MODULE VII: ANIMAL RESEARCH

10.23 Against Animal Research

Need a topic to focus on to make discussion more manageable.  Should monkeys be used in coronavirus vaccine research?

Mylan Engel

1. we can start from disputable premises postulating animal rights and arrive at conclusion we should stop
2. we can start from disputable utilitarian premises and the wrongness of speciesism and arrive at conclusion we should stop
3. absence of indisputable premises shouldn't make us continue a suspicious practice (slavery example)
4. but we can also start from common sense ethics and arrive at the conclusion that we should stop
   

   

   

   
   
   
5. Animal research is misleading and unreliable --> pointless --> done "for no good reason"
• LD50 example

Discussion

1. What do scientists think?
2. Should we trust that the consensus view is probably right?

Alternatives:

1. Grow human tissue in vitro, use it to study diseases and drugs
2. Use synthetic substitutes
• eytex instead of Draize test
• replacement for LD50 for botox
3. Use computer models
4. Go directly to testing on human volunteers, using microdosing

Discussion

1. Volunteers for vaccine trials were available before vaccine candidates had been tested in monkeys. Is it ethical to use them? 

Next: a reply to the arguments in Engel (two pro-research authors next week)