The issue of animal rights has provoked a lengthy controversy over the use of animals in scientific experiments. If animals are to be granted rights-bearing status, similar to that of humans, it would appear to suggest that scientists have an ethical obligation which would impose limits on scientific activities which cause harm to animals. Conversely, scientists also have an ethical obligation to pursue the truth in a manner which provides benefits to humanity. These conflicting interests which arise between human welfare and animals' rights, although extremely complex, are not beyond reconciliation. It is possible for science to respond to the obligations owing to both groups without limiting the growth of knowledge. It is unlikely that the outcome of any negotiations will be satisfactory to supporters of either side in this controversy, but it is a step toward a more balanced perspective of human and animal rights.
The cases in this essay will focus on nonhuman primates species because recent evidence suggests that they possess certain characteristics which provide a compelling argument for recognizing them as candidates for receiving human-like rights.
Why Animals Should Have Rights
The Animal Rights view has been forwarded following several different lines of argument. "The Kantian account" (Regan, 1983b, 25) cites that the main reason to discourage the abuse of animals is that the mistreatment becomes a habit which eventually results in the mistreatment of humans. The difficulty with this view is that the abuse is only a problem if it affects one's own species and can therefore be used to justify various forms of prejudice when one's own race, sex, social class or species is not negatively affected (Regan 1983b).
"The cruelty account" (Regan, 1983b, 26) establishes the negative duties which humans have toward animals based on a social norm to restrain from all cruelty. The problem with applying this argument to the use of animals in science is that consideration must be given to the actor's character or state of mind before an act can be judged as cruel (Regan 1983b). From this position, scientists can legitimately respond that they take no pleasure in harming animals and that their use of animals is not cruel, but necessary.
"The utilitarian account" (Regan, 1983b, 29) is founded on the acceptance of the principle of equality and the principle of utility. The former establishes that all individuals' interests are of equal importance regardless of one's status. The latter claims that individuals are to act in a manner which assures the "greatest possible balance of good over evil" (Regan, 1983b, 29). The utilitarian view is also inadequate because there is no necessary connection between respecting an individual's interests and adhering to the principle of utility, and in fact, the principle of utility may be used to encourage the differential treatment of animals.
Another view has been recommended by Tom Regan (1983b), whereby the weaknesses of the preceding argument may be avoided. An account of human obligations for animals can be established by "postulating the existence of animal rights" (Regan, 1983b, 34), based on the assumption that humans also have rights. "The Rights account" (Regan, 1983b, 41), proposes that humans have an "inherent value" (Regan, 1983b, 37) which exists beyond their instumental value. This inherent value is apparent because humans are not only alive, but because they "have a life" (Regan, 1983b, 38) which exists independently of how they may be valued by others. An individual's inherent value recognizes a "moral right not to be treated in ways which deny their having value of this kind" (Regan, 1983b, 38). The moral rights of the individual exert a "moral limit" (Regan, 1983b, 34) on what the larger group can do to an individual in pursuit of the group's own interests; therefore, an individual's right not to be harmed can only be overridden in extreme circumstances. The situations where the right of an individual not to be harmed may be overridden are:
The same line of argument follows for the rights of animals. Any individual animal, of any species, that has a life which exists independently of whether it is valued by others, is afforded the moral right not to be subjected to actions which deny the existence of this inherent value. Consequently, any animal's right not to be harmed can only be overridden in extreme circumstances.
This view eliminates the weaknesses of the other accounts because the moral status of an individual is valid in its own right; there is no need to comtemplate the actor's character or mental state, and acts cannot be justified on the basis of their overall effect on the balance of good over evil. The most valuable advantage of this line of reasoning is that the actor who seeks to harm an individual must justify their action and show that it does not violate the individual's right because of the presence of extreme circumstances. In this case, the scientists who wish to use animals in their research must justify their decision to do so and if they cannot provide evidence that an extreme circumstance exists, they are violating the animal's right not to be treated in a way which denies their inherent value.
Non-Human Primates: A Special Case?
There are also specific characteristics of non-human primate species which may operate to enhance the ethical considerations about their use in scientific research.
There are considerable similarities between non-human primates and humans which have raised significant debate over the proper classification of the primate order. The chimp-gorilla-human split occurred around 8 to 10 million years ago (Rodd 1990) and since that time human and chimp DNA sequences have diverged by only 2.5% since their last common ancestor (Rodd 1990). The molecular sequences indicate that African apes are actually more closely related to Homo sapiens than they are to the orangutan and gibbon, or the lower primate species, such as, Old World monkeys (Rodd 1990). Speculation about the significance of these findings has led some theorists to propose that Gorilla, Pan (chimpanzee), and Homo should be classified in one subfamily of Homininae (as opposed to the present classification of Gorilla and Pan in Pongidae and Homo alone in Homininae (Rodd 1990).
It is perhaps the cultural similarities which exist between chimpanzees and humans which provide the best evidence for their being the type of -animal- which could be granted rights-bearing status. In the wild, common chimpanzees (Pan troglodyte) have been observed to use and make tools, and to transfer their technological knowldege to their young (Miller 1995). Chimpanzees have also been observed participating in cooperative hunting and territorial warfare (Linden 1992).
