A Question of Animal Rights
One issue I think is critical to address is the question of Animal Rights. There is a great deal of misinformation put out by the Animal Rights movement about animal research and I think the scientific community has not done a great deal to counteract this misinformation. I will briefly give my opinions on the issue and then provide links to further information on this issue.
First I have to make clear that I am biased on this issue. And not for the obvious reason that I am a scientist, but rather because I know for a fact that without medications and surgical techniques developed through animal research, I would be right now be dead, my brother would be dead and my mother would be dead. All of us, as with a very large percentage of people in the industrialized world, have been through illnesses or accidents that only modern medicine could pull us through. I myself benefited from a.) antibiotics, without which I would probably have died or, at a minimum, lost a leg due to infection; b.) delicate surgical techniques that repaired both internal injuries and my leg; and c.) anasthetics that allowed such surgeries to be done without what otherwise would have been intense pain; and d.) pain killers that dulled the suffering before and after the operations. All of these things were developed on, tested on or practiced on animals long before I ever was able to benefit from them. It is for this reason that I am very biased in favor of animal research.
Some Animal Rights folks argue that no benefit to humans has ever been accomplished through animal research. This is completely untrue. As I suggest above, almost every aspect of modern medicine that brings our health above the level of the Middle Ages was developed through, tested on and/or practiced on animals before being used in humans. Sulfa drugs, antibiotics, anaesthetics, surgical techniques, etc. all come to us thanks to animal research. The only contribution to our health that surpasses these medical advances in terms of impact on our life expectancy is the development of modern sanitation. To most of us who survived being born and survived infancy, we owe our lives to animal research. If someone wants to argue that we have no right to sacrifice the lives of animals for our own benefit, that is another issue. But to argue that we do not benefit from our sacrificing the lives of animals in medical research is blatantly false.
I do not wish to seem to belittle the entire animal rights issue. As a moral issue it is a legitimate debate. Although I personally think we do have the right to sacrifice animal lives for our own benefit, I do think it is important for us to question that right. I do feel we have to justify these sacrifices and if we are unable to justify a particular instance of animal research, then we should not carry out that particular instance. This brings me to one benefit I see to the animal rights movement. Their actions have forced the scientific community to treat laboratory animals with more care, to better avoid causing pain to lab animals and to minimize our usage of lab animals. All of these are desirable. Prior to the animal rights movement, the treatment of lab animals, though generally fine, could be horrendous. That has completely changed, at great cost to researchers. The conditions under which these animals are kept and handled are not higher than they were prior to the animal rights movement. For this, I thank them. But I do disagree with them on the morality of sacrificing animal lives for our own benefit. If the benefit is good enough, such sacrifice is justified in my mind if for no other reason than it is perfectly natural for one species to benefit from the exploitation of other species. The only difference is that we are the only species that seeks to minimize the suffering such exploitation causes.
.
For more detailed discussions on this issue, please refer to the various links I provide. I realize that this is a controversial issue and I welcome comments and will attempt to address such comments.
Back to Science
Back to Mole's Home Page
Links
A Scientific American Article on the Subject
Americans for Medical Progress Educational Foundation
Foundation for Biomedical Research
Critiques of Animal Rights
Animal Research Database
USDA's Animal Care Home Page
Email: michad03@mcrcr.med.nyu.edu
