THERAPEUTIC USE - Ethics and the Beast - page 92

5. Injury : Therapy animals can be (and are) routinely manhandled. Even when they
are gently handled, exposing them to strangers who pet them can itself induce anxiet-
ies in them. A small percentage of such animals are injured during these sessions.

5

6. Instrumentalization : Liberationists tend to tacitly or explicitly model ideal human-
animal relations on analogies with human-human ethics. While few extend to animals
the same range of moral considerability that befits humans, liberationists turn the
human-animal model from the thoughtless instrumentalization that is typical of human
relations with objects into forms of interaction that approximate human-human rela-
tions. From this perspective, since it is unimaginable to retain a subgroup of human
beings as therapeutic aids of other human beings even if proved as facilitating ex-
tremely effective therapy (say that the tactile quality of touching members of this
subgroup is proved to have therapeutic merits), doing this to animals is wrong in a
similar way. Animals are not out there to be used by us, even when the use is im-
portant or worthy.
Liberationists would be quick to identify these six potential violations of the moral
status of animals and would accordingly be concerned about the moral legitimacy of
AAT as such. The fact that much more serious violations than the uses described in
1-6 occur in relation to animals does not abrogate the moral questions that relate to
types 1-6. It matters not that billions of animals are routinely killed for negligible
reasons, or that they are institutionally used and exploited in large-scale industries all
over the world. If types 1-6 cannot be vindicated, liberationists should censor these
modalities of therapy and assistance.

A PATERNALISTIC CASE FOR AAT?

Analyzing the moral status of types 1-6 invites an exploration of the owner-pet re-
lationship. If such relationships can be morally justified, some of the therapeutic uses
of animals sketched above might be vindicated as well. 6 In the previous chapter I
proposed a utilitarian-based justification of the owner-pet relationship that can morally
legitimate the practice of keeping some animals as pets. In a nutshell, my claim was
that the hands-off approach advocated by some liberationists—the idea that the lives
of animals are better the less paternalistic they are—is morally sound though, ironic-
ally, not always in the interest of the animals themselves. Accordingly, liberationists
should avoid the hands-off approach. With regard to companion animals, some owner-
pet relationships are an overall good for human as well as for nonhuman animals.
The paternalistic framework of such relations is a potential wrong but is exonerated
because it makes for a better world for small animals: it is an overall better alternat-
ive for them than a life in the wild. Success stories of feral populations of horses
and dogs would modify such an impression only in a few examples but are less im-