Review Monday, study guide at tab
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How to take a position on animal research
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Tom Regan's position: no animal research
- "In the case of animals used in science the rights view is categorically abolitionist. Lab animals are not our tasters, we are not their kings." (Regan, "The Case for Animal Rights" p. 9)
- Tipu Aziz -- 100 monkeys used to test deep brain stimulation that helped 40,000 Parkinson's patients (ALN p. 21)
- but also right to do this research on comparable humans
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Mylan Engel's position: stop all animal research, but proceeds from commonsense ethics
"The Commonsense Case Against Animal Experimentation"
- Note: paper seems to take a position on all animal experimentation but he focusses on the first--
- drug testing
- vaccine testing
- basic anatomy and physiology
- causes and progression of diseases
- develop surgical procedures
- psychology research
- etc.
- Starts from obvious ethics, makees non-obvious factual claims
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Engel's factual claims about animal research
Drug testing background: testing covid vaccines on monkeys
The Extrapolation problem
- Dogs and chocolate
- LD50 test -- stands for "lethal dose 50%" -- the amount of a substance that causes death in 50% when given to a set of animals
- "Why should anyone care how much of X proves lethal to 50 percent of rat subjects? This idiosyncratic information has no relevance to human health and well being It is no more useful than knowing whether the number of blades of grass in your front yard is odd or even." (Engel p. 220)
- example of a use -- testing the strength of batches of botox using LD50 on mice
- drug testing failures
- Learning from research vs. luck
- Covid vaccine safe and effective in monkeys ... safe and effective in humans ... just luck
- Aziz brain stimulation method safe and effective in monkeys...safe and effective in humans ... just luck
If we stopped animal research, are there alternatives?
- Grow human tissue in vitro, use it to study diseases and drugs
- Use synthetic substitutes
- Use computer models
- Test on human volunteers, using microdosing
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Larry Carbone
- lab vet -- author of The Hidden Lives of Lab Animals
- "The Utility of Basic Animal Research" -- we do gain useful information from animal research
- Veterinarians extrapolate from one species to another all the time
- evolutionary biology supports extrapolation
- Biomedical research is probabilistic--doesn't provide certainty
- There are also failures of extrapolation from other types of research--in vitro, computer models, epidemiology, using human volunteers, etc.
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If Carbone and Singer are right about the utility of SOME animal research, we still have to ask the hard ethical questions
- Morally, are we entitled to use animals for human gain?
- If we are not entitled, should we stop doing animal research?