Chimpanzees and gorillas have also been shown to be capable of developing "human-like reasoning and linguistic abilities" (Rodd 1990) under experimental human guidance. There have been numerous studies which have demonstrated that these apes are capable of learning American Sign Language and communicating with other apes and humans in this way (Patterson 1978; Linden 1992). The use of language, which provides humans and apes the possibility of coherent communication is an important factor which should influence the way that scientific research is carried out. The ability to communicate in this way surpasses the idea of "preference-autonomy" (Regan 1983a); whereby, it is made possible to get a feeling about whether an animal is being coerced to take part in an experiment and shows that some animals could be capable of communicating clearly whether or not they choose to participate.
The Ethical Obligations of Scientists
The biological and evolutionary similarities between humans and non-human primates are among the main reasons why these animals are so important to scientific research into human physiology and disease (Peterson 1989). This appears to be as far as most scientists choose to look; and, because they ignore the other more significant similarities (such as cultural and behavioural), scientists are caught in a contradiction when they choose not to give nonhuman primates the same ethical consideration as they would humans in the same situation.
The rights account, outlined above, would require that scientists be able to justify overriding an animal's inherent value and moral right not to be harmed. Some researchers might argue that their ethical obligation is to humanity because it is their duty to "serve the public will" (Regan 1983a) and that the use of animals is necessary to meet this goal. Yet, it can be argued that the validity of this contract depends on the just treatment of all those involved and "not only those who enter into agreement" (Regan 1983a). More often scientists will employ a scientific justification for the use of animals in experiements.
The Scientific Justification of Animal Experiments
The most frequently proposed argument for the justification of animal experiments is that they provide "increases both in scientific knowledge and in the health, safety and comfort of humans" (Mayo, 1983, 339). The critics of animal experimentation are often accused of being anti-scientific and anti-humanity, but the error in this judgement is that it assumes that these goals are actually attained. Consequently, if a majority of evidence demonstartes that these objectives are either not fulfilled or are not scientifically valid then the justification for animal experimentation can be discredited.
One problem with animal experiments is that many are irrelevant in that the questions being asked are trivial or already have obvious answers (Mayo 1983). One example of this is when University of Chicago experimenters shot rhesus macaques in the head with power rifles from a distance of one inch (Peterson 1989). Similarly, at the University of Michigan, a study on abdominal trauma used a cannon impactor at speeds up to 70 mph to strike rhesus macaques, baboons and squirrel monkeys in the abdomen (Peterson 1989). Another experiment used a mechanical device to smash the base of the skull of 10 chimpanzees with a force up to 4 000 pounds (Peterson 1989). The effects of these injuries, considering the amount of damage that scientists chose to inflict, would appear to be known before the experiments were carried out. There is also a question as to how much additional knowledge can be gained which has not already been acquired from research on humans who have died from such injuries.
Additionally, one should also question the scientific validity of certain experiments. There are 3 main areas of research where the assumptions of scientists cause problems for the validity of their results:
1)The artificial induction of disease is one of the methods used to study the effects of drugs on disease. Animals are injected with diseases, exposed to toxins and receive unhealthy diets so as to induce a disease which is then treated with test drugs. Emotion-based diseases, such as, fear, anxiety, ulcers and heart disease, can also be artificially induced.
The problem with this method is that in many cases the artificially induced diseases "have little in common with naturally occurring conditions in animals and even less with diseases in humans" (Mayo 1983). In some instances, the extrapolation of animal model results for humans is often incorrect because of the absence of comparable diseases in animals. For example, research into the treatment of epilepsy requires that monkeys be given electric shocks until convulsions are produced. They are then given a variety of drugs to see which works best to cure or alleviate symptoms. The shock-induced convulsions which occur in these monkeys are not the equivalent to human epilepsy because they are of different origin, and consquently, "animal-tested drugs have failed to cure or control epilepsy" (Mayo 1983). Similar failures have occurred with cancer research, failing to produce drugs which work on human cancer because the types of cancer which develop in other animals are quite different from those which occur in humans (Mayo 1983).
2)The differences which exist between and within species also produce results which are not consistently valid. The best example of this is found in the toxicological testing of drugs and consumer products to determine the toxicity of substances for humans by establishing the median lethal dose (LD50) (Mayo 1983).
The first problem is that if a substance is relatively non-toxic, extremely large quantities must be administered before half of an experimental group will die (this is how LD50 is calculated). These deaths may be due to the large doses and not the substance in question (Mayo 1983) and as such it is not likely to be relevant to how humans will be using the drug or product. Another problem is that some substances, for example asbestos or lead, may not be toxic initially, but chronic exposure may prove to be poisonous (Mayo 1983). Additionally, the safe dosage, or LD0, is determined by experiments which systematically lower the dose of the substance and, then, this dose is extrapolated to humans by multiplying the weight of the animal proportionately to the weight of humans (Mayo 1983). The assumption behind this extrapolation fails to account for the fact that chemicals act on the body at five different stages:
3)Scientists may be unaware of subtle background variables which can affect an animal and as such some effects may be falsely attributed to the experimental treatment. Non-treatment variables which can influence an animal's reaction to treatment are: "health, sex, age, litter, strain, living conditions, stressful or painful stimuli, even odours or time of day" (Rodd, 1990, 353). In the case of primates, which are the only lab animals still captured from the wild (Peterson 1989), these background variables are of special significance. Many become sick during transport or are wounded and subjected to stress during capture. Experiments in immunology, an area where primates are vitally important (Linden 1992), are particularly vulnerable to ambiguous results due to uncontrolled and confounding background variables (Mayo 1983). It is also possible that the measurements taken after experimental treatment may not be the result of the treatment, but a result of the pain or stress that an animal experiences in the lab. Stress may occur from handling, other animals distress calss and alram odours (Mayo 1983).
