Introductory Ethics Tutorial

Nell Kriesberg
Division of Multidisciplinary Studies
North Carolina State University

In this section we will give a general introduction to the major ideas and movements, the basic philosophic paradigms characterizing the discussion about the moral concerns of animal subjects in research. The question we will focus on here is the most basic, should we or should we not use animals as research subjects, reviewing the debate from the 1970s, when it began in earnest in this country and up to 1990. We will use an historic approach to this survey, much as we did in Tutorial One. Tutorial Three of this section, the Advanced Ethics portion, will pick up the conversation from 1990, continuing to the present, going into a bit more detail.

This debate about animals as research subjects is part of another larger philosophic question, that of whether or not science is value free. Some say that science is objective while others say that values are actually embedded in science, in choices scientists make and in the implementation of scientific discoveries. Choosing to use animals is a moral decision; how to care for them while generating data involves other ethical choices. In 2002, Bernard Rollin, a veterinarian who is one of the philosophers noted in this section gave a talk, “The Role of Ethics in Research.” Although this talk is not only about animals, it is interesting in terms of the larger context for this module, the interaction between science, society and values.

Attitudes toward animals vary along a spectrum, not just in terms of their use in research, but in general. These attitudes reflect differences in world view, in how we see ourselves in relation to nature and animals in general. One can see a spectrum, from exploitive, to use, to welfare, to rights to liberation. Most people are not at the two extremes of this spectrum; exploitive is close to abuse and liberation means animals should not be used in any way for benefit of humans. Some believe that pet owning is misguided; others believe so strongly in the moral right of their view that breaking the law is permissible. The middle areas: use, welfare, and rights are our focus. This middle approach is illustrated in the Animal News Center, a webzine focusing on animals.

Most people feel comfortable with the use of animals for our needs: this has been the traditional role of animals. Logically speaking, if we can use animals for food, why not for medical research? In general, the approach is one of seeing how human beings can benefit from the use of animals in research—and this research benefits animals as well. This type of cost-benefit approach is a Consequentalist way of judging morality: an action is good depending on the overall results, or consequences. In this case, the overall good, increased health benefits for human beings, justifies the use of animals as subjects in scientific research. Utilitarianism is the most common form of Consequentalism.

The American Veterinary Medical Association takes this position, that we, human beings, are responsible for animal welfare, even as we make use of them for our needs.

Animal welfare is a human responsibility that encompasses all aspects of animal well-being, from proper housing and nutrition to preventative care, treatment of disease, and when necessary, humane euthanasia. The AVMA’s commitment to animal welfare is unsurpassed. However, animal welfare and animal rights are not the same. AVMA cannot endorse the philosophical views and personal values of animal rights advocates when they are incompatible with the responsible use of animals for human purposes, such as food and fiber, and for research conducted to benefit both humans and animals. (http://www.avma.org/policies/animalwelfare.asp#policy)

One can see in this statement the idea that although it is morally right to make use of animals, we are still morally responsible for their welfare.

The earliest proponents of Utilitarianism, the most well known form of Consequentalism, were British philosophers such as David Hume (1711-1776), Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). It was Mill who defined Utilitarianism as “the greatest good for the greatest number;” in this way, the common good outweighs the particular, individual harm. The standards for good vs. bad were defined as happiness vs. pain and suffering. Bentham, in 1780, argued to include animals as worthy of moral consideration since they were capable of suffering pain. His statement in the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation which has become much quoted was in direct opposition to the Cartesian tradition of considering animals as incapable of feeling pain as humans did, since they lacked rational thought and a soul. Bentham said, “The question is not, can they reason? Not, can they talk? But, can they suffer?”(see Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation for the full quotation.)

One of the most well known contemporary Utilitarian philosophers, Peter Singer, follows Bentham in including animal suffering as part of the overall moral calculus. But he takes the Utilitarian stance further. Bentham and the Utilitarians of the 18th century were focused on refuting the Cartesian position but still made a distinction between human beings and animals. Singer says that this is not a logical position, that there is no reason to prefer one species over another except that we are prejudiced in favor of our own species. He labels this prejudice “speciesism.”

