KILLING FOR KNOWLEDGE - Ethics and the Beast - page 47

minating experimentation will harm humans. The damage will be in the form of
either life-saving products that will not be devised, or risk to human subjects of ex-
perimental drugs that have not been sifted through in vivo experiments. These, then,
are four different formulations of the idea that humans have greater value than anim-
als and that, accordingly, it is morally permissible to experiment on them: we ascribe
greater importance to what humans are, we care more for them, we think that they
deserve more, and we think that by experimenting on animals, we minimize the harm
done to humans.
Challenging these four claims is possible, but I will avoid this. I shall also assume
that these assumptions are justified , not merely widely shared. Instead, I plan to ask
whether they exonerate the killing animals as part of research. If they fail to provide
such support, we lose the commonest kind of moral defense for research. We will
then have to stop animal-dependent research altogether, devise a new moral defense
for it, or continue it while acknowledging its immorality.

LEGITIMIZING THE QUESTION

Before examining the moral status of research, we need to ask whether such ex-
ploration is plausible given that we routinely kill huge amounts of animals for much
lighter reasons. If society does not outlaw eating meat, hunting, or fishing, then, a
fortiori, it cannot interfere with research that sacrifices animals for weightier reasons.
This point is routinely made in proresearch propaganda, which typically compares the
death toll in the meat industry or processes of “pest” control with the numbers of an-
imals killed by experiments. One such estimate, conducted by the Research Defense
Society, shows that in 1991, 11.5 animals per person were killed for food in the UK,
whereas 0.05 animals per person were used (not necessarily killed) in research. The
number of rodents exterminated as pests each year on average is almost four times
the number of rodents killed during experiments. 5 Another way to put the same
point is to say, with Webster, that an average human omnivore eats in a lifetime
around seven hundred animals (not counting fish). In comparison, only four lab anim-
als per one human life are killed (in the UK). Webster concludes that “this is not,
perhaps, much to ask of Brother Mouse.”

6

Picking on researchers when routine

killing takes place is insincere and dubious.
The problem with this claim is the assumption that existing norms regarding meat
eating and pest control are morally justified. True, if killing animals for food is justi-
fied, then, a fortiori, killing them to test product safety or devise better medication
cannot be immoral. Yet it is far from clear that killing for food is morally admiss-
ible. Presented as a moral vindication of research, pointing out widespread misuses of
animals for trivial reasons is plainly inadequate (the strategic dimensions of this fact