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Animal testing is something I find ethically intriguing. Like fox hunting before it, I think it’s an issue I see as just about dodgy enough to be interesting. It’s also something to which I’m constantly exposed: Oxford University are building an animal housing facility to consolidate their medical testing, and it has generated huge controversy to the extent that there are now two counter-protesting groups feeding the debate.

Apart from providing a focal point, however, I don’t think the “Oxford Torture Lab” is really a very interesting case. It won’t have a lot of effect on the number or type of tests being conducted, acting mainly as a centralised location to house the critters and improve their welfare in the process.

What, though, of the broader issue? How is it justified administering poisonous prototype drugs or intentional brain damage to cute little bunnies in the first place?

Most people have an intrinsic feeling of compassion towards animals. I certainly wouldn’t stand by and watch while someone injected bleach into the eyes of my pet dog, for example. Indeed, I also feel that one should object to cosmetic testing on animals. Sadly, as I shall elaborate upon below, I can’t nail down why: I’ve just got an eerie supposition that animals should be accorded some kind of protection. It’s probably this strange notion which makes the issue interesting.

The moral case

Do animals have rights at all?

It is an essential precursor to this debate that you establish whether animals deserve to be given any consideration at all. If they don’t, you’re home and dry: we would certainly not have any objection to testing on chemicals or machines because we don’t believe them to be worthy of ethical status. If animals are amoral automata, differing from machines only in complexity, they should surely be treated no differently.

It is quite possible that animals are not conscious: certainly they respond to stimuli in a way which appears similar to human pain, but it can be explained away as a natural and necessary reaction.1 An animal which does not recoil from hot, sharp or otherwise painful things will not survive very long in the wild! If they don’t have a perception of pain through consciousness, there is no problem testing on them.

It is also possible that animals simply don’t have a concept of the future, or death, or ever make any meaningful plans. Without these, it could be argued that there is no lack of hope or suffering even if at any instant the animal is conscious and experiencing pain.

The final possibility is that animals give us, or indeed other animals or anything else, no moral consideration. Predators would eat us in the wild, herbivores would kick us to death sooner than see us approach their young, and so on. Even animals which wouldn’t harm us are being morally passive: an animal ignoring or running away from you is not doing so for some ethical reason! Thus, it follows, we have no reciprocal obligation to them.

If the above are untrue or invalid, then it is necessary to give some consideration to animal welfare.

Utilitarianism

Animals are intrinsically less valuable than humans (possibly due to arguments like the above), and testing on a comparatively small number of them is certainly outweighed by the massive benefit to society of life-saving drugs. 2

The trouble with applying utilitarianism is that it leads to the conclusion that we should probably try everything on animals: shampoo testing may make me uneasy, but it’s certainly better that a few mice who don’t know any better get it in their eyes first just to make sure that humans won’t go blind. Why not try everything on animals first, just to make sure?

Utilitarian considerations don’t seem to impose any limits. 3

Meat-eating

There is a widespread agreement in our democratic society that it is morally acceptable to eat meat. If it could be demonstrated that the eating of meat is able to be equated morally with animal testing of some kind, then that form of testing is, according to the democratic ideal, acceptable to our society.

Even without the democratic leap required to go from agreement of the masses to moral vindication, any individual eating meat but opposing animal testing would be a hypocrite.

In terms of number of animals killed for amount of benefit, consuming meat is certainly less beneficial per carcass than animal testing. Vegetarians are living proof that it’s possible to survive and, if you’re careful, even be healthy without eating meat.

You might argue that the pain the animals undergo whilst being tested on results in a greater level of suffering, but what about battery hens and veal?

It seems quite difficult to envisage a coherent ethical framework which can allow meat eating but entirely condemns testing on animals. Surely, since there is the tacit admission that limited animal suffering is permissible for food, there is at least the suggestion that it could be in others?

Scientific objections

Animal testing is not perfect science. Animals undoubtedly respond differently to humans to many chemicals. Some drugs which make it through the now-obligatory animal testing phase do so only to be found ineffective or toxic4 in the next obligatory stage, human trials.

The converse is logically true: some drugs will prove toxic in the animal testing phase and thus never make it to human trials, despite possibly being the most effective treatment it is possible to manufacture for human beings.

This claim is extended to all types of animal testing (toxicology only makes up about 15% of UK animal research), claimants stating that the neurophysiology, anatomy or whatever part of an animal is under scrutiny is sufficiently different from that of a human that the testing is either worthless, or at least severely scientifically compromised.

However, this argument can be deconstructed in that animals are the best test subjects we have: computers, cells in a tray and brain scans on human patients simply can’t reproduce the results obtained from animal studies, despite their being imperfect, too. Apart from jumping straight to human testing, we simply never can find those wonder drugs which we may have discarded because they proved toxic in animals; that worry, whilst disquieting, is ultimately a fallacy.

