Group1: Ethical I - Animal Testing

Philosophical Evolution

The discussion of testing scientific theories on animals is closely linked to the question if humans are superior to animals. Already in ancient Greece philosophers discussed this question and came to the conclusion that animals have not the same the perception of the world and of pain as humans. In the context of animal testing, ultilitarism has been used to justify animal testing, by putting the benefits for the human race above the well-being of the animals.

In the 20^th century, Peter Singer and Tom Regan focused their work on animal rights and put this topic in the mainstream discussions. Both philosophers are in favour of granting rights to animals, resembling human rights, because even if the life of an animal has no value to humans, it has a lot of value to the animal itself. This justifies giving rights to animals and hence we as humans have duties to animals [1].

Today about 100 million animals are used only in research all around the world [2].

Scientific Community

The underlying ideology in the scientific community regarding animal testing is purely scientific. Science is often regarded as value- and ethics-free and there is no ethical judgement of observable or testable matters. Part of this point of view has been that many scientists don’t believe in the consciousness of animals [3].

Before the 3R rules were implemented, guidelines concerning animal testing in research only focused on the scientific question that is being answered and the benefit to humanity. The treatment and interests of animals were not considered and as long as the scientific goal was achieved [2].

Beside the scientific discovery and the search for a certain cure for example, often researchers are motivated by the renown for the discovery of a medical breakthrough and see a possibility to reach their own ambitions through animal testing [4].

Due to a higher focus on animal well-being and higher social expectations towards researchers, scientists need to abide the boundaries of “consensus social ethic”. In not doing so, either social or legal rules are being broken and can have severe consequences [3].

Current research and conclusion

The scientific community has already evolved by putting in place the 3Rs and making it illegal to perform research on chimpanzees because they are regarded to be like humans. Recent researches show that not only monkeys are similar to humans, but also other animals have complex mental states and a certain pain sensitivity [4].

Recent studies have shown that animals experience harm in much more detail than previously assumed in the research community. Like humans, they can feel pain and distress caused by invasive procedures, deprivation of needs or the inability to fulfil their natural needs. The way animals respond to pain or emotions is coordinated and expressed similarly to humans. Those responses can lead to psychopathology, like PTSD or depression  [2].

Drawbacks of animal testing

The underlying drawbacks of animal testing are that human conditions can’t be recreated in lab experiments and often data collected from animal testing is difficult to apply the data to human treatment.

From a animals rights point of view a main problem of experimenting on animals is that a majority of experiment descriptions are not giving any information about the physical and emotional pain inflicted on the animals [4].

Stress caused by pain or other harm done to animals lead to a change in hormones and bias the results of the study.

As mentioned before, many problems regarding animal testing stem from the unreliability of the collected data. Often the data is not replicable on humans and predict the outcomes on humans badly.

In chemical testing the main problem are the outdated regulations that were put in place 60 years ago and they need to be adapted to the state of the art research today. This evolution is very slow [2].

Behind the scenes of Animal Testing

Not necessarily everything a study includes represents the whole story behind animal testing. First of all, there should be put attention to the well-being of the animals. Further, the conditions that the animals are kept should be a focus to everyone. Animal experiments deliberately harm animals in order to try different ways to cure them. In most cases, animals are brought to a given state to test different procedures afterwards. Thus, these tests are not at all similar to humans, that are experimented upon when they are in a particular state [5][6]. Different animal experiments according to CrueltyFreeInternational are:

• injecting or force feeding animals with potentially harmful substances

• exposing animals to radiation

• surgically removing animals’ organs or tissues to deliberately cause damage

• forcing animals to inhale toxic gases

• subjecting animals to frightening situations to create anxiety and depression

However, there is also a very bias division between 'animals' and 'non-animals', which leads to further regulations and permission avoidance. For example, according to the same source, only vertebrate animals (mammals, birds, fish and amphibians) and some invertebrates such as octopuses are defined as ‘animals’ by European legislation governing animal experiments. This goes even further in the US legislation, where rats, mice, fish, amphibians and birds are not defined as animals. Thus, in the US, all the legislation are void when it comes to experimenting with the above-mentioned animals. Another very shocking methodology used is that particular experiment-animals are laboratory bred only for the purpose of testing. In the eyes of the researchers, these animals are only test-objects at the end of the day [5][6].

As it can be seen in the video below, not only testing upon animals is the only bad, the conditions that these animals are kept, is as bad as the prior. Looking from another perspective, how reliable are the results when the animals have suffered pain, frustration, ache prior to being 'test-objects'. Thus, there should be very detailed investigation on different methodologies for alternative testing [7].

Animal testing in 60 seconds [8] 

Alternatives to animal testing

Dependent on the area of research there exist alternatives to animal testing that show a lot of promise due to advances in computer science:

• Therapeutic research is beginning to use human data and cell tissue to test
• For vaccine testing in-vitro human immune systems are used because such testing methods have higher accuracy and are less expensive [2]

Insight a leading animal research center