the much greater benefits to be derived from the latter. That may be a useful rhetorical device, given how many people assume that it is morally acceptable to eat animals, but its psychological persuasiveness does not demonstrate its soundness. Why should we accept the view that the strongest animal interests may be overridden to satisfy even trivial human desires?
When faced with this question, a great many people are inclined to argue that animals have so subordinate a moral status as to warrant the defeasibility of animals' most basic interests to procure luxuries for humans. In other words, they seek to show why meat eaters do not underestimate the value of animal interests, whether in evaluating the eating of or the experimenting on animals. They attempt to do so by arguing that animal interests are not really that valuable (at least in comparison with humans).
In response to such attempts, many philosophers have noted that a being's species—just as its race or sex—cannot in and of itself determine the moral importance or otherwise of its interests. To suggest otherwise, they say, is to be guilty of ‘speciesism’—the species analogue of racism and sexism.5 If, for instance, we can choose to avoid the infliction of the same pain on only one of two beings, it should not matter whether the one is an animal and the other human, just as it should not matter if one is black and the other white, one a male and the other a female. This is not to say that there are no differences between humans and animals, or that we should never treat humans and animals differently. Clearly, for example, humans have interests in being educated, which sheep lack. Thus it is no arbitrary discrimination—no speciesism—to provide education to humans but not to sheep. Similarly, it is no arbitrary discrimination for health insurance plans to cover pregnancy care or routine mammograms for women but not for men. But it would be unfair discrimination if comparable interests were assigned different moral weight on the mere basis of the race, sex or species of the bearers of the interests.
Now one might embrace this formal point about non-discrimination and yet claim that there are morally relevant differences between humans and animals that render experimenting upon, killing and eating of animals, but not humans, morally acceptable. For instance, it is often noted that humans have greater cognitive capacities than animals, and are therefore capable of sophisticated language, heightened self-consciousness and higher-order thinking.
Clearly the possession (or absence) of these capacities has some moral significance. The question is whether it has the specific significance attributed to it by those who defend the practices of using animals for food and science. There are a number of compelling reasons to doubt that it does.
First, it is not clear why a being's cognitive (rather than its sentient) capacity can affect the moral permissibility of inflicting suffering on it. Though it might be argued that often beings with greater cognitive capacities may suffer greater psychological effects from such suffering, it will also sometimes be true that beings that cannot understand or make sense of their suffering will suffer more as a result of this inability. Surely, in the words of Jeremy Bentham, the ‘question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?’.6
Some might concede that when it comes to the infliction of suffering, human and animal pains of the same nature and intensity should be granted equal moral weight. This, they may say, speaks against the infliction of pain on animals, either in rearing them for food or in experimenting on them. By contrast, they may say, to kill or experiment on an animal in a painless manner is not wrong because animals lack the cognitive capacities of humans. Having a greater cognitive capacity enables one to be more aware of one's own mortality and to care more about the continuation of one's own life. Now whether this line of argument is sound will depend (in part) on how cognitively enabled a being must be before killing it (painlessly) becomes wrong. Beings are not neatly divided into the cognitively enabled and the cognitively deficient. There is a continuum of sapient capacities. As far as we know, we humans, as a species, exist at the most advanced end of this continuum. One question we should ask ourselves honestly, is why it should be the case that the threshold of sapient capacities that makes killing a being wrong should be fixed at precisely the level at which we are situated? Why is it not fixed slightly lower to include the great apes, other primates or lower still to include other mammals? Few would want to concede that it is merely our status as the most sapient beings that gives us privileged status, for if that were the case then we would have to concede that were we to be discovered by members of some far more intelligent species from another planet, there would be nothing wrong with their killing us for food and experimenting on us,7 so long as they were careful not to inflict pain on us. These reflections suggest that there is something remarkably self-serving about fixing the threshold at the level that humans do.
This arbitrariness becomes even clearer when we consider that the nature of the continuum of cognitive capacities is such that there is considerable overlap between species. Many humans, for instance, are less sapient than many animals. Severely retarded humans can have less mental life than ordinary adult gorillas. If a being's cognitive capacities determine whether killing it is wrong, why should we think it is wrong to kill any human, no matter how cognitively impaired, and yet think that we may kill members of other species with much greater cognitive capacities?8 Why is experimentation on non-human primates acceptable, but performing the same experiments on cognitively less well-endowed humans not acceptable?9
In attempting to answer this question, some have argued that the psychological effects of killing (as well as experimenting on) members of one's own species are worse than killing members of other species. Thus even if killing or experimenting on cognitively defective humans is intrinsically no worse than subjecting non-human animals to such treatment, it is extrinsically worse. This is a curious argument because it seems to give great moral weight to people's prejudices. It allows the speciesist to justify his unfair discriminatory treatment of animals by recourse to his own prejudices. That may be untroubling to some. They should consider that it also allows the racist to justify his unfair discriminatory treatment of the race he despises by appealing to his own prejudices and the unfortunate psychological effects that behaving in a non-discriminatory manner would have on him and his fellow racists. At the very least, if members of a racist society would suffer no negative psychological effects from experimenting on or killing people who were members of the race they despised and who, because of mental impairment, had the mental capacities of a chimpanzee, then, on this view, there would be nothing wrong with such practices. However, though the racist may be unable to see it, the rest of us can recognise that a human of any race with the mental capacities of a chimpanzee is deserving of significant moral consideration from everybody and not only from non-racists. But if this is so, then why are not all beings (including non-human ones) with the mental capacities of a chimpanzee—most typically chimpanzees themselves—not deserving of the same degree of moral consideration from everybody and not only from non-speciesists?