Some of these problems can be addressed if experimenters pay careful attention to background variables, but many problems seem to occur because of "limitations in principle to the beneficial use of animals in research" (Mayo, 1983, 358).
How to Impose Limits Without Sacrificing the Truth
The depth of
the conflict between protecting animal rights and the human benefits of animal experimentation makes it difficult to foresee a resolution in the near future. Scientists tend to "adopt ethical systems in which knowledge has supreme value" (Rodd, 1990, 144) and animal ctivists tend to focus exclusively on the rights issue which severely limits the use of animals in research. These are two opposing views which provide "little or no evidence" (Rodd, 1990, 144) to resolve the debate on facts and, therefore, public and legal authorities have no legitimate basis for making a reliable decision which accounts for the interests of both humans and animals. Yet, the incompatibility of these views does not imply that some actions should not be taken to eliminate the irrlevant and trivial research and to modify current techniques or to find new methods which would reduce the numbers of animals used and the amount of pain and suffering caused.
One method of eliminating irrelevant research would be to assess experiments as if there were no animal models available and ask what would be considered justifiable if humans had to become the subjects (Rodd 1990). The use of animals for non-essentail benefits should also be re-evaluated. The necessity for toxicity testing for consumer products can be challenged in several ways. First, some products contain substances known to be toxic or benign, thus, eliminating the necessity for testing the new product in the first place (Regan 1983a). Second, the "worse off principle" (Regan 1983a) is not an adequate defense, because no human need is being served through the development of more new consumer products and there is no reason to believe that harm will come without new products. Finally, it is not true that alternatives to animal testing are not available. Several companies have chosen to use a -no animal testing- label as a marketing tool to promote their products (PETA 1996). The testing of cosmetics and other consumer products may represent only a small percentage of the overall number of scientific experiments, but they require large numbers of animals (Rodd 1990) and, therefore, any reduction in this area would be desirable.
Some experiments are more necessary and beneficial to humans, but they should not be carried out unless they are modified to decrease to an absolute minimum the numbers of animals required and the amount of pain and suffering inflicted. As discussed earlier, accurate LD50 values require very large numbers of animals be used, but using these amounts cannot be justified if the accurate LD50 for a particular animal can only present an "approximate indication of likely human toxicity" (Rodd, 1990, 170). Accordingly, if the animal toxicity level were to be determined as an approximate value as well, fewer animals would be needed to meet the statistical requirements (Rodd 1990).
Other experiments would be more acceptable if they were modified to eliminate the killing of an animal once its use to the research has expired. For example, experiments on strains of hepatitis virus use chimpanzees to develop and test vaccines (Rodd 1990). This disease poses a dangerous health risk to humans, but does not produce serious effects in chimpanzees. However, the overall cost for the apes is actually very high. Chimpanzees and often acquired from the wild and this is usually accomplished by killing the adults of a group and capturing the orphans. Many of these infant and juvenile chimpanzees die during transport; and those that survive are used in the research. But they must be killed afterward because of the health risk they pose to humans. In an effort to prevent this unnecessary killing, several research institutes have established breeding colonies and retirement funds (Rodd 1990) which eliminates the need to acquire chimpanzees from the wild and provides for the care of the animals until they die of natural causes.
Furthermore, there are several areas in science which should be examined for their future potential to reduce the number of animals used and prevent
unnecessary pain and suffering.
Organ and Tissue Culture The ability to keep cells alive outside the body will be useful for pretest screening before animal trials are started (Rodd 1990). Developments in this area have already led to a reduction in the number of animals used in certain experiments. For example, Oliver Flint's method to evaluate chemicals for tertogenecity requires only a few cells from an embryo and, therefore, one embryo can be used for several tests (Rodd 1990). The end result is that only 3 animals are killed for a test compared with 300 for a conventional study which administers the substances to pregnant animals (Rodd 1990).
Mathematical Models Computer simulations which can reproduce a variety of treatments and select the best options will eliminate the random selection of drugs and therapies and, thereby, reduce unnecessary trials to a minimum, ultimately using fewer animals (Rodd 1990).
Other areas which demonstrate potential and should be studied further are: quantum pharmacology, which can predict the biological activity of some chemicals and may eliminate the need for some animal experimentation; biotechnology, which may provide alternatives to animal derived hormones and produce safer vaccines with less animal testing; and the use of videos, films and computers for educational purposes to end the need for repeated demonstrations (Rodd 1990).
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