The World’s scientists agree with this.

The question then, of course, is whether this imperfection means that animal testing is not useful enough to outweigh the ethical considerations. 5

Cosmetic testing

If animals don’t have any rights at all, then there is certainly no objection to bathing them in the latest pro-vitamin conditioner. Even from a utilitarian perspective, it’s certainly better to try it out on a few animals than have potentially of millions of users suffer some unforeseen adverse side-effect.

However, there is a stronger case against testing cosmetics: do we actually need new cosmetics? Do our current soaps really remove grime so ineffectively that we should conduct morally-dubious animal tests to develop new ones?

A pure utilitarian would argue that the benefit to society could manifest in a more subtle form, and that the increased profits of companies with new products or happiness of vain teenagers who can now dye their hair a new colour might, since it’s in a higher species and, though a small amount of happiness, far more prevalent, outweigh the animal suffering.

However, animal testing seems somehow less necessary here.

My opinion

As I alluded in my opening comments, I’m not quite sure where I stand on this issue. The difficulty is mainly with assessing whether or not animals deserve rights and, if they do, how far these rights extend and thus, quantitatively, how far we are obliged restrict use of animals in testing.

I certainly think that, whilst imperfect, animal testing is good science. Cell culture and computer simulation will undoubtedly develop apace, but the complexity of living systems scares me as a physicist: I can tell you that each of the constituent parts of the atoms could merit a DPhil, so their collective behaviour, with a bit of emergent complexity and chaos thrown in, must be no mean feat to simulate.

I also think that there is a strong case for believing animals to be worthy of moral consideration separate and different from that given to humans. Though in possession of consciousness and a theory of mind we are driven to anthropomorphise them, they are undoubtedly less complex in important respects than us.

Thus, I believe that there is good reason to continue medical testing on animals, and possibly a case to be made for cosmetic or other testing. However, the ability to strip animals of some or all rights is by no means an ethical certainty and so, if or when more viable alternatives to such testing arise, we should embrace them as far as is possible.

What a tremendous ethical exposition to come out cautiously in favour of the status quo.

Footnotes:

1. 1 The sensing of pain without the sensation of pain is called nociception. It is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain as detection of a stimulus to which exposure would damage tissue: the kind of thing it would therefore be sensible for an animal to recoil from.
2. 2 A utilitarian could argue that we should test on humans, because a small number of suffering or dying humans could lead to massive collective benefit to society. Indeed, the scientific objections to animal trials would not apply if we tested on humans. More extreme utilitarianism suggests that we should kill every tenth healthy person such that we have a good supply of blood and organs for donation, guaranteeing a longer and healthier life for the other nine in the process.

   The common comeback is that this would create a climate of fear and mistrust in society. Even a clandestine testing procedure carried out on every tenth baby could be uncovered and understood by humans, but animals probably don’t even have a conceptual scheme capable of encompassing the notion of other members of their species suffering. This argument for testing holds even if we equate animal worth precisely with that of humans: if they are worth less somehow, it is strengthened.

3. 3 This lack of limitation is compounded by the fact that the judgement is based upon potential benefit. We cannot know until after the animal tests, and indeed until a given drug or procedure has jumped through the many subsequent hoops and reached approval, whether or not to perform the tests will benefit anyone at all.

   All you have to do is create a compelling prediction of the future benefit or the potential for future risk, and the testing is completely justified. So, since almost anything could have a huge number of unforeseeable consequences, utilitarianism actually requires testing of almost everything.

4. 4 To call a drug “toxic” in humans or animals is a gross simplification. Every substance is toxic to every creature if you give it the correct dosage. Drinking a few litres of water in one go can kill you. Too much oxygen can be lethal. Substances like cyanide just have a much lower lethal dose.

   What matters in medical testing is a drug’s therapeutic ratio, calculated by dividing its LD₅₀ (lethal dose in 50% of test subjects) by its ED₅₀ (effective dose — that which causes the desired medical effect — in 50% of test subjects). A high therapeutic ratio implies that it takes a lot to kill you, but not a lot to treat you: ideal.

   However, there is no one threshold therapeutic ratio which to aim for: a cancer drug, whose purpose will necessarily be to kill the tumour cells, is likely quite poisonous to boot. Terminal cancer patients also have less to fear from side-effects. A headache pill, on the other hand, shouldn’t induce death whilst treating minor pain, and as such would need a much higher ratio to be considered clinically sound.

5. 5 Another observation which derives from the highlighted difference between animal and human physiology is that of how those making such a fuss of the distinction are willing to admit that animals are different from humans in biochemical or anatomical respects but then insist that their moral status must be exactly equivalent.

   I think this is more an interesting begged question than an especially useful point, hence my relegating it to the footnotes.

Monday, March 20th, 2006 20:11 | permalink | trackback