Today we continue our look at the reasons that attempts to have a dialogue about the use of animals in scientific research routinely run aground.
Dialogue, you’ll remember, involves the participants in the dialogue offering not just their views but also something like their reasons for holding those views. In addition, in a real dialogue, participants engage seriously with each other’s positions. Serious engagement doesn’t necessitate that one of the positions on offer ends up persuading everyone in the dialogue, but everyone is supposed to be open to considering each view — and open to critically examining one’s own view. A dialogue is not a high school debate where the point is for your side to win. Instead, “winning” here is really understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the competing view, and ideally, all of the dialogue’s participants can achieve this sort of win.
Research with animals seems to be a topic of discussion especially well-suited to shouting matches and disengagement. Understanding the reasons this is so might clear a path to make dialogue possible. Yesterday, we discussed problems that arise when people in a discussion start with the assumption that the other guy is arguing in bad faith. If we can get past this presumptive mistrust of the other parties in the discussion, another significant impediment rears its head pretty quickly:
Substantial disagreement about the facts.
Trying to get people to accept (or even seriously consider) your conclusion, no matter what that conclusion might be, is a lot harder if those people do not accept your premises. In discussions (or shouting matches) around animal rights, animal welfare, and the use of animals in research, there are plenty of premises that are hotly disputed by participants. Thus, I’m going to focus on three types of facts that are usually points of contention and give them each a post of their own. In the next post, I’ll discuss contention about what animal welfare regulations allow or require. In the post after that (part 4 of the series), I’ll take up disagreements around the facts as far as animal discomfort, distress, pain, or torture when animals are used in scientific research. We will start, though, by considering a pretty basic clump of claims over which various sides have trouble agreeing to the same facts:
Is animal research necessary or unnecessary for scientific and medical advancement?
Category Archives: Research with animals
Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 1).
In a post last month about an animal rights group targeting a researcher’s car with an incendiary device, I closed by expressing my profound pessimism at the prospects of having a serious dialogue about animal rights:
More commentary on animal rights extremists.
In an op-ed by Tim Rutten in today’s Los Angeles Times:
No sensible person dismisses the humane treatment of animals as inconsequential, but what the fanatics propose is not an advance in social ethics. To the contrary, it is an irrational intrusion into civil society, a tantrum masquerading as a movement. It is a kind of ethical pornography in which assertion stands in for ideas, and willfulness for argument, all for the sake of self-gratification. At the end of the day, there is no moral equivalence between the lives of humans and those of animals.
More violence against researchers by animal rights activists.
Again, at UCLA, a researcher has become the target of violence at the hands of animal rights activists.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Animal rights activist takes drugs tested on animals.
I’m not a regular reader of the Huffington Post, but I received a pointer to an article there that strikes me as worthy of comment.
The article, Why I Take Animal-Tested Drugs, was written by Simon Chaitowitz, the former Communications director for the animal rights group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
From the title, you might expect a defense of animal-tested drugs, or at least a coherent explanation for why the author is taking them. However, what the article actually offers is condemnation of the use of animals in biomedical research, and even a claim that animal-tested drugs and medical interventions contributed to the author’s cancer.
Fellowship for public outreach about humane use of animals in research.
Americans for Medical Progress has announced the Michael D. Hayre Fellowship in Public Outreach, designed to inspire and motivate the next generation of research advocates.
The Fellowship is named in honor of AMP’s late former Chairman, Mike Hayre, as a testament to his visionary leadership within the laboratory animal medicine community.
Animal research, violent attacks, and the public’s right to know.
An article in the Wall Street Journal notes the collision between researchers’ interests in personal safety and the public’s right to know how its money is being spent — specifically, when that money funds research that involves animals:
The challenges of dialogue about animal research.
Earlier this month, I wrote a post on California’s Researcher Protection Act of 2008, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law on September 28. There, I noted that some opponents of the law expressed concerns that the real intent (and effect) of the law was not to protect those who do academic research with animals, but instead to curtail the exercise of free speech. I also wrote:
I’m left not sure how I feel about this law. Will it have a certain psychological value, telling researchers that the state is behind them, even if it doesn’t actually make much illegal that wasn’t already illegal? Will it end up curtailing free speech, possibly driving more people to pursue “direct actions” against researchers because their attempts at dialogue are frustrated?
In comments on this post, Clinton raised some important issues about what is — and is not — involved in a dialogue, especially around the question of research with animals. Clinton wrote:
Why is it when you write “dialogue” what I read is “getting their way”?
There is no problem with the dialogue. Particularly in these days of the internets and blogz and all that, people who oppose the use of animals in research can sound off to their heart’s content. It is very likely they can find a venue for dialog with animal research supporters as well. They are free to lobby their local Congressional representative. With just a little effort they can probably get on their local nightly news. “Dialogue” is freely available.
People on the animal rights bandwagon who are “driven to direct action” are not being driven by a failure of dialogue but rather by a failure to get their way. It is a failure on their part to convince a majority that they are correct in their extremist views.
Schwarzenegger signs Researcher Protection Act of 2008.
The past couple years in California have been scary ones for academic researchers who conduct research with animals (as well as for their neighbors), what with firebombs, home invasions, significant intentional damage to their properties and threats to their safety.
In response to a ratcheting up of attacks from animals rights groups, universities have lobbied for the Researcher Protection Act of 2008, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law on September 28.
DVD review: Veterinarians – Speaking for Research.
Americans for Medical Progress has produced a new DVD titled Veterinarians – Speaking for Research. (You can get your own free copy at the Americans for Medical Progress website.)
You might consider this DVD a follow-up of their previous DVD, Physicians – Speaking for Research (reviewed here). However, the two are pretty different, perhaps suggesting some differences not only in the intended audiences for the DVDs (veterinarians vs. physicians) but also in the concerns of the segments of the public each set of professionals is likely to encounter.
In this post, I’ll first discuss Veterinarians – Speaking for Research. Then, I’ll examine some interesting ways it differs from Physicians – Speaking for Research.