Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
mentation . . . then I think that such experimentation is justified because human lives
are more valuable than animal lives.
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If A and B are children quarrelling over a piece of pie, and B already had some
of the pie, A
deserves
a larger piece of it now and should get it even if B will eat a
smaller piece. Experimentation on animals is sometimes defended in this way, the ar-
gument being that since humans in some unspecified sense “deserve more” (to deploy
the references above: human suffering is to be accorded greater weight, and so the
human interest in escaping suffering overrides the animal's interest in avoiding pain),
sacrificing animals to save humans or relieve their suffering is justified. Yet this reas-
oning is unsound. The logic that underlies research is different from unequal alloca-
tion of pieces of pie, and this difference undermines the argument from greater desert
as a vindication of research. Something that B possesses (its life) is
taken
from it, to
respond to A's need. Here there is no question of distributing unequally a shared re-
source. The question is one of dispossession. Even if we take the strongest scenario
on behalf of experimentation with animals, a life versus a life, the moral logic of the
reasoning is dubious: say that A deserves something that he has in a greater degree
than B deserves to have his. Does this justify
taking
what B has to preserve A?
Examples of such moves in human-human morality suggest that when dispossession
on behalf of greater desert has been conducted—for example, uprisings that involved
dispossession of nobility—this has sometimes been rationalized through deflating the
nobility's right of ownership. Since no one thinks that animals do not deserve the
lives that they have—to the extent that this formulation even makes sense—this justi-
fication cannot apply to animals. When the right of ownership is fully recognized in
human-human morality and the argument from desert is invoked to vindicate actively
taking something from someone, dispossession is typically rationalized via considera-
tions of fairness—for example, taking from the rich to benefit the poor through un-
equal taxation practices. There are prudential considerations for doing this. But the
standard moral justification of unequal taxation and unequal allocation of funds aimed
at benefiting the poor is that such assists the children of the poor to compete with
the children of the rich from a fairer starting point. The overall justification appeals
to benefiting the weaker party at the expense of the stronger one. Obviously, this
move cannot justify research, since unlike unequal taxation here the weak benefit the
strong. In addition, redistribution of wealth has its limits: one can take from the rich
only so much. The underlying moral principle is that the benefactor cannot end up
worse off than the beneficiary. Research violates this principle too since the animals
end up dead.
To conclude: even when conceding the strongest case for research, in which sacrifi-
cing an animal positively saves a human life, the animal has been made worse off
