Animal Experimentation: An Ethical Assessment

This research assesses within an ethical context the practice of animal experimentation conducted as a part of medical and other biological research. The positions of ethicists Daniel Callahan, Charles Curran, and William May, and others are considered.

The issue of the ethics surrounding the use of animals in medical and other biological experimentation for purposes of research is linked inextricably to the animal rights movement, which provides the strongest and most vocal opposition to the practice. As is true of so many social phenomena in the United States, the animal rights movement appeared to most Americans to develop out of thin air in the 1980s (Burke, 1990). As is also true of most social phenomena in the country, however, the animal rights movement is not new. Animal protection organizations have existed in the United States for more than 100 years (Alperson, 1988), and the animal welfare movement has even earlier origins in Englandùthe Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in 1824 (Zak, 1989).

The level of activism and the tactics employed in the pursuit of animal rights since the late-1980s, however, do represent changes (Holden, 1989; Zak, 1989). Both sides in the controversy demand moderation in the behavior of the parties in the opposing camp, and each side demands new laws to deal with either the protection of animals, or the protect

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y may be used (Alperson, 1988). At the other end of the spectrum are organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that demand a complete end to medical and other scientific experimentation involving the use of animals. More radical still are those individuals and organizations who contend that the ethical treatment of animals requires an end to the use of animals for human food. All animal rights and animal welfare activists accept the philosophical idea that animals have an intrinsic value (Zak, 1989, p. 71). Some of these people interpret this doctrine to mean that animals have a right to be free from physical and mental pain, while others interpret the doctrine to mean than animals have the same right to live as that enjoyed by human beings. Ethical Assessment of the Issue The presumption that other animals lack the same worth as human animals began with Aristotle, who held that a lack of rationality makes them by nature slaves to humans. Seven hundred years after Aristotle, St. Augustine, in establishing a Christian justification of human domination in the world, argued that Christ taught that (1) to refrain from killing animals is to give in to superstition, and (2) no commonality of rights
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Approximate Word count = 3550
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)

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