We have seen that experimenters reveal a bias in favor of their own species whenever they carry out experiments on nonhumans for purposes that they would not think justified them in using human beings, even brain damaged ones.  This principle gives us a guide toward our question. Since a speciesist bias, like a racist bias, is unjustifiable, an experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain damaged human would also be justifiable. (Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd edition, NY: Avon Books, 1990, p. 25)

As a Utilitarian, when calculating the overall “goodness” of an action, although the consequences for the greater number are the primary focus, the needs of the minority are still part of the overall "calculus." Singer's point is that we need to include both animals and human beings in our cost benefit analysis. He is not necessarily opposed in principle to using animals in research, provided that we have considered whether or not to use human beings as subjects in the same protocol. If we would not use human beings in the protocol but have chosen animals then we are morally inconsistent. In his view, animal pain counts as much as human pain.

What is different in Singer’s approach can be summed up in the title of his book, Animal Liberation. This book was first published in 1975 and is credited with beginning the at times bitter debate about the proper relationship between animals and people. Singer is using the word “liberation” in the sense of other liberation movements that characterized America in the 60s and 70s. Along with Richard Ryder, an Australian philosopher, Singer used the term “speciesism” in making the claim that preferring our species over another was just as prejudicial and illogical philosophically as preferring one race or gender over another. Those who agreed called their movement animal liberation, feeling it to be a battle for justice akin to those fighting prejudice in society. This point of view is in the tradition of Bentham, whom we made reference to in Tutorial One of this section, when he made the benchmark for moral consideration the ability to suffer, regardless of species.

But not all Utilitarians think that using animals as research subjects is wrong. Another well-known Utilitarian, R.G. Frey, historically has not been opposed to animals being used in research, since he notes that the overall good is the point. (For Frey’s current thinking see the Advanced Ethics Tutorial.) If the goal of Utilitarianism is to provide for the greatest good for the greatest number, then research is plausible, provided the net result is a decrease in suffering for both humans and animals. What Frey and Singer emphasize is that both the general cost and the general welfare should include all species, human and non-human. They say that human beings lacking full rational capacity (e.g. the retarded, those labeled marginal) should be used rather than higher functioning mammalian species who are more rational than these marginal humans. The cost to the research subject will be higher, they say, for a cognitively advanced mammal such as a chimpanzee than for a severely retarded human infant. It is not that the cost doesn’t matter at all, but that the overall general good is judged as more important. Frey, like Singer, is including animals in the overall non-species approach to the question. His view is that the cost, as long as the research will provide overall benefit, is allowable.

In practice, I take the most important question to be the assessment of the scientific value of an experiment, of the knowledge or benefit to be gained and the suffering (if any) involved, and the question of how to balance these. It is ultimately a moral problem, and a question of responsibility borne both by the scientist and the rest of society in the characteristically human task of removing ignorance and minimizing suffering. (R.G.Frey and Sir William Patton, “Vivisection, Morals, and Medicine: an Exchange,” Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Tom Regan and Peter Singer, Eds., (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1976) p. 245)

Although the pragmatic aspect of the utilitarian approach makes sense for many, the issue of speciesism is a different part of the overall equation. There have been critiques of Singer’s articulation of Speciesism. One well-known rebuttal of is by Carl Cohen, who aside from disagreeing, takes exception to the rhetorical implications of the word "speciesism." Writing in The New England Journal of Medicine (1986) Cohen says,

This argument is worse than unsound; it is atrocious. It draws an offensive moral conclusion from a deliberately devised verbal parallelism that is utterly specious…I am a speciesist. Speciesism is not merely plausible; it is essential for right conduct, because those who will not make the morally relevant distinctions among species are almost certain, in consequence, to misapprehend their true obligations.  (Carl Cohen, “Why Animals Have No Rights: The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research,” The New England Journal of Medicine, October 2, 1986, p. 867)

In thinking about this argument, it might be helpful to separate it into two parts. How we might decide to rank (or not rank) the human species in relation to all the other species is one sort of question. Deciding which species we feel especially obligated to is a different type of moral consideration.

