Ethical

The ethical point of view considered on this blog is going to be focused on animals rights and the controversy that exists within this topic . To consider the rights of animals is to acknowledge the violation that has been done towards them, in other words, it is morally wrong, because as it has been stipulated from many years ago, it is wrong to violate rights. It should be irrelevant to consider the possible benefits that animal testing could bring upon humanity because rights should never be violated, even if it means that we wont be able to learn and apply multiple things that could have an uncertain outcame. Benefits to humanity should never justify the suffering of the animals involved.

Most people support the argument that validates the moral status of an animal, this is why it is morally wrong to abuse pets or to hurt other animals In modern times, the question has shifted from whether animals have moral status to how much moral status they have and what rights come with that status.

 The people that support animal rights, represent the contradiction towards the precious statement, “animals have exactly the same moral status as humans and are entitled to equal treatment” this doesn’t mean that animals have the same capacities that we have in a society, it means that their life is a subject of value that we should respect,  in short, we should not have the right to kill animals, force them into our service, or otherwise treat them merely as means to further our own goals. 

Moral statusshould be considered for any organism that is able to experience pleasure, pain, sadness, discomfort, anxiety, fear, in these aspects, many animals are not different from humans. Supporters of this type of argument claim that granting humans more moral status can lead us to what it’s described as speciesism, in fact, we have a tendency of considering human species more relevant because it is the group to which we belong. However, we look upon past examples of this behavior as morally condemnable. Being of a particular race or gender does not give one any grounds for declaring outsiders to be of a lower moral status. Many animal rights advocates argue similarly that just because we are human is not sufficient grounds to declare animals less morally significant.

When adressing ethics regarding animal testing , it is cruciall to mention the methods that have been proposed and held to  minimise the harm animals may experience while being studied in a laboratory, This is why, researchers are required to follow a set of principles, the ‘three Rs’. These are:  

• Replace: Replacing, where possible, experiments using animals with alternative techniques such as cell culture, computer modelling or human volunteers instead of animals.

• Reduce: Reducing the number of animals used, by improving experimental techniques and sharing information with other researchers so that the same experiments aren’t being done by many people.
• Refine: Refining the way the animals are cared for to help minimise any stress or pain, by using less invasive techniques where possible and improving medical care and living conditions.

However, Although the Three Rs tenet has achieved some success in improving animal welfare, it has also been criticized for its limitations; these principles are poorly defined, even if they provide assistance and change, they afford little guidance.  Between the critics that have been made, these are some of them; 

• While the three R’s allow the use of animals for scientific purposes, they do provide the criteria  for animal use but don’t allow further examination of the assumption that use is acceptable.
• Certain species are not provided with special consideration with the parameter of the three R’s, this means that, species with the least public support for their use in science (nonhuman primates and western companion animal species) cannot be exempt from scientific use by solely applying the Three Rs tenet in the ethical evaluation process. In these cases, local institutional policy or legislation are often used to prohibit or limit use of these species, this means they bypass the existing considerations under a Three Rs process. One example is the ban on the use of chimpanzees in science in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
• The contradictions between each R are also identified as limitations in  animal testing, the refinement R is related with thehow the process should be carried in oreder to minimice the pain they are being induced to, nevertheless, it also requires the reduce of overall animals being tested. If less animals are being allowed, the harm to individuals would be greater since they are going to get more tested on, the balance should be carefully studied before any research is done. 
• Different studies can represent a conflict between the Three Rs tenet and the goals of certain types of scientific animal use. For example, in  studies of wildlife populations the replecement R may not be valid, similarly, there’s a clear conflict between the refinement R and the goal of improving welfare since much research relies on the creation of a poor welfare state. 

• Countless numbers of people argue that the potential and purpose of the three R’s has not yet been reached, and should be renewed when considering the huge advances in biotechnology and sciences that has been done over the last 50 years. Some solutions that have been proposed are to increase the knowledge through more complete publication of Three Rs-related information in published scientific papers and increasing funding for the development of viable Replacement alternatives.

Another method that has been proposed to ensure the wellbeing of animals is ethical arithmetic , this process cant be used in a mathematical way, but it’s useful for demonstrating the issues of animal testing very clearly. The comparisons go from different approaches the first one being the harm that will result from not doing the experiment, in this approach they consider

• The moral value of a human being .

