Abusing the weak

We don’t believe that sacrificing a few babies would be worth it if it helped to cure cancer – and w

By Alistair Currie Published 04 March 2008

At its heart, the case for animal experimentation rests on a simple utilitarian equation: animal suffering in medical research is worth less than the human benefit that results. This received wisdom appears rational and self-evident but the simplicity of the utilitarian argument is no more than the attractive face of an ugly reality.

If utilitarianism were really our guiding principle, we would experiment on ourselves. Ninety per cent of drugs that pass animal tests fail in humans and billions of dollars are wasted on animal research that leads us down blind alleys. Involving people in the dangerous, speculative early stages of medical research would yield benefits for the rest of us. But we don’t believe that sacrificing a few babies would be worth it if it helped to cure cancer – and we are absolutely right. Means don’t justify ends, so why do we think they do when it comes to animals?

This discrimination relies on difference (as the abuse of the weak by the strong always does). Animals lack our mental powers, moral capacities and a place in our community, goes the argument. But we don’t apply that principle to our own mentally, socially or morally subnormal and experiment on the sick, the isolated or the criminal. Universal human rights don’t rest on our capacities, which are not universal, but on our vulnerabilities, which are. If we can be hurt and if we value our lives, we earn the right to moral protection. Animals suffer and want to live too. If we recognise that the basis of human rights is the protection of the weak, we cannot deny the most basic of those rights to others who suffer and are powerless.

Animals aren’t means to our ends - but even if they were, the calculation is wrong. The only sure outcomes of animal experiments are dead animals. Millions of animal experiments have failed to yield cures to AIDS, strokes, Alzheimer’s and other diseases. How can we say that a speculative theoretical benefit outweighs the known cost in suffering and death? This isn’t balancing saving a dog against saving a duchess – it’s balancing a known against an unknown. And, crucially, that’s something we don’t need to do.

According to Unicef, around 10 million children under five die of preventable causes each year. Meanwhile, if you’re working class in the UK, you’re likely to die seven years earlier than a professional. Forty percent of all cancers can be prevented and many can be cured yet, to quote the World Health Organisation “more than 70% of all cancer deaths occur in . . . countries, where resources available for prevention, diagnosis and treatment . . . are limited or nonexistent.” If saving lies is our goal, we can achieve that without a single mouse being given cancer or a single monkey poisoned to death.

If cost-benefit is our guide, why not sell our iPods and use the money to buy life-saving mosquito nets? While those of us who are fortunate and privileged are unwilling to live a little less comfortably to save people ourselves, we earnestly endorse the wholesale killing of animals on the merest possibility of benefit. Talk of a moral obligation to inflict harm is cant: sacrificing others before making the merest sacrifice yourself is a long, long way from doing the right thing.

We can have medical research without animals but the issue is bigger than that. The case for inflicting justified harm – whether made by governments, scientists or terrorists – must always be treated with suspicion. Animal experimentation is an act of unconscious hypocrisy by a society whose values – including the real value we put on human life - are confused and inconsistent, and whose moral capacities are far, far more rudimentary than we like to believe.

Tags: Animal Rights

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61 comments

Fri, 2008-03-07 16:32 — 48 Crash

Thank you for engaging in specifics - admirable.

If the research is for medicine or medical procedure that would help said dog or baby, it's not a false dilemma, is it. If it were cosmetics or some similar bit of piffle then it would be, but treatment for heart op.s, care for premature babies or anything els eon the list is quite specific. Whereas for Dr Greek (sorry, not Dr Greel - poor typing) to write 'Experimenting on monkeys in the hope of unlocking the secrets of the human brain is an exercise in futility' is a false dilemma: speaking to someone who used to do such research, I'm told that the thrust of the work was to understand neural pathways within a complex cortex roughly analogous to our own; not to find direct comparitive solutions.
I'm not doing anything to bring about vivisection's end, except spending my money. I'm not a scientist, and am sufficiently ignorant that any action on my part would be about as effective as my trying to take over my granny's knitting - disasterous. All I can do as a taxpayer and consumer is spend wher I believe my money is targeted best, and complain about drug use when it's prescribed to me and I think it not the best available choice.
'A proliferation of major drug disasters' ... eh? The very reason there hasn't been a list of such disasters is the safety-checking of drugs and procedures, or so I'm told. A disease caused by a food additive? Any links here please? And pesticides are toxic by their very nature - tests are to decide just how toxic they are, surely.
Researchers are required to test; the commercial pressure to use animals is near-as-dammit zero compared to the commercial pressure to make drugs cheaper - it all comes off the bottom line, after all.
I'm not unduly worried about animal breeders, cage-makers and the like, and I wouldn't be particularly sorry to see their trade ended which is one reason I didn't mention them. But to enforce a restriction of pratice for abstract reasons - and however fervently one believes it, the rights of animals v. the rights of humans is an abstract choice, which varies from culture to culture - is to remove commercial pressure from the decision, which in turn encourages bad practice, such as all the research going overseas where the wellfare standards are much lower, and thus causing much more of the suffering one hopes to prevent.

