Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
that our consequentialist presents a variant of consequentialism that does not entail re-
form and that utilizes the superiority claim to justify research. To avoid the implica-
tion that not only animals but humans too can be experimented upon should experi-
menting on a small number of them contribute to the welfare of numerous others, the
consequentialist will need to add some restrictions regarding what may be done to
humans in a just society, even if the disutility of harming them is offset by benefit-
ing many others. Yet establishing this limitation on consequentialist grounds alone is
not easy. True, if people know that it is permissible to experiment on them without
their consent, this in itself diminishes the overall good in a substantial way when
factoring in the disutility of the now widespread anxiety of every person: that ghoul-
ish possibility that he or she will happen to play a part in some such a gruesome
scenario. But such anxieties can be quantified, measured against, and offset by the
much more severe and palpable suffering induced by some disease. The consequen-
tialist will have to concede that if no feasible alternative to deploying human subjects
for some diseases is forthcoming, it is morally permissible to do so on the grounds
that the value of many individuals surpasses the value of few human subjects.
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This does not yet mean that it is wrong to sacrifice animals for the benefits that
research offers. The conclusion is merely that we cannot exonerate such practice by
appealing to the inferior value of animals.
THE ARGUMENT FROM GREATER CARE
The cruder manner by which the greater care for humans excuses research is
through questions like: “What would you say if the sick person is your child, and
saving her requires sacrificing animals?” Here is psychiatrist Robert White's less po-
lemically pitched, nonhypothetical version of this claim:
We wept and watched, my wife and I, as a little girl fought for her life. She was
tiny, frail, helpless, and so very vulnerable. Motionless except as her chest rose and
fell spasmodically, there lay Lauren, our first grandchild, born so prematurely that
each breath was a desperate and failing effort. We wept, our hearts torn by the grow-
ing realization that Lauren might not live. The next day she died. The research on
baby lambs and kittens that has given life to many premature infants such as Lauren
was still in the future and would come too late for her.
In time, two grandsons, Jonathan and Bryan, were born. Premature babies, they
also had to struggle for life. Our pain of uncertainty and of waiting was all to be en-
dured twice again. But the little boys lived. The knowledge gained through research
on lambs and kittens gave them life, a gift that Lauren could not have.
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The philosophical problem with such moving confessions when they mobilize provi-
visection arguments is that this kind of reasoning permits too much and is not limited