• The number of human beings that are going to get a benefit from these researches. 
• The value of the benefit that each human being wont get.

The second approaching that is going to be considered is the harm that the experiment will cause to the animal it is going to be tested on, in this variable is taken into account:  

• The moral value of an experimental animal.
• The number of animals suffering in the experiment.
• The negative value of the harm done to each animal. 

Nevertheless, these considerations are not that simple since, first, it is impossible to give a moral value to any organism, it works the same for the harm that is being done, you can’t measure this. Second, the harm that will be done by the experiment is known beforehand, but the benefit is still unknown for us. And third, the harm done by the experiment is caused by an action, while the harm resulting from not doing it is caused by an omission, what this means is that, it is morally worse for the experimenter to harm the animals by experimenting on them than it is to (potentially) harm some human beings by not doing an experiment that might find a cure for their disease.

To conclude the information previously given, when the harm that the experiment is going to do to the animals is compared to the one that it would do to a human  if it is not carried out we have to acknowledge that one of them is certain whereas the other is just a probability since we are not going to be sure about the outcome of the experiment, this means that, the equation is completely useless as a way of deciding whether it is ethically acceptable to perform an experiment, because until the experiment is carried out, no one can know the value of the benefit that it produces.

Ethics in animal testing are used to create conciousness about the wrong managemnet thats been going on for sveral years, however, as it was previously stated, this parameter does not always work, and can lead to even higuer risks being done to animals. It is unfair for us to even consider the morals of any specie because they are still living beings, they think, they suffer, some of them have the capacity to acknowledge time meaning they are also aware of their time of death (like in the case of pigs) and, the procedures can sometimes be extremely harmful for them, is a torture that shouldn’t be allowed to do in any conscious living organism.

Tom Reagan an American philosopher based his beliefs on utilitarianism and claimed that “ no ends can justify the evil means of sacrificing an animal in the face of inviolable dignity of sentient beings”  he also argues that “many kinds of non-human animals possess moral rights in virtue of their nature; in virtue of the fact that they are, as he puts it, subjects-of-a-life”. In his essay The case of animals rights he critiques the system and the way many of us perceive animal testing as a factor that happens in specific situations to some individuals, not as a whole problematic that is engaged in mutiple process held by humans. 

As he stated “What’s wrong-fundamentally wrong-with the way animals are treated isn’t the details that vary from case to case. It’s the whole system. The forlornness of the veal calf is pathetic, heart wrenching; the pulsing pain of the chimp with electrodes planted deep in her brain is repulsive; the slow, tortuous death of the raccoon caught in the leg-hold trap is agonizing. But what is wrong isn’t the pain, isn’t the suffering, isn’t the deprivation. These compound what’s wrong. Sometimes-often-they make it much, much worse. But they are not the fundamental wrong. The fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us-to be eaten, or surgically ·manipulated, or exploited for sport or money. Once we accept this view of animals-as our resources-the rest is as predictable as it is regrettable. Why worry about their loneliness, their pain, their death? Since animals exist for us, to benefit us in one way or another, what harms them really doesn’t matter-or matters only if it starts to bother us, makes us feel a trifle uneasy when we eat our veal escalope, for example. So, yes, let us get veal calves out of solitary confinement, give them more space, a little straw, a few companions. But let us keep our veal escalope” .  The problem doesn’t rely on whether we should still be testing on animals or not, the discussion should go beyond that information, it should be focused  on why we consider a human being a resource that exists only to benefit us.

Furthermore, Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher argues in his book Animal liberation written in 1975  that “the interests of animals should be considered because of their ability to feel suffering and that the idea of rights was not necessary to weigh against the relative worth of animal experimentation” , he also adopts a utilitarian principle  that moral judgements should be made based on equal interests (for example, an interest in not suffering) irrespective of sex, ethnicity, or now, species. In his book he makes people reconsider a lot of their beliefs by writing straight forward statements that could make people feel uncomfortable, but it’s important to consider them since they are important for understanding the relevance of this topic. As he said, “ To make a distinction between humans and non‐humans is “speciesism”, an argument no better than sexism or racism.”.