Wed, 2008-03-12 08:36 — 48 Crash

Maya - no disrespect given! And you've addressed some points directly, which is a lot more than most; so good for you.
ECT is now a fairly 'developed' therapy, so I'm guessing that those experiments aren't done any more. There may well be others, I don't know.
It's interesting that the argument tends to centre around either animals roughly like us - primates - or animals we know and like, such as cats & dogs. They're a very small percentage of the animal experiments done, at least in the UK if not the world. An awful lot of experiments are on mice. Even more are on earthworms. I know people like PETA want the public's imagination and therefore concentrate on 'popular' animals - but what's the position on earthworms. Do they suffer? Are they acceptable as subjects? If not, how about a little further down the tree. Hydra? Sea anenomes? These are both used in experiments a fair bit. I just wonder if there's a line drawn, and if so where it is.
Anyway. Some of this I do have some knowledge of. Cloning of cells is promising, but at present is very expensive and fairly unreliable. Stem-cell research would be more successful, but is currently opposed with gret vigour by the Catholic church and therefore by a number of MPs and would struggle to get through as a full bill. Computer models are way, way off yet. We can't get a computer to draw the outside of a mouse convincingly yet, let alone the inside! The good news is that it's very much desired by the industry - it's cheaper, more reliable, can't catch mouse illnesses or get lost, doesn't need feeding and looking after - and commercial pressure is heavy on the developers to make it happen.
I don't believe they've carried out these experiments because they're lazy; they want results, whether it's because they want to save people or because they think it'll make 'em rich or because they want to be famous. They want results. The technology just isn't there. Yet.

The moral dilemma is the interesting bit here, I think. The science is easily enough proved, and arguing against it (as I wrote before) just weakens the moral argument by making it look silly. 'Hurting an animal is wrong, unless it's a threat' would I think be most people's position. If by hurting the animal they could save a person's suffering, would they do that? This is the choice, the point where we decide what sort of people we wish to be.

Thu, 2008-05-15 13:28 — 48 Crash

Alistair's article may be well thought out, but that wouldn't reflect very well on his honesty. A number of not-entirely-true arguments are advanced, and a lot else is avoided.
Who are these 'powers' tha should invest billions? Whos billions? And why do you think they're not being invested now?

Fri, 2008-03-07 21:26 — tamtam1622

I can give you one guaranteed outcome of animal experiments...the animals suffer excruciating pain.

'Nuff said??

Wed, 2008-03-05 11:15 — F.J.Lawrence

Very well said, Mr. Currie. I too live optimism for a time in the future when people look back on our wide and varied abuse of animals today with the same repugnance with which we now consider oppression of human minority groups.

Tue, 2008-03-25 15:20 — 48 Crash

Dear GJA

You seem to be struggling with the distinction between toxicity and actualy killing someone or something. The 'straw man' fallacy is when you raise objections to something that isn't really happening - like your understanding of why experiments use animals.

I have spent some time on this; more than the hours you suggest. My intentions, as I've set out above, may be many things but I don't belive they're fraudulent. They've certainly not been demonstrated so by yourself. The website you suggested is now familiar to me, but I don't see much in the way of discussion there. It's more in the manner of a Revivalist prayer meeting. I saw a front page that set the ball rolling with a clear lack of understanding - or a deliberate misinterpretation - of the very subject it claims to describe. Not a good start. Despite King Arthur's orders ringing in my ears, I didn't run away. Neither did I find anything in that self-congratulatory rats'-nest [sic] of Holier-than-thou posturing that disproved anything.
I rather doubt I will evolve personally - that's really not how it works. And yourself?

Sat, 2008-03-08 14:20 — rights4whole

Animals and human are all the same. We should not harm anyone. Medical experimentation is just to show how hypocrite they are. Humans by right can be healed by plant-based drugs, why have to sacrifice lot of animals, in fact, mostly are failure projects (like stated). Thats what we call 'bull shit' experimental works. Why they do not try their own partner to see the reaction since all is similar one another?

Wed, 2008-03-05 16:24 — gnuneo

absolutely liberal wishy-washy twaddle.

what we should be doing, is extraordinary rendition of Bushite and CIA officials, and use them in experiments.

after all, as *they* argue, the end justifies the means.

Wed, 2008-03-05 16:42 — 48 Crash

Millions of animal experiments have given us the cures to the diseases that used to kill us; that there are some left is tribute to the tenacity of some diseases, not the sadistic tendencies of the experimenters. How many different diseases might have carried off Mr Currie before he got to write this article, if it hadn't been for the experimentation that produced the cures?

Animal experimentation, as practiced in this country, is an act of conscience: to prevent future suffering, even of Mr Currie.
I wonder if he avoids all western medicine because of its' tainted past?

Thu, 2008-03-13 15:55 — gja

The science against animal testing is 100% conclusive, www.curedisease.com will map it out for you and show what a FRAUD it is in TODAY'S world. It had benefits in other centuries up to the 1920's ONLY because we were researching disease on the gross medical levels. Today we are NOT asking these questions anymore. You are wrong about insulin; just because dogs were used does NOT mean they were VITAL in learning new ideas that led to a discovery. I assume that you understand basic arithmetic. Get out your calculator and see how many tens of millions of people who died due to misplaced faith in the animal-model.