From time to time, when we’ve talked about people who object to research with animals on ethical grounds, the claim has been made that it is hypocritical for people with these objections to avail themselves of modern medicine. Our drugs and surgical interventions, after all, are typically the result of research that includes animal research.
Occasionally, a response like this is made: There is no reason to opt out of the existing treatments, since the animal suffering that went into that research cannot be undone. Given that these past animals suffered, the knowledge produced from their suffering should not be wasted. However, it would not be ethical to cause further animal suffering the the development of new medical treatments.
I have never found this sort of response especially persuasive. The other day, I thought of a pair of potentially analogous situations that may illustrate why not.
Long time readers are probably aware that I’ve been a vegetarian for a couple of decades. Despite this, I am mindful that it may become hard to score tofu should civilization collapse, whether by way of pandemic flu or zombie apocalypse. I know myself well enough to know that I don’t really have the temperament to kill my own livestock or game.
But what if, on my last tank of gas before the end of the world, a deer jumped into the road, I could not avoid hitting it, and it died? Would it be ethical for me to use its flesh for food? After all, I can’t unkill the deer. Leaving it by the side of the road is letting a large amount of high-quality protein go to waste.
If I could get past the ick-factor and eat the deer, I think it might be ethical.
Now apply parallel reasoning to the slabs of beef, chicken, and pork wrapped in plastic on their little styrofoam trays in the supermarket meat case.
These animals have already died. All the suffering involved in their being raised and slaughtered has already occurred. They can’t be unkilled. Not eating these slabs of meat is letting a large amount of high-quality protein go to waste. Isn’t it then ethically permissible to eat the already-dead meat?
To the extent that you see meat eating as ethically problematic (and of course, not everyone does), I think the supermarket meat case is less defensible than the accidental roadkill. Here’s why: If I buy the slab of meat, the supermarket will restock meat. My purchase is the demand that feeds back into the raising and slaughter of more animals for meat. The already-dead animal I purchase will be followed by some non-yet-dead animals to meet the expected future demand. On the other hand, if I refrain from buying the meat (and if others do, too), the demand declines. With no demand, there’s no reason to raise more animals for meat.
Whether I use the accidentally killed deer for meat, though, doesn’t feed back into a demand for more deer to run into the road.
Is making use of biomedical knowledge and treatments generated with animal research more like making use of meat in the supermarket meat case or roadkill?
I’d argue it’s the former. This is why I don’t think those with strong ethical objections to the use of animals in biomedical research can avail themselves of modern medical treatments without at least some hypocrisy. Making use of medical interventions feeds back as demand for medical interventions — which means biomedical science will make more.
If only there were medical interventions analogous to roadkill.
If only there were medical interventions analogous to roadkill.
Organ transplants from people killed in auto accidents (human roadkill, if you will) is pretty close. The only differences being all the surgical techniques, technology, and drugs that go along with an organ transplant and which have all involved animal experimentation.
Deer is tasty, but anyway, I’m just curious as to how the opponents of this research fail to understand why it is necessary for medical technologies and biological science in general. While I cannot be certain as to how little they know of scientific and medical research, it seems to be very little.
Why is hypocrisy bad? It’s the easiest thing in the world to not be a hypocrite. You just simply avoid setting any moral standards for yourself. I’ll bet Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t a hypocrite. Raise the ethical bar a bit. Maybe you come up a little short and wind up a hypocrite. You could be worse.
Seriously though, do they have to test on more animals if more people use the meds? Isn’t there just a basic amount of testing to establish some degree of safety before moving to human tests? I don’t quite see the analogy with meat consumption as quite as tight a fit. Maybe I’m missing something.
And I’m only half kidding about the hypocrite thing. For example, I prefer a hypocrite who’s tries but is not perfect on reducing his or her emissions to an oblivious jackass in a Humvee, for example. The charge of “hypocrisy” is just a way for jackasses to feel better about themselves. There’s worse things you can be than a hypocrite.
Jared. I think that the moderate position, where you have some ethical regard for animals but don’t see them as of equal value to humans, acknowledges that the ends can justify the means for some research. I think it’s also possible from that position to wonder whether some research on animals is not justified by the ends.
