Skip to main content
Search

The moral status of invasive animal research

Published on February 11, 2015   32 min

A selection of talks on Plant & Animal Sciences

Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
My name is Bernard Rollin. I'm a university distinguished professor of philosophy, biomedical sciences and animal sciences at Colorado State University. I will be addressing the question of the moral status of invasive animal research.
0:18
In order to retain custom, freedom and autonomy, industries, businesses and professions must operate in accord with social expectations, and societal ethics. Failure to accomplish this is very likely to result in onerous external regulation, far more difficult to adhere to than voluntary self regulation. This observation is particularly true of animal research. During the 1970s animal research was greatly unsynchronized with social concern regarding the treatment of animals, growing out of the research community's failure to realize that emerging societal ethics for animals, viewed animal research as a moral issue. For example, there was essentially no analgesia employed in animal research, even for the most painful invasive project. One notorious editorial in a prominent international science journal opined that quote "Animal research is not a moral issue, is a scientific necessity." As if it could not be both.
1:18
Indeed, ethical ambivalence about the moral status of scientific research has been extant since the Renaissance. With the rise of animal research and such philosophical justifications for it as Descartes's denial of consciousness, awareness and pain in animals, not everyone welcomed such arguments. In a fascinating book opposing Descartes's view of animals as machines, titled From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine, historian of science Leonora Cohen Rosenfield chronicled contemporary vigorous opposition to Descartes, including the views of theologians who emphatically affirmed that Descartes must be wrong about animal's souls because quote "heaven would not be heaven without my dog." Inevitably, such opinions, as well a strong moral feelings towards animals inherent in common decency, gave rise to strong social opinions opposing animal research and favoring anti vivisection, particularly in Great Britain. Indeed, some of the early researchers utilizing animals were highly ambivalent about such use, but relied on invoking cost benefit analysis to justify it.
Show
Hide

The moral status of invasive animal research

Embed in course/own notes