Bioethics Mod 8 - animal use

PHL 116

Moral Hazard 1: mass animal harm

used in research each year are 15 million animals in the US and 100-200 million animals worldwide

Tom Regan (1938-2017)

critic of animal experimentation

“the whole system of animal experimentation are morally bankrupt institutions. The only way you change these things fundamentally is eliminating them— in much the same way as with slavery and child labor.”

Moral Hazard 2: human harm

we need to use animals to develop vaccines and treatments (covid, polio, ebola, cancer, transplants, etc.)

1966 Animal Welfare Act (AWA)

animals not covered are farm animals used for food or fiber; coldblooded species; horses not used for research purposes; fish; invertebrates; or birds; rats and mice that are bred for use in research

19802 PETA

infiltrated animal labs

1985 Improved Standards for Lab Animals Act

established institutional animal care and use committees (IACUCs); at least 3 members, one vet, and one unaffiliated person representing the community

2013 NIH

phased out most chimp research and tired most of its 360 chimps

Edward Taub and Silver Spring Monkeys (1981)

research on the effects of severing nerve connections in monkeys' limbs, aimed at helping human stroke and spinal cord injury; Alex Pacheco of PETA, went undercover and reported severe animal cruelty; police raided the lab; Taub was convicted of cruelty

moral foundations prioritizing human welfare

care, authority, loyalty, liberty

moral foundations against prioritizing human welfare over animal welfare

care, sanctity, fairness, liberty

Carl Cohen

author of “Do Animals have Rights?”

Taught at the Univ. of Michigan

argues: animals don’t have rights

“if animals have rights they certainly have the right not to be killed, even to advance our important interests.”

Regan’s Argument:

1. anything with inherent value has rights

2. animals have inherent value

3. 3. so, animals have rights

Cohen’s reply:

This is the equivocation fallacy; inherent value has two senses - moral value (entails rights) and uniqueness (doesn’t entail rights)

direct moral status

has moral value independently of its relation to other indivs; has rights, intrinsic value, duties

indirect moral status

has moral value only because of its relation to someone with direct moral standing; no rights, but we can have obligations to it

we have indirect duties to animals because if not we could

harm property, develop bad character, or make people sad

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

“Our duties towards animals are merely indirect duties towards humanity. Animal nature has analogies to human natures, and by doing our duties to animals in respect of manifestations of human nature, we indirectly do our duty to humanity."

dictionary definition of rights

a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way; a kind of social contract’ ex) property rights

cohen’s analysis of rights

a right is a valid claim, or potential claim, made by a moral agent, under principles that govern both the claimant and the target of the claim

requires moral autonomy (or self-legislation, the ability to understand and respond to reason) in order to make the claim

Cohen’s Kantian Argument

1. rights require moral autonomy

2. only humans have this capacity

3. only humans have rights

critiques of cohen’s Kantian agument

may be too high of a bar (ex: what about babies)

some animals might have this capacity 

Peter Singer (1946-)

author of “all animals are equal

australian philosopher at Princeton and Melbourne

utilitarian

father of bioethics and animal rights movement

the argument from discrimination

the suffering we inflict on the animals while they are alive is perhaps an even clearer indication of our speciesism than the fact that we are prepared to kill them

speciesism

the view that members of one species matter more/less just because they’re a different species

arbitrarily privileges species, esp. in experiments and factory farming

speciesism, compare to racism and sexism; all violate a basic moral principle

equal consideration of interests: the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being

capacity for suffering/enjoyment yields these “interests”

all animals are equal?

unequal in one sense: quality and quantity of suffering/enjoyments

equal in another: moral weight of the same interests

“there are important differences btwn humans and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some differences in the rights that each have.”

argument against animal experimentation

1. its wrong to arbitrarily privilege the like interests of humans over other animals

2. most animal experimentation arbitrarily privileges human interests

3. most animal experimentation is wrong

Cohen’s response to speciesism

its more line person-ism; any non-human w/ moral autonomy has equal rights too, but animals don’t have moral autonomy, so they do not have these rights

Singer’s critique of personhood criterion

what about marginal cases, such as infant, mentally impaired, and elderly with dementia? These are less self-aware, less conscious, and less rational than adult apes and some other animals! but they clearly do matter (reductio ad absurdum)