Since I’m a philosopher you’ll have to indulge me a highly artificial example to make my point. Let’s say that putting 100 puppies into intense pain is the only way to relieve my toothache. Does the ends justify the means in that case? I would think not. My concern as some one taking the moderate animal welfare position is that there’s a lot of research that’s being done that causes harm disproportionate to the benefits for humans. I’m open to being persuaded otherwise, but frankly have no clue where to start looking at data that would help make an honest assessment.
Personally, I’m inclined to think hypocrisy is a matter of degree (although in the extreme cases, it can put you in one of those “divided soul” kind of situations that you really should try to deal with if you’re serious about your own human flourishing). However, when the charge of hypocrisy is made and the response is, “I’m totally not a hypocrite and here’s why,” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to evaluate the response.
Seriously though, do they have to test on more animals if more people use the meds? Isn’t there just a basic amount of testing to establish some degree of safety before moving to human tests? I don’t quite see the analogy with meat consumption as quite as tight a fit.
I don’t think it’s a perfect fit. But I think it’s close.
Let’s say that you’re prepared to live with treatments generated from the animal research to date, but anything that requires animal research from tomorrow onward is (ethically) off the table for you. When you go to your doctor today, do you inform him or her, “By the way, please convey to the researchers that I will not be using any of the new treatments they might want to develop that will require any animal use from tomorrow on”? Do you ask that they make a note of this in your chart for future reference, so they won’t mistakenly treat you with one of these next year, or five years from now?
If not, how does the feedback get to those developing new medical treatments? Won’t your use of medical treatments that relied on animal use be counted as a tacit vote for more of the same going forward? (Just as your buying one last steak — no more after tonight! — tickles the demand to restock steak?)
It’s certainly a difficult problem and I’m inclined to think that even inconsequential complicity in unjustified harm is bad (an intuition in tension with my consequentialist tendencies, perhaps). It does seem to me that there are ways to give feedback that could be effective. For example, one might read and comment in threads on scienceblogs about animal testing and try to get across one’s point of view. Dialogue shapes norms.
Of course the best thing to do is to hold yourself to a high standard and meet it. I push this line on hypocrisy because I think there’s a little too much emphasis on avoiding hypocrisy in our society, to the effect that “at least I’m not a hypocrite” becomes an easy out to avoid serious ethical self evaluation and moral reflection. If you just don’t even think about whether conditions in factory farms are inhumane, it’s a lot easier to swallow that cheddar cheeseburger and you get the added benefit of thinking you’re better than the “hypocrites” who forgo the burger but not always the cheddar. (Mmmmmmm grilled chease, tomato, mustard!) Though, in extreme cases of hypocrisy (e.g., fundamentalist ministers doing coke with gay prostitutes) your point about human flourishing is right on target.
I do not think that meat-in-the-supermarket is a very apt comparison for medical research.
When in the supermarket, it is an easy matter to walk past the meat case and on to the vegetable section. With what you find there, it will be possible to craft an acceptable alternative to eating meat. One need not sacrifice health or well-being to forgo the meat (and, indeed, it may even be healthier to do so.)
There will, of course, be those who refuse to deny themselves the gustatory pleasures of meat consumption–but this is a different issue. It does not change the fact that there exists, at your supermarket today, a “perfectly viable” alternative to meat eating.
The situation in medical research is not analogous. Computer models and cell/tissue culture can answer certain questions that would have, in the past, required animal research. However, no one (outside the animal rights community) would argue that they are “perfectly viable” alternatives to animal research.
So we are left with tough choices. Certainly the decision to use animals in research is one with moral consequences. But a decision to forgo the use of animals in medical research would have also have moral consequences (in terms of slower research progress and more human harm/suffering).
Most in our society are willing to accept this moral tradeoff in medical research. In one sense this is not surprising in a society where people in a supermarket are unwilling to deny themselves the pleasurable taste of meat and walk one more aisle for a satisfactory (or superior?) substitute. However, the lengths to which even animal rights activists will go to rationalize why they do not need to deny themselves the benefits of modern medicine suggests that our society is not likely to soon demand a change to our present moral consensus.
Am I allowed to use animal-tested medication if I believe (well-policed) animal testing is ok, but I am opposed to using animals for not health-related issues? For instance, I am totally opposed to using animals to test for cosmetics. If this means I can’t use cosmetics ever, so be it. I don’t use cosmetics ever, actually.