When all other arguments fail, many people fall back on religious ones. Such people suggest that all humans (even mentally defective ones), but no animals (even very clever ones), are created in the image of God and that this constitutes a non-arbitrary and therefore non-speciesist explanation for asymmetrical treatment of humans and animals. Two sorts of response can be offered to such an argument. The first questions the religious assumptions that underlie this argument or points to the impossibility of defending them in publicly accessible ways: can we be so sure that God exists and that humans are created in his image, that, on this basis, we inflict considerable suffering and death on animals? The second kind of response should have force for even those who do embrace religious doctrines. Thus one might point out that though the Bible permits the eating of (some) animals under certain conditions, the Bible also permits the institution of slavery (though admittedly under strict conditions), marriage of and sex with young children, polygamy, and divorcing a wife without her consent. Few people today, even religious ones, believe that it is acceptable to engage in these practices. Although later developments in various religions have resulted in the prohibition of these practices, it is clear that not everything the Bible permits is taken by religious people to be permissible. If these practices were once permitted but are now prohibited, why should we think that permission to eat animals and use them in other ways should not follow a similar path?
The most compelling defence of animal experimentation is the argument that, although it inflicts great costs on animals, its benefits to humans are still greater. I have noted that whether the benefits really do outweigh the costs is a controversial matter. I have not attempted to settle that complex issue. Rather, I have suggested that there are very strong reasons for thinking that humans tend to accord grossly too little weight to animal interests and thus fail to appreciate the full costs of suffering and loss of life that animal experimentation involves. This is demonstrated by the widespread acceptance of meat-eating, which suggests that most people think that even very weak human interests—culinary ones—may override the most basic animal interests. It is curious that when faced with this observation, many meat-eaters are inclined to retreat from the plausible-sounding consequentialist justification offered for animal experimentation and, in seeking to defend their carnivorous practices, advance a variety of much weaker arguments which bespeak an attempt to rationalize speciesism. The history of human prejudice gives us ample reason not to rely on received ideas about moral status, but rather to subject such ideas to as honest and critical a scrutiny as possible. That, in turn, will require a new and more critical examination of the costs to animals of experiments on them.
|
Notes |
|---|
Address correspondence to Dr D. Benatar, Department of Philosophy, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, Rondebosch 7700, South Africa. e-mail: dbenatar{at}humanities.uct.ac.za
|
References |
|---|
|
TopIntroductionReferences |
|---|
1. The ethics and politics of animal experimentation are quite regularly mentioned (often as news items) in medical and science journals, but rarely do such journals devote space to arguing and analysing the issues. For instance, a Medline search reveals that the New England Journal of Medicine, which regularly publishes papers about ethical issues in medicine, has published, since at least 1966, only three substantial articles about animal experimentation. Two of these (Cohen C. The case for the use of animals in biomedical research. N Engl J Med 1986; 315:865–9; Pardes H, et al. Physicians and the animal-rights movement. N Engl J Med 1991; 324:1640–3) were vigorous defences of the practice. The third (Hoff C. Immoral and moral uses of animals. N Engl J Med 1980; 302:115–18), which suggested that animal experimentation, though not always wrong, ought to be radically reduced, appeared as long ago as 1980. This is sparse treatment of an issue that affects tens of millions of animals each year. When scientific journals do publish material debating animal experimentation, it is usually short letters that appear, rather than the sustained argument of more substantial papers. There are exceptions, of course. See, for example, various articles in Scientific American February 1997;79–93.
2. LaFollette H, Shanks N. Brute Science: Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation. London, Routledge, 1996.
3. It is often not realized just how much suffering is involved in the rearing and slaughter of animals for the production of meat. For an account of this suffering, see Singer P. Animal Liberation. 2nd edn. New York, New York Review of Books, 1990:95–157.
4. Cohen C. The case for the use of animals in biomedical research. N Engl J Med1986; 315:865–9.[Medline]
5. The term ‘speciesism’ was coined by Richard Ryder, whose intention was to draw a parallel with racism (Victims of Science. 2nd edn. London, National Anti-Vivisection Society, 1983, 5). Also Singer P. Animal Liberation. 2nd edn. New York, New York Review of Books, 1990:6.
6. Bentham J. The Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789; ch 17:section 1.
7. Steward D. The limits of trooghaft. In: Regan T, Singer P. eds. Animal Rights and Human Obligations. 2nd edn. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1989:273–80.
8. Singer P. Animal Liberation. 2nd edn. New York, New York Review of Books, 1990:18.
9. Hettinger E. The responsible use of animals in biomedical research. Between the Species1989; 5:123–31.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  D. Benatar The Chickens Come Home to Roost Am J Public Health, September 1, 2007; 97(9): 1545 - 1546. [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 J.M.B. Hughes and D. Benatar Duty and the beast: animal experimentation and neglected interests QJM, May 1, 2001; 94(5): 283 - 284. [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||