The Regulation of Animal Research and the Emergence of Animal Ethics: A Conceptual History

The history of the regulation of animal research is essentially the history of the emergence of meaningful social ethics for animals in society. Initially, animal ethics concerned itself solely with cruelty, but this was seen as inadequate to late 20^th-century concerns about animal use. The new social ethic for animals was quite different, and its conceptual bases are explored in this paper. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 represented a very minimal and in many ways incoherent attempt to regulate animal research, and is far from morally adequate. The 1985 amendments did much to render coherent the ethic for laboratory animals, but these standards were still inadequate in many ways, as enumerated here. The philosophy underlying these laws is explained, their main provisions are explored, and future directions that could move the ethic forward and further rationalize the laws are sketched.     

论传媒伦理的界定

要科学地界定传媒伦理,首先,不能偏离伦理“致至善”的本性;其次,须从元伦理学、规范伦理学及应用伦理学三个层面深入考察传媒伦理的理论进路。本文认为,传媒伦理首先是对人们媒介行为中善恶选择的系统性探究,它系统地研究道德善的媒体当如何履职、媒体是否符合它的应当以及媒介从业人员在其媒介行为中对善与恶,正当与不正当的认识与抉择等问题;其次,与人们实际生活相关的是,传媒伦理也试图界定那些构成价值与生活规范的,被作为个体、群体或文化共同体的人们所共同认可的原则性的内容。     

From Environmental to Ecological Ethics: Toward a Practical Ethics for Ecologists and Conservationists

Ecological research and conservation practice frequently raise difficult and varied ethical questions for scientific investigators and managers, including duties to public welfare, nonhuman individuals (i.e., animals and plants), populations, and ecosystems. The field of environmental ethics has contributed much to the understanding of general duties and values to nature, but it has not developed the resources to address the diverse and often unique practical concerns of ecological researchers and managers in the field, lab, and conservation facility. The emerging field of “ecological ethics” is a practical or scientific ethics that offers a superior approach to the ethical dilemmas of the ecologist and conservation manager. Even though ecological ethics necessarily draws from the principles and commitments of mainstream environmental ethics, it is normatively pluralistic, including as well the frameworks of animal, research, and professional ethics. It is also methodologically pragmatic, focused on the practical problems of researchers and managers and informed by these problems in turn. The ecological ethics model offers environmental scientists and practitioners a useful analytical tool for identifying, clarifying, and harmonizing values and positions in challenging ecological research and management situations. Just as bioethics provides a critical intellectual and problem-solving service to the biomedical community, ecological ethics can help inform and improve ethical decision making in the ecology and conservation communities.

Thinking Without Words: An Overview for Animal Ethics

In Thinking without Words I develop a philosophical framework for treating some animals and human infants as genuine thinkers. This paper outlines the aspects of this account that are most relevant to those working in animal ethics. There is a range of different levels of cognitive sophistication in different animal species, in addition to limits to the types of thought available to non-linguistic creatures, and it may be important for animal ethicists to take this into account in exploring issues of moral significance and the obligations that we might or might not have to non-human animals. I am grateful for comments on an earlier version from Robert Francescotti and Clare Palmer.     

Collective Informed Consent and Decision Power

It has been suggested that, in addition to individual level decision-making, informed consent procedures could be used in collective decision-making too. One of the main criticisms directed at this suggestion concerns decision-making power. It is maintained that consent is a veto power concept and that, as such, it is not appropriate for collective decision-making. This paper examines this objection to collective informed consent. It argues that veto power informed consent can have some uses in the collective level and that when it is not appropriate the decision power a concerned party ought to have in connection with an arrangement should be made relative to the interest she has at stake in it. It concludes that the objection examined does not undermine collective informed consent.

Is Speciesism Opposed to Liberationism?

“Speciesism” accords greater value to human beings and their interests. It is supposed to be opposed to a liberationist stance, since it is precisely the numerous forms of discounting of animal interests which liberationists oppose. This association is mistaken. In this paper I claim that many forms of speciesism are consistent with upholding a robust liberationist agenda. Accordingly, several hotly disputed topics in animal ethics can be set aside. The significance of such clarification is that synthesizing liberationism with speciesism substantially modifies some of the coordinates of the debates over animal ethics. Secondly, defusing some counterintuitive implications of liberationism may make liberationism more popular than it currently is. Liberationism would no longer demand the eradication of ingrained speciesist intuitions. The paper finally presents a form of speciesism that does oppose liberationism, but is too strong and (fortunately) shared by few.

