Applied Ethics

Applied Ethics

“Is it morally impermissible to use animals medically for human sake?”

To begin with, we have to point out that under which situation is permissible to use animals for human sake. We believe we can only use animals when it exerts constructive and affirmative influence to human beings which means it might save lives and enhance the quality of living on a general basis and most importantly, when there is no existing alternative. Using animals medically for human sake is morally permissible and justified and will be illustrated in a moment.

Even though we do agree that animals have moral sense and value like Frey’s view “animals have moral standing and so are members of the moral community and . . . their lives have value.” , we still think it is morally permissible to use animals for experimentation. Nowadays, human is the one that dominant and the main character in the world, therefore we agree Frey’s view “human lives, on average, have “a higher value than the lives of most animals.” Although animals also have the moral standing and value, the life of human is more important than animals in our common sense. It is impossible for human to use human in the experimentation when there is other creature similar to human body structure. Also, the reason of using animals in experimentation is to explore new medical methods to enhance the living standard of human life. It is contradictive to require human not to use animals instead of human in the experimentation. Under this circumstance, using animals for medical purpose is acceptable. However, when using animals, human must consider animals’ suffer during the experimentation, human need to do as much as possible to reduce animals’ suffer in order to respect animals’ sacrifice.
Nevertheless, Frey’s view that because of human arrogance, therefore human think they are superior to animals and use animals medically for human sake is not reasonable. The reason of human using animals in experimentation is that there is no other method to do the research about gene, cell, etc. Human can only obtain results by testing animals. If there is “sense of arrogance” in human, then there should be no animal testing regulations like “3Rs principle” by William M.S. Russell in the world. In fact, for those countries which having the animals testing, they all have the regulations like controlling the number of times individual animals may be used. No matter the regulations are perfect or not, it is obvious that human is not holding the sense of arrogance when using animals. Otherwise, human would not set up those regulations to reduce the degree of suffering of animals.
Although the majority of human beings hold the speciesism view, it exists in the kingdom of animals too. There is a gap between each species of animals. Animals occupy different level of morality. The “higher” animals will hunt the “lower” animals in order to survive. It is a natural phenomenon and rationale. Then, human utilize animals for experimentation not because they discriminate or look down on other species, but it comes with the sake that human want to survive, therefore they use animals.
The opponents would challenge that under any situation, humans’ pain should not be built on animals’ well-being. Humans also have no reason to say that saving human life is in the priority of the live of animals. In this case, animals also should not use plants to heal wound when they are injured since animals do not have the right to use the plants in the purpose of remedy. Then, it means human can only utilize human in any case, and this principle should be also applied in animals and plants when each species do not own the right to use other species for any reason. If this assumption is wrong, then opponents cannot argue that human build their happiness on animals’ pain when there is no choice for human to study new medical method. Besides, there are only organisms and non- organisms on the planet, when human cannot use non- organism for scientific purpose, humans can merely use living organism other than human in the experimentation for medical purpose.
In view of scientists, experiments involving animals use for medical purpose is unavoidable at many stages. While the possibility of arising and inventing other substitute to replace animals remains relatively low, options other than the use of animals are rather impossible.
To replace animals with humans for medical use at early stage is impossible as confined by FDA( Food and Drug Association), for example, drug development. Two major steps are involved which are, firstly, the preclinical development and later one clinical trials. While preclinical development is to conduct research and laboratory tests on animals and organisms, clinical trials is collect data on safety and efficiency of a new-developed drug with health intervention for humans. The sequence of performing the aforementioned two steps cannot be reversed in order to ensure a satisfactory level of safety and effectiveness of the drug for humans. Humans possess a significantly more complex health system than animals do. An outsider does not easily comprehend how difficult it is to avoid zero mistakes for humans after taking new drugs. That’s why, in case humans substitute animals for medical tests, the development and the discovery of a new drug needs several decades to be completed as scientists potentially bear the risk to kill a person, however, not a save a person.
A scientist bears the duty to avoid the animals in the laboratory tests to suffer needlessly pain, for example, to help a rabbit heal more quickly. When an animal gets involved in a test or experiment, it is highlighted that that animal must not necessarily to be killed. Sometimes, animals were needed to extract vaccine for further culture or even for observations only. That’s why it is stressed that the severity of using animals for experiment might not be as bad as others suggested.

The possibility of technological assimilation remained very low. While the current medical technology is advancing at an unanticipated level, a complete substitution of animals test with computers software is infeasible. A human biological system is extremely sophisticated with altogether 12 complex body systems cooperating with each other. It is unworkable to utilize computer software, equations and formulas to assimilate the respond of real human beings.
Another critical reason to use animals for laboratory test is the significantly shorter life cycle of animals. Humans usually share the similar life cycle duration of approximately 80 years of time, varying between races, thus it is not difficult to come up with an easy question: how long we need to wait to obtain the satisfactory level of influence of drugs? On a general basis, scientists need at least or around ten years of time to develop a new drug with assistance of animals laboratory tests. Perhaps a scientist need to develop the drug or technique with the rest of his/her life in case the animals use is forbidden.
To further illustrate above reasoning, preclinical tests can be taken on living objects which means dead object like computers are not included. Living objects are required for observation and collecting real data. Their response towards a drug or treatment‘s influence will be explored and studied to further manipulate the dose or to ameliorate the formula. Without such crucial information, further steps in developing a new drug will be enormously hindered.
It has been argued that animals and humans possess a vast degree of dissimilarity, as a result, the use of animals for medical research may lead to inaccuracy and doubtful reliability. The later stages of development might even cause irreversible tragedies, such as toxicity and complications in humans. However, scientists and laboratory technicians, at this stage of biotechnology, already possess the knowledge to differentiate what kinds of animals to use for particular aim of a medical research, for example, invertebrates should not be used for developing drugs for human as diseases in invertebrates are very different from humans. Hence, concerns for misusing animals for lab tests and inaccuracy should be eliminated. Reduction in numbers involving animals’ tests, however, should be highlighted.
The refinement and alleviation of suffering of animals brought by lab tests are being endorsed and advocated. It is generally agreed that the needlessly pain experienced by animals should be completely avoided as human’s medical advancement should not be built on animals’ suffering. For a human to ensure a animal test being carried out justifiably, extra considerations should be given to alleviate one’s pain during the test, for instance, after the extraction of vaccine from rabbit, medicine could be dispensed for the sake of quick healing and avoid infection.
To conclude, sacrificing animals for medically reason is unavoidable at this stage of technology. Focus should be shifted to enