KILLING FOR KNOWLEDGE - Ethics and the Beast - page 46

Chapter 4
KILLING FOR KNOWLEDGE
WIDE AGREEMENT EXISTS that experimenting on animals 1 in ways that harm
or kill them is permissible but is to be limited: few hold that minute advancements in
knowledge justify any degree of animal suffering and death. 2 The concern for limita-
tion registers a deeper tension that underlies the moral status of research: if animals
suffer, if killing animals is on a different moral footing from modifying objects, what
justifies killing them and causing them pain in order to advance knowledge, test and
devise medical and nonmedical products, or determine their toxicity levels? What al-
lows us to kill them in classroom demonstrations?
When we say that the interest to advance knowledge or promote product safety for
humans trumps the pain and death of animals, we are assuming that human ends are
more important than animal welfare. 3 This assumption is left untouched even in the
most pro-animal legislation. Countries such as the United Kingdom, Norway, the Neth-
erlands, or Sweden, which have introduced the most progressive and ambitious legisla-
tion, still perceive experiments as morally justified (Nazi Germany being a glaring and
disturbing counterexample). 4 In this chapter, I do not attack the assumption that hu-
mans are more valuable than nonhuman animals—“valuable” either simply due to spe-
cies membership or because their interests, pleasures, capabilities, and so on count for
more—but undermine its capacity to function as a plausible vindication of research.
Much antiresearch philosophical literature is devoted to challenging the discounting of
animal interests. This chapter examines whether or not animal-based research is mor-
ally credible if one grants the superiority of humans. I will argue that a speciesist out-
look does not morally validate research.
ARGUMENTATIVE STRATEGY
Four distinct operations are at play when the assumption that humans are more valu-
able than animals serves as a springboard to a justification of research. These are
sometimes run together, diffusing into each other, so avoiding confusion requires de-
marcating and discussing them separately. First, people value the capacities in which
humans excel more than the capacities of animals. Animal-based experimentation is ex-
cused given the necessity to harm either humans or animals and the inferiority of the
latter. Second, care for human suffering overrides sympathy for animals. Third, humans
possess an entirely different level of moral standing than animals. Since humans de-
serve more, saving a single human life justifies sacrificing many animals. Fourth, ter-