Against Pro-Test

I’m not happy about Pro-Test, the campaign to defend scientific experiments on animals. By all means, oppose the more lunatic antics of animal rights campaigners; I don’t see how burning my old college’s pavilion promotes animal rights. But actively defending experiments on animals is a step too far.

The argument for such experiments is a cost-benefit one; the benefits – Pro-Tests give a long list of drugs and procedures developed through animal testing – outweigh the suffering inflicted on animals.

Let's grant a large chunk of this argument - that it's empirically correct, and that utilitarianism is morally acceptable. Why should we experiment on animals rather than humans?

In some cases, there’s a practical reason. If you want to study multiple generations, it’s better to experiment on rats or mice as these have shorter lifespans.

However, the ethical argument for experimenting on animals rather than humans is more obscure.

Many supporters of Pro-Test, I guess, believe humans have a right not to be experimented upon. Why don’t animals have this right? What’s the difference between animals and humans?

Some of the (implicit) arguments here look a lot like some defences of slavery: they are mere brutes, without our delicate sensibilities. And how can things that look and behave so different from us have the same rights we do?

But it’s not obvious that our superior rights over animals derives from our physical features. Why are bipedelism, opposable thumbs and some language morally important, as generators of rights?

A better line of argument is that rights arise from some type of implicit social contract. But this distinguishes some animals from other animals, not all humans from all animals. Cats, dogs and horses have entered into society with humans, generating reciprocal obligations, whereas rats and monkeys haven’t. I can see the case, then, for experimenting on the latter but not the former.

However, if rights originate in a social contract, then surely serious or persistent criminals – by breaking that contract – lose their rights. So why not experiment on him, him, or them, to name but a few.

Logical consistency, I reckon, requires that Pro-Test call for experiments on (some) humans, rather than all animals.

I can’t, though, be too harsh on them. Despite all I’ve said, I eat meat. The fact that I would, I suspect, have no problem eating some humans (if properly hung and cooked) does not exonerate me from the charge of hypocrisy.

But then, the dominant species is no more capable of clear, honest thinking about its position than is the dominant race, gender or class. And I include myself in all four.

Comments

[James Hamilton]

I suspect that Pro-Test is as much about highlighting the use of intimidation and outright violence by animal rights campaigners as it is about the benefits of animal testing. The founder is in his teens, yet is already in receipt of a death threat and has a police alarm button in his home. Given this and the experience of scientists who use animals in testing - experience of the likes of the ALF I mean - I feel that any call for testing on humans has to come after, and not before, a rollback from violence and intimidation towards them.

[VS]

If you ask me, i think that the anti-vivisectionists should volunteer to have new drugs etc tested on them :) After all, they are the ones who claim that animal testing doesn't produce accurate results! So if we are to try testing on humans - i suggest we start with them.

[Robert Schwartz]

"What’s the difference between animals and humans?"

Mr. Dillow meet Mr. Tombe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4748292.stm

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal.

Mr Alifi, Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.

"When I asked him: 'What are you doing there?', he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up".

Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.

"They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife," Mr Alifi told the newspaper. They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

"We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.

[Cornelius J. McHugh]

Posted by: James Hamilton | February 26, 2006 at 11:35 AM

"If you ask me, i think that the anti-vivisectionists should volunteer to have new drugs etc tested on them :) After all, they are the ones who claim that animal testing doesn't produce accurate results! So if we are to try testing on humans - i suggest we start with them."

Volunteer to have new drugs etc. tested on me! For the sake of the pox-ridden human race! Forget it. Man as a species has brought nothing but misery and terror, pain and suffering to every other species that has the misfortune to live on this ruined earth and no longer deserves to exist.