BICH 420 Lecture 13 - Animal Ethics

Sentience

Having capacity to extract meaning from stimuli, create and categorize concepts, to reason, be aware of self and others.

Theory of mind

Mental states view

A good life has low level of negative mental states, while having high level of good mental states

Naturalness view

the realization of significant natural or species-specific potentials and performing normal behavior

Preference view

The satisfaction of key desires or preferences

Five Freedoms for animals

Freedom from:

Hunger and Thirst

Discomfort

Pain, injury, and disease

Fear and Distress

Freedom to:

Express normal behaviour

Utilitarian Animal view

Use animals for the greater good if the human race

Companion animal

Dogs, cats, horses, etc

Production animals

Cattle, sheep, hogs, poultry, fish.

Captive animals

Zoos, wildlife preserves, sea world.

Sport Animals

Dogs, hawks.

Wild Animals

Hunting, trapping for furs, wildlife preserves.

Research Animals

Used for discovery research for the benefit of humans, and possibly all life.

50 million used annually

Justification for animal models

Need to use biological models close to humans

Thalidomide tragedy

tested in rats with no adverse effects recorded

Pregnant women used for morning sickness

caused phycomelia a birth defect where limbs do not form

Justifications for killing animals

Self Defense

Euthanasia

For food

For wildlife preservation

Rationale for Animal Research

Fundamental biomedical research

Applied research

Toxicity Testing

Justification

Guideline for use of animals (Three R’s)

Replacement: Can you substitute the animal?

Reductions: minimum number of animals that can be used

Refinement: reduce severity and duration of experiment that may induce pain and suffering

Pro-research view

Animal research is essential, humane treatment of animals, reasonable regulation

Pragmatists view

Balance human and animal interests

3 R’s

Pro-animal welfare

Limited use of animals, humane treatment, Distinction between animals (sentient, non-sentient)

Pro-animal rights

Advocate for banning of animal experimentation

Animals have moral rights

Genetic modification of animals for food production

Increase milk, egg, protein production

Hormone usage

Disease resistance

Pronuclear microinjection (cloning)

Inject DNA into pro-nuclei of embryo

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning)

Obtain somatic tissue, obtain unfertilized eggs, remove nucleus and use nucleus from transgene cell

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (cloning)

Shinya Yamanaka

Induced pluripotent stem cells, create stem cells from somatic cells

Won Nobel prize in 2012

Animal cloning in research

Mouse lines for disease models, toxicity testing

hGH

collected from pituitary glands from cadavers and animals

hGH now produced in transgenic cows milk

Xenotransplantation

Production of human organs in animals

Needs human histocompatibility

HLA

Human leucocyte antigen

part of MHC transferred to pig embryos

Wildlife preservation

American bison/buffalo

buffalo crossed to cattle

hybrids were not commercially successful

genotyping aided in retention of diversity and knowledge of breeding dynamics