Do you think this is a reasonable division, or is it also hypocrisy? Or is the point that I’m too lazy to wear makeup?
The problem with this analogy is that a person who fails to utilize some of the modern medical tools, like vaccination, makes a choice that could imperil others.
This happened last year when there was a mumps outbreak in Vancouver.
No one imperils others when they bypass the meat section in the grocery store.
Suppose you have the following preference ordering:
Medical research (no animal testing) > Medical research (animal testing) > no medical research.
In this case, even though one would prefer (on ethical grounds) that medical research proceed without animal testing, and thus consider it pro tanto bad to incentivize future animal testing through one’s medical purchases, nevertheless one thinks it would be even worse to forego modern medicine altogether.
In that case, there’s nothing remotely hypocritical about using modern medicine. It is not hypocritical to do something that one thinks is pro tanto bad (i.e. bad in some respect). It is only hypocritical to do something that one thinks is all things considered bad.
The more common argument I’ve heard from the animal rights community is that the would take the medicine because it is the only thing they have available… the same way they are forced to drive their car every day despite the pollution it causes, because they don’t have any other alternative.
They will very quickly add, however, that they believe that the fact that today’s medicines were developed with the help of animals does not mean they could not have been developed without. Of course, there will be a few that will even argue that most medical advances were not obtained with animals.
The bottom line… Whatever they choose to do, they are always right, they are always ethical.
A vegetarian user on a photography forum recently asked if there were any films not using animal collagen for the substrate. It transpired that he got around his opposition to using any animal byproducts by only buying film that was beyond its sell-by date. The problem with that was that he’d have to wait until there was a batch of his preferred film getting too old at the local stores, which was rather inconvenient.
Of course, film is perfectly fine beyond that date if it’s been stored properly, and other people know this too. In reality it was making zero difference (other than him getting his film a little cheaper). Sold film counts as sold whether before or after the sell-by date, and there’d be zero difference in use of animal collagen as a result.
In his view it made all difference in the world since the film was suddenly “old” and not a new product anymore. I maintain that it’s a bit of sophistry that only acts to settle his conscience with zero real effect on the issue he ostensibly cares about. By that standard he could simply ask a friend to buy the film, then resell it to him, magically making it a no-longer “new” product.
@Janne:
Do you think that the vegetarian from the Photography forum would buy meat from the supermarket if it was beyond the date it can be sold ?
Just out of curiosity: does anyone dispute that my counterargument (comment #10) succeeds, or have you all [Janet?] come to accept that there’s nothing necessarily hypocritical about opponents of animal research using modern medicine after all?
I don’t think the supermarket analogy works, for the reasons cited above. As an animal rights supported (one who is appalled by the actions of certain activists) with a consequentialst ethic, I can use medical care developed using experiments I would find unethical. (Same goes for human studies, by the way.) However, I cannot contribute to a charity that funds animal research.
What I really want to know is why these discussions immediately turn to medical research. What about cosmetics testing? What about basic research? What about the fact that Sturgeon’s Law applies as much to science as to anything else? Shouldn’t we discuss easier problems before moving on to the hardest one?
The problem with the argument that someone with an anti-animal research stand can still use medical intervention developed with animal research because there is no equally viable alternative that does not involve loss to health (like choosing soy instead of meat), yet oppose animal research going forward, is that that person has chosen their own well being over principle, at the expense of someone else’s future well being, who might have been made well by the results of animal research yet to be done.
Also, Sturgeon was refering to science fiction writing (which IS 90% crap), Jane #15; you mean Pareto’s principle in the sense that 80% of, let’s say, ‘important’ results come from 20% of the work. Problem is, with science, even assuming Pareto’s principle is at work, you do not know a priori which 20% of scientific inquiries will produce the next breakthrough.
I think a better analogy than the meat market, from the point of view of the animal rightists, is the problem of whether or not to use the results of Nazi expts on humans: do you shun these results as if these didn’t exist even though they could save lives, or use the results while stipulating that no such experiments are ever ethical? I do not equate human life with animal life, but that is what extreme animal rightists do, and that is a fundamental problem with the discussion. Of course, it’s always different when it’s your life, or that of your kids, at stake.