For many researchers who use animals, utilitarianism makes good sense and is morally practical since the calculus of the greatest good for the greatest number can and often does include animals. For example, there is much research that benefits many species. The original studies on Feline Infectious Virus, undertaken with the goal of benefiting cats, evolved into using the cat as a model for AIDS. A protocol that investigated virus transmission between a cat and her offspring via milk, was useful in clarifying transmission of the AIDS virus between human mother and child. In this case, according to a Utilitarian view, the harms to individual cats that resulted from their being research subjects, was outweighed by the benefits to both other cats and to human beings.

In contrast to the approach of looking at results to calculate "the moral good," Non-Consequentalism focuses on the a-priori ethical dimension; an action is good insofar as it follows an overall ethical principle. A well known example of this sort of approach is the Golden Rule. The most well-known philosopher to take this approach was Immanuel Kant. He said that ethical behavior was considering human beings as ends in themselves, not ever as means toward something else. Just as Singer was working out of the Utilitarian tradition, Tom Regan is working from the Deontological approach (from the Greek “deontos” meaning duty or obligation). Expanding on Kant’s idea that it is immoral to consider a human being as a means to an end, Regan argues that animals have inherent value, worthy of respect in and of themselves, and it is unethical to treat them as means to an ends, to use them for any purpose. Furthermore, he says, we have an obligation to respect the right of the individual, whether a human being or an animal, to not be seen as an object for use. For someone holding this point of view, the idea of the right of an animal to be not used is a moral imperative we must follow, regardless of the consequences.

What’s wrong—fundamentally wrong—with the way animals are treated isn’t the details that vary from case to case….The fundamental wrong in the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us—to be eaten, or surgically manipulated, or exploited for sports or money. (Tom Regan, The Struggle for Animal Rights, Clarks Summit: International Society for Animal Rights, 1987, p. 47.)

Both Singer and Regan oppose the use of animals in research but for very different philosophic reasons. For Singer, what is wrong is to choose animals as research subjects in order to benefit human beings; he says that both humans and animals should be considered equally in the moral calculus. To his way of thinking, if it were to be morally permissible to use a human being in a research protocol then, and only then, would it be permissible to use a non-human animal. And, if we were to consider the use of humans as well as animals and the research was considered to have great overall benefit for all, then the animals might be used since for a utilitarian such as Singer, the general good is the most important thing.

For Regan, the moral wrong is in thinking that an animal is here for use in the first place. Animals have the right, says Regan, not to be used as a means to an end. Since the individual animals will not reap the benefits of the research, using them is immoral. Regan says, the rights of the individual animal “trump,” or override any possible benefits, even if to people or to other animals. Regan’s philosophy says that the obligation we have to individuals—be they animals or people—outweigh the importance of the general good. Where Singer and Regan concur, however, is in their critique of our society for giving people more moral consideration than animals. 

One of the more difficult challenges is to decide how to make decisions among individuals, all of whom have the right to be treated as valuable in and of themselves. How do we weigh out and balance the different interests of both animals and human beings? Writing in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (1991) David DeGrazia says,

Equal Consideration. (italics in original) Assuming that the interests of animals are morally important, do they have as much moral weight as human interests (as both the utilitarians and Regan assume), or do they have less weight, that is, deserve less consideration (as Midgley, for example, has maintained)? This issue, though rarely discussed explicitly, is of greatest importance in determining our moral relationship with animals. ...the upshot is that anyone who claims that the interests of animals have less weight than human interests must produce a relevant difference between them. What makes this issue so difficult is having to determine what differences are morally relevant. (David DeGrazia, “The Moral Status of Animals and Their Use in Research: A Philosophical Review,” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (March 1991) reprinted in Applied Animal Ethics, Leland Shaprio (Albany: Delmar, Thomson Learning, 2000) p.F6 )

The discussion of "who matters more and why" is ongoing and one that we will take up again in the Advanced Ethics Tutorial. DeGrazia mentions another philosopher, Midgley, who sets forth another way of looking at this dilemma.

Mary Midgley, in her book, Animals and Why They Matter (Athens:University of Georgia Press,1984), proposes that the key point is the interrelatedness that exists in the real world, with both people and animals, part of the larger whole, or community. Thus, although she supports the idea that preferring our species over others is morally acceptable, she argues against a completely rationalistic approach to the dilemma of the proper ethical treatment of animals. As such, a simple utilitarian solution goes against her grain, since there is no consideration for the reality of either our or animals’ emotional lives. For Midgley, although we might not consider animals as moral equals, they are more valuable than a utilitarian calculus might indicate. Deciding exactly how morally valuable an animal is depends on how we view their place in the moral community.

Where do animals stand in the moral community?  To be a member of a moral community means that we cannot treat those who belong to this categories as means to an end but must respect them as valuable in and of themselves. When ethical decisions have to be made, we consider those in our moral community first. We consider human beings members of our community in this way, regardless of levels of rationality. Animals, on the other hand, have historically been considered as outside this moral community. Looking at it historically, there has been a shift. Descartes was in the tradition that animals basically had no moral standing at all; they were here for our use. Bentham and the Utilitarians of the 18th century began the shift to giving animals moral consideration by virtue of their capacity to feel pain, not due to their mental capacity or the idea of possessing a soul.

The contemporary philosophers such as Regan and Singer urge us to consider animals as members of our moral community due to their capacity to have preferences and intentions. The increasing weight of research into animal behavior and cognition has shown that many mammals do indeed have levels of rational abilities that many feel, both scientists and the public, need to be taken into account. (Orlans) Non-human primates for example have many supporters for membership in some form in the moral community. Older chimpanzees that are no longer used in active research are no longer killed, but maintained; the implication being that they have enough inherent value that to simply dispose of them is not an ethical choice.

Tom Beauchamp, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, has argued that so long as one requires a high level of cognitive criteria, animals may not be able to qualify for significant moral standing. But if one appeals to less demanding cognitive capacities, such as intention, understanding, desire, preferences, suffering, and having beliefs, animals will likely acquire a significant range of moral protections. For example, if a high-level qualifying condition such as the capacity to make moral judgments is eliminated and conditions like intention and understanding are substituted, then it becomes plausible to find the cognitive capacities needed for moral standing in at least some animals.  (F. Barbara Orlans, “Animal Well Being,” in Ethics Applied, edition 3.0, Paul De Vries, Robert Veatch and Lisa Newton, NY: Pearson Education, 2000, p. 423.)

There is as yet no general consensus on this question, no agreement on which capacities might qualify. In an online essay, Biomedical Ethics, Tom Beauchamp comments on other current dilemmas facing us in scientific research, as well as the one of animal subjects. You will see a visual history of biomedical research along with his article as he notes that ethical questions and their societal context are intertwined.

One of the realities of the debate over animal subjects in research, putting aside the issues of animals used for food, clothing and sports, is the highly contentious nature of the argument. There does not seem, at first glance, much room for compromise between a “rights” position holding that animals cannot ethically be used for human purposes and the “use” position.  But there have been efforts to find a middle, or at least a common meeting ground. For example, Frey supports the position of “progressive abolition of such research as replacements develop.” (Phillips, p. 87) In an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1996) Donald Phillips quotes Frey as follows

“They are experiential subjects and, therefore, in this regard, have lives like ours.”  Frey said. “This is the reason we use them as models. This is also the reason why we prefer using non-experiential subjects as alternatives to experiential ones. Researchers take animal pain and suffering seriously, and nearly everyone believes [the animals] lives have value, even if not the same value as human lives,” Frey explained. The destruction of their lives represents destruction of something valuable. That’s why we need a justification for destroying valuable lives. The pursuit of human benefit can provide the requisite justification,” Frey noted, “but we need to take account of the limits placed on the pursuit of human benefit. Morally, we cannot accept pursuit at any cost.”  (Donald F. Phillips, “Conference Explores Ethics of Animal Research With Critical Thinking and Balanced Argument,” JAMA, July 10, 1996, p. 88)

Another way of looking at some of the different approaches, often used in comparing viewpoints, is to contrast an animal rights approach with an animal welfare approach. For an online lecture on this distinction, "A Lecture on Animal Rights vs. Animal Welfare" by Gary Varner. Those in the animal welfare position believe in the validity of using animals for our needs, but temper that with an insistence on careful attention to the well being of the animal. This is the approach taken by many organizations, both in research and in veterinary medicine. Some find this distinction not completely useful since it seems to imply that those taking a welfare position have less respect for the inherent value of an animal than those taking a rights position. Those taking the rights position say that no amount of welfare considerations can make up for treating an animal as an object for use. Just as the Utilitarian approach, the idea of overall welfare is a common way to think about animals in research.

Jerrold Tannenbaum, a lawyer specializing in animal law, comments on the distinction between welfare and rights:

The concept of welfare, unlike the concept of rights, allows for liberal balancing of human against animal interests and for deciding in many circumstances that human interests should prevail…Sometimes a condition conducive to or constituent of animal welfare is so important to an animal that we can say the animal’s claim to this condition rises to the level of a right. Adequate food and water are critically important to animal welfare…It is therefore not just wrong, but terribly wrong, to deprive an animal one keeps or uses of adequate food and water. One may subject animals to such treatment only for the most important of reasons. Here, those of us who believe that animals have some moral rights would say, is a right based on considerations of welfare. (Tannenbaum, Veterinary Ethics (St. Louis: Mosby, 1995) p. 173)

Tannenbaum is also trying to clarify the challenge of the language itself. The word “right” or “rights” has a wide range of meanings and implications. There are the sort of rights concerning basic survival—and the sort of rights having to do with quality of life. Most would agree that an animal has a right to enough food, water, shelter and freedom from cruelty. This is a survival sort of right and most people (as we noted on page 1 of this section) fall into the middle category of feeling morally obliged to provide these basic survival “rights” to an animal. This is different from the “rights language” meaning of the word used by Regan; here the word “right” is used similar to the way Singer uses the word “liberation.” An animal has the right to be considered as having inherent worth, a right not to be considered an object for use. Both Singer and Regan use words such as “rights” and “liberation” to indicate their belief that animals should be considered as equally deserving “of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness” as human beings.

Tannenbaum is attempting to find a middle ground, a way of looking at the dilemma that avoids an either-or resolution. Midgley, as we noted above, is also looking for a more inclusive approach. She argues that animals and people are all members of a mixed community, sharing resources, concerns and lives. She notes that this has been so historically, commenting that the instinct to care about animals is evident in children and seems natural to most people. In her 1983 book, Animals and Why They Matter, Midgley sees the dilemma from the vantage of “Care Ethics.” For those taking this point of view, moral connectedness arises out of the subjective experience of relationships—a natural component of daily life--rather than an intellectual argument over rights and definitions. Midgley’s emphasis is that the community we are all members of, consists of more than one or two species, and always has. We have always, she says, had to deal with ethical dilemmas over how to treat different individuals and groups. Historically, she notes, human beings have lived in a mixed community of species, feeling bonds, sympathy and compassion for animals.

Morality shows a constant tension between measures to protect the sacredness of these special claims and counter-measures to secure justice and widen sympathy for outsiders. To handle this tension by working out particular priorities is our normal moral business. (p. 103)… Claims are of different kinds. Those on behalf of one’s own community certainly are strong, but they are not the only strong kind. And the species-barrier, as we now find, is not even accepted in the same form by all human communities. But also, more important than this, all these communities are themselves multi-species ones. It is one of the special powers and graces of our species not to ignore others, but to draw in, domesticate and live with a great variety of other creatures. No other animal does so on anything like so large a scale. Perhaps we should take this peculiar human talent a little more seriously and try to understand its workings. (Midgley, p. 111)

We noted in Tutorial One of this Section that laws and regulations can be seen as the values of society made explicit. In this context, the increasing amount of attention to legal matters involving animals over recent years—not necessarily about laboratory research issues—reflects the intensity of the conversation. An online article, “Animals, Property and Legal Welfarism: “’Unnecessary’ Suffering and the ‘Humane’ Treatment of Animals” gives an overview of the legal context of some of the philosophic issues we have been discussing.

Study Questions

1.       If a research protocol provides benefit to both animals and people, is this a non-speciesist approach?

2.       What obligations do you think making use of an animal in a research protocol gives you? Looking over the website for Laboratory Primate Advocacy Group do you think these researchers have gone too far in deciding to house chimpanzees no longer needed? As a taxpayer, would you support this instead of further research, if you had to make a choice? Why or why not? How far would you go and why?

3.       Gary Varner has a useful site discussing the differences between animal welfare and animal rights. It is titled Some Materials For Teaching About Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. Looking at it and the other materials in this part of the module, as well as the American Veterinary Medical Association website, make a distinction between rights and welfare, as you see it.