Ethics education in science and engineering: The case of animal research

Conclusion The past one hundred fifty years of debate over the use of animals in research and testing has been characterized mainly byad hominem attacks and on uncritical rejection of the other sides’ arguments. In the classroom, it is important to avoid repeating exercises in public relations and to demand sound scholarship. This paper is a modification of material originally included in the handbook which accompanied the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Seminar “Teaching Ethics in Science and Engineering”, 10–11 February 1993.     

Animal Mind: Science,Philosophy, and Ethics

Although 20^th-century empiricists were agnostic about animal mind and consciousness, this was not the case for their historical ancestors – John Locke, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and, of course, Charles Darwin and George John Romanes. Given the dominance of the Darwinian paradigm of evolutionary continuity, one would not expect belief in animal mind to disappear. That it did demonstrates that standard accounts of how scientific hypotheses are overturned – i.e., by empirical disconfirmation or by exposure of logical flaws – is inadequate. In fact, it can be demonstrated that belief in animal mind disappeared as a result of a change of values, a mechanism also apparent in the Scientific Revolution. The “valuational revolution” responsible for denying animal mind is examined in terms of the rise of Behaviorism and its flawed account of the historical inevitability of denying animal mentation. The effects of the denial of animal consciousness included profound moral implications for the major uses of animals in agriculture and scientific research. The latter is particularly notable for the denial of felt pain in animals. The rise of societal moral concern for animals, however, has driven the “reappropriation of common sense” about animal thought and feeling.     

Animal experimentation

Millions of animals are used every year in oftentimes extremely painful and distressing scientific procedures. Legislation of animal experimentation in modern societies is based on the supposition that this is ethically acceptable when certain more or less defined formal (e.g. logistical, technical) demands and ethical principles are met. The main parameters in this context correspond to the “3Rs” concept as defined by Russel and Burch in 1959, i.e. that all efforts to replace, reduce and refine experiments must be undertaken. The licensing of animal experiments normally requires an ethical evaluation process, oftentimes undertaken by ethics committees. The serious problems in putting this idea into practice include inter alia unclear conditions and standards for ethical decisions, insufficient management of experiments undertaken for specific (e.g. regulatory) purposes, and conflicts of interest of ethics committees’ members. There is an ongoing societal debate about ethical issues of animal use in science. Existing EU legislation on animal experimentation for cosmetics testing is an example of both the public will for setting clear limits to animal experiments and the need to further critically examine other fields and aspects of animal experimentation. This paper was presented at the 6th International Bioethics Conference on the subject of ‘The Responsible Conduct of Basic and Clinical Research’, held in Warsaw, Poland, 3–4 June 2005. The paper has been expanded from an article to be published in the forthcoming Council of Europe publication entitled “Animal Protection and Welfare”.     

关于实验动物运动模型建立的伦理思考

基于目前广泛应用的动物实验伦理3R和5F原则,通过深入分析已有运动干预文献中的动物运动模型构建方法,分别就运动模型建立前实验动物的选取,运动模式、运动剂量的确定,模型建立过程中不同阶段不同运动形式所涉及的伦理问题,以及实验动物安乐死等各个方面进行伦理分析,探讨伦理关怀在动物运动模型建立中的必要性和重要性。运动模型的构建作为研究运动干预的关键环节是极其重要的,此建立过程中涉及到诸多动物实验伦理问题。

     

Ethics of aggression research: Papers from a symposium of International Society for Research on Aggression

Three papers are presented from the first symposium on ethical issues in aggression research of the International Society for Research on Aggression held at the biennial meetings 1980 in Haren, The Netherlands. The symposium reflected a growing awareness of the Society that their research is a matter for public concern and scrutiny, both for its potentially good uses, and for its potential misuse and misinterpretation. A paper by Santiago Genovés, a Mexican anthropologist, outlined some of the issues concerning the dissemination of information and misinformation of aggression to the public, along with an extensive bibliography on the subject. A paper by Paul Brain, a British zoologist, addressed the issues surrounding the use of animals in aggression research and the arguments being used in public attacks upon it. Daniel Wikler, a practitioner of normative ethics from the United States, discussed ethics as theory and as practice and suggested some of the types of actions that the Society could consider undertaking.     

