Animal Experimentation and Research Many lives are lost each year as a result of disease, and scientists are frantically trying to keep up by producing cures to new diseases. Experimentation in animals is a common method to achieving such a cure. The experimentation is controversial for several key reasons. Animal rights has been an issue for several decades, and the ethics of experimenting are constantly being questioned. Yet animal experimentation clearly has benefits to humankind and has been successful in the past. Currently, animal experimentation inside the United States is limited while not being fully prohibited by law. Animal experimentation should continue to be minimally limited because animal experimentation, drug development,
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To apply ethics to animals, we first must define what is moral and what defines something to have ethics applied to it (include it in a so-called “moral community”). According to HOPES (Huntington's Outreach Project for Education at Stanford), the human moral community is joined together by cognitive thinking; “The human moral community, for instance, is often characterized by a capacity to manipulate abstract concepts and by personal autonomy. Since most animals do not have the cognitive capabilities of humans and also do not seem to possess full autonomy (animals do not rationally choose to pursue specific life goals), they are not included in the moral community”. Most laboratory animals are non-cognitive, and according to this article, are not part of the group that applies to morals. However, ethics are very hard to pinpoint and identify because much of it comes down to cultural difference and/or personal values. Even if animals are included in another moral community, animal research is still ethical at times. Nathan Nobis, Ph.D., from the department of philosophy at Morehouse College, expounds moral principles of his to his readers in his book Animals and Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights, that “Moral principles often assert that an action having some feature(s) is a sufficient condition(s) for that action being morally wrong, permissible, or whatever. E.g., here are two …show more content…
“The ethics of animal research. Talking Point on the use of animals in scientific research”, US National Library of Medicine, 2007, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2002542/. Accessed Feb 13 2017.
Johannsen, Kyle. “Animal Rights and the Problem of r-Strategists” 01 Dec. 2016, https://philpapers.org/archive/JOHARA-7.pdf. Accessed Feb 13 2017.
Kim, Sejoong, and Shuichi Takayama. "Organ-on-a-chip and the Kidney." Kidney Research and
Clinical Practice. Elsevier, Sept. 2015. Web. 14 Apr. 2017.
Liou, Stephanie. “Animal Research: the Ethics of Animal Experimentation”. Huntington's Outreach
Project for Education at Stanford, 06 Jul. 2010, http://web.stanford.edu/group/hopes/cgi-bin/hopes_test/animal-research/#the-case-for-animal-experimentation. Accessed Feb 14 2017.
Nobis, Nathan. “Animals & Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights”.
2016, https://philpapers.org/archive/NOBAE.pdf. Accessed Feb 13 2017.
“Forty reasons why we need animals in research.” Understanding Animal Research, 11 Sept. 2014, http://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/about-us/science-action-network/forty-reasons-why-we-need-animals-in-research/. Accessed Feb 13
To apply ethics to animals, we first must define what is moral and what defines something to have ethics applied to it (include it in a so-called “moral community”). According to HOPES (Huntington's Outreach Project for Education at Stanford), the human moral community is joined together by cognitive thinking; “The human moral community, for instance, is often characterized by a capacity to manipulate abstract concepts and by personal autonomy. Since most animals do not have the cognitive capabilities of humans and also do not seem to possess full autonomy (animals do not rationally choose to pursue specific life goals), they are not included in the moral community”. Most laboratory animals are non-cognitive, and according to this article, are not part of the group that applies to morals. However, ethics are very hard to pinpoint and identify because much of it comes down to cultural difference and/or personal values. Even if animals are included in another moral community, animal research is still ethical at times. Nathan Nobis, Ph.D., from the department of philosophy at Morehouse College, expounds moral principles of his to his readers in his book Animals and Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights, that “Moral principles often assert that an action having some feature(s) is a sufficient condition(s) for that action being morally wrong, permissible, or whatever. E.g., here are two …show more content…
“The ethics of animal research. Talking Point on the use of animals in scientific research”, US National Library of Medicine, 2007, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2002542/. Accessed Feb 13 2017.
Johannsen, Kyle. “Animal Rights and the Problem of r-Strategists” 01 Dec. 2016, https://philpapers.org/archive/JOHARA-7.pdf. Accessed Feb 13 2017.
Kim, Sejoong, and Shuichi Takayama. "Organ-on-a-chip and the Kidney." Kidney Research and
Clinical Practice. Elsevier, Sept. 2015. Web. 14 Apr. 2017.
Liou, Stephanie. “Animal Research: the Ethics of Animal Experimentation”. Huntington's Outreach
Project for Education at Stanford, 06 Jul. 2010, http://web.stanford.edu/group/hopes/cgi-bin/hopes_test/animal-research/#the-case-for-animal-experimentation. Accessed Feb 14 2017.
Nobis, Nathan. “Animals & Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights”.
2016, https://philpapers.org/archive/NOBAE.pdf. Accessed Feb 13 2017.
“Forty reasons why we need animals in research.” Understanding Animal Research, 11 Sept. 2014, http://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/about-us/science-action-network/forty-reasons-why-we-need-animals-in-research/. Accessed Feb 13