Animal Experimentation

Cadernos de Saúde Pública, 1999

The purpose of this article is to raise some points for an understanding of the contemporary debate over the ethics of using animals in scientific experiments. We present the various positions from scientific and moral perspectives establishing different ways of viewing animals, as well as several concepts like 'animal ethics', 'animal rights', and 'animal welfare'. The paper thus aims to analyze the importance and growth of this debate, while proposing to expand the academic approach to this theme in the field of health.

Throughout history, researchers have been solving medical and other challenging problems, developing new techniques and treatments, and curing diseases -largely by conducting animal experimentation. Animal testing gives researchers the opportunity to control in vivo the genetic and environmental factors that may influence the development of disease and establishment of its complications, and thus gain new information about its handling and treatment in humans. Most experiments are carried out on rodents, though other species with human-like biological characteristics are also used. In this review, an overview of ethical considerations in the use of animals in research, which have become highly topical and contentious, especially in recent times, are presented. The usefulness and contributions of animals in biomedical research are equally highlighted with some historical perspectives. INTRODUCTION Animal testing is the use of non-human animals for the purpose of scientific experiment...

Scientific American, 1997

F or the past 20 years, we have witnessed an intense but largely unproductive debate over the propriety and value of using animals in medical and scientific research, testing and education. Emotionally evocative images and simple assertions of opinion and fact are the usual fare. But we do not have to accept such low standards of exchange. Sound bites and pithy rhetoric may have their place in the fight for the public's ear, but there is always room for dispassionate analysis and solid scholarship. When it comes to animal research, there is plenty of reason for legitimate dispute. First, one has to determine what values are being brought to the table. If one believes animals should not be used simply as means to ends, that assumption greatly restricts what animal research one is willing to accept. Most people, though, believe some form of cost-benefit analysis should be performed to determine whether the use of animals is acceptable. The costs consist mainly of animal pain, distress and death, whereas the benefits include the acquisition of new knowledge and the development of new medical therapies for humans. There is considerable disagreement among scientists in judging how much pain and suffering occur in the housing and use of research animals. More attention is at last being given to assessing these questions and to finding ways of minimizing such discomfort. Developing techniques that explicitly address and eliminate animal suffering in laboratories will reduce both public and scientific uneasiness about the ways animals are used in science. At present, indications are that public attention to the animal research issue has declined somewhat; however, the level of concern among scientists, research institutions, animal-rights groups and those who regulate animal use remains high. There is also much room to challenge the benefits of animal research and much room to defend such research. In the next few pages, you will find a debate between opponents and supporters of animal research. It is followed by an article that sets out the historical, philosophical and social context of the animalresearch controversy. We leave it to you to judge the case.

Animal L, 1996

2019

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 2015

In this article, we present three necessary conditions for morally responsible animal research that we believe people on both sides of this debate can accept. Specifi cally, we argue that, even if human beings have higher moral status than nonhuman animals, animal research is morally permissible only if it satisfi es (1) an expectation of suffi cient net benefi t, (2) a worthwhile-life condition, and (3) a no-unnecessary-harm/qualifi ed-basic-needs condition. We then claim that, whether or not these necessary conditions are jointly suffi cient for justifi ed animal research, they are relatively demanding, with the consequence that many animal experiments may fail to satisfy them.

EMBO reports, 2007

2015

Animal research has long been a source of biomedical aspirations and moral concern. Examples of both hope and concern are abundant today. In recent months, as is common practice, monkeys have served as test subjects in promising preclinical trials for an Ebola vaccine or treatment 1 , 2 , 3 and in controversial maternal deprivation studies. 4 The unresolved tension between the noble aspirations of animal research and the ethical controversies it often generates motivates the present issue of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. As editors of this special section, we hope that these original and timely articles will push the professional discussion of animal research ethics in a positive direction that will benefi t research scientists and others interested in moral problems in animal research. We also look forward to a day when animal research will genuinely meet both appropriate scientifi c and appropriate ethical criteria-criteria that themselves can be improved by critical scrutiny. Animal research-that is, the use of live animals as experimental subjects in biomedical and behavioral fi elds of learning-has been deeply entrenched for well over half a century. One signal development was the enactment in the late 1930s of federal product safety legislation in the United States and other nations that required animal testing of food, drugs, and medical devices prior to use by human subjects or consumers. 5 Another development was the publication of codes of research ethics that called for animal research prior to human research. The Nuremberg Code, published by an American military tribunal in 1947-48 after scrutiny of Nazi medical atrocities, stated that experiments involving the use of human subjects should be "based on the results of animal experimentation." 6 The Declaration of Helsinki, fi rst published in 1964, reaffi rmed this assumption and added, rather imprecisely, that "the welfare of animals used for research must be respected." 7 Against the background of such statements, the institutionalization and widespread acceptance of animal research in the twentieth century rested on two basic assumptions, one factual and one moral. The factual assumption was that animal research is suffi ciently reliable as a basis for predicting the effects of drugs, products, and other materials on human beings that animal trials can be expected to yield signifi cant scientifi c conclusions and medical benefi ts to humanity.