Transforming animal species: the case of ‘oncomouse’

In this paper I deal with ethical implications arising from animal biotechnology. I analyse some general questions surrounding the production of transgenic animals through a specific case study: the oncomouse. In particular, I explore ethical factors involved in the production of oncomice. This is because biologists genetically modify animals’ germ cells and refuse to modify human germ cells. I will underline how the international community has thus far justified this ‘ethical difference’. The opinions here expressed are personal and do not commit the European Commission. Maurizio Salvi is member of the Scientific Staff of the Higher Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven. Currently he is a Scientific Officer (National Expert Detached) of the European Commission, (Directorate-General XII, Science Research and Development, Directorate B.II.3) dealing with Bioethics research.     

Animal Minds,Cognitive Ethology,and Ethics

Our goal in this paper is to provide enough of an account of the origins of cognitive ethology and the controversy surrounding it to help ethicists to gauge for themselves how to balance skepticism and credulity about animal minds when communicating with scientists. We believe that ethicists’ arguments would benefit from better understanding of the historical roots of ongoing controversies. It is not appropriate to treat some widely reported results in animal cognition as if their interpretations are a matter of scientific consensus. It is especially important to understand why loose references to “cognitive ethology” by philosophers can signal ignorance of the field to scientists who are more deeply immersed in the relevant literature. Understanding the variety of approaches to cognitive phenomena in animals is essential if such capacities are to form the foundation of scientifically-informed ethical reasoning about animals.     

A Christian Rationale for Vegetarianism

Abstract :  This article lays out an argument for vegetarianism based on a Christian theological rationale, specifically on a new articulation of a Christian anthropology for the 21^st century. What I suggest is that an exploration of what it means to be human in a contemporary first world context leads to the conclusion that vegetarianism is a logical expression of one's understanding of oneself as a Christian, and one's exercise of one's Christian faith and discipleship.     

Ethics and the Science of Animal Minds

Ethicists have commonly appealed to science to bolster their arguments for elevating the moral status of nonhuman animals. I describe a framework within which I take many ethicists to be making such appeals. I focus on an apparent gap in this framework between those properties of animals that are part of the scientific consensus, and those to which ethicists typically appeal in their arguments. I will describe two different ways of diminishing the appearance of the gap, and argue that both of them present challenges to ethicists seeking a firm scientific basis for their claims about the moral status of animals. I argue that more clarity about the role of appeals to science by applied ethicists leads to questions about the effectiveness of such appeals, and that these questions might best be pursued empirically.     

医学研究实验动物伦理和福利状况调查——以药学和中药学期刊载文分析为例

调研我国27种药学和中药学期刊2018年刊发论文中实验动物伦理审查和福利状况以及期刊稿约中关于动物实验研究的伦理要求。结果发现,23种期刊声明通过动物伦理委员会审核的论文比例低于14%,25种期刊注明动物伦理审批编号的论文比例低于5%,各个期刊声明遵循有关动物使用和操作指南的论文比例均低于10%。部分论文实验动物福利状况的表述不清楚,动物实验所遵循的指南和原则表述不规范;大部分期刊稿约没有对动物实验研究伦理提出明确要求。建议尽快加强相关期刊编辑的实验动物伦理和福利意识,及时完善稿约内容。     

Editorial

This article provides a critique of the IWC's traditional focus on anthropocentric conservation in the governance of whaling. It is argued that this position, which relies on accepting the view that we have no direct moral duties to whales, is out of step with the moral status that now tends, in theory and practice, to be granted to animals. More specifically, anthropocentric conservation conflicts with the widespread acceptance, in theory and practice, that non-human animals such as whales have moral standing, that what we do to them matters to them directly. This does not mean that whaling should necessarily be prohibited on ethical grounds, although the animal welfare analysis of whaling sketched in this article does suggest that, on balance, it is difficult to defend morally. Rather, it is being claimed that it is morally objectionable to deny, as the whaling nations do, that the IWC ought to be mandated to consider the welfare implications of whaling.