Animal Research in Laboratories What

Animal Research in Laboratories

What are the applicable ethical considerations when scientists use animals in research? Can researchers justify causing pain to animals while doing research on medicines that could potentially be beneficial to humans? These issues will be discussed in this paper, along with the news that there may soon be alternatives to using animals in research.

Pro and Con -- on Animal Research

In the Mark Kula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California the statistics presented show that "about 20 million animals are experimented on and killed annual" -- and of those three-quarters are killed for medical purposes and the remaining for the testing of "various products" (Andre, et al., 2010, p. 2). Further data reveals that about eight million animals (of the 20 million) are made to go through pain, and moreover about 10% of those are not given any painkillers, Andre explains.

There is a good moral argument to be made that pain "…is an intrinsic evil," and anything that causes pain to another living thing is "…simply not morally permissible," Andre continues. The author quotes 19th century philosopher Jeremy Benthan's viewpoint about animals and humans. Bentham believes the morally appropriate question is not, "Can they reason" or "Can they talk?" Instead the utilitarian philosopher says the ethical question is, "Can they suffer?" And the answer is, of course they can and do suffer, and therein lies the controversy. Making animals suffer is not just cruel; it is unethical by any standards of fairness and morality.

Animals do indeed suffer when they are "…starved, shocked, burned, and poisoned" (Andre, 2). These horrifically painful acts go on while the researchers are attempting to find some remedy for a human ailment, or trying to improve on a beauty treatment for the wealthy woman whose face is beginning to wrinkle. There in fact is evidence that baby mice have had their legs "chopped off" so the researchers could determine if they would "groom themselves with their stumps" (Andre, 2). Clearly, there have been (and apparently still are) some hideously unconscionable experiments done on animals.

Those who advocate for continuing animal research suggest that without the ability to utilize animals in research "…scientists' efforts would be massively hampered," according to Laurie Pycroft in the journal, New Internationalist. Pycroft insists that because the human body is made up of "…trillions of cells, each containing billions of molecules, many of which are composed of tens of thousands of atoms" -- with these microscopic "machines" able to communicate with each other and function in a "stunningly interdependent environment" -- researchers in biomedical environments need tools that can at least "mimic" human biology (Pycroft, 2011, p. 1). And animals are the answer, Pycroft explains, since their cells, molecules and atoms work in similar patterns to humans' biological functions.

Pycroft points to the research by John C. Eccles, who used cats' spinal cords in his investigations, and it led to "the nature of synapse"; Eccles was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1963 for his discoveries (using cats in labs) (Prycroft, 1). Further, Prycroft mentions the fact that if scientists didn't have access to "live organisms, we would know far less about the function of the cardiovascular system, how digestion works, hormonal interactions," and more (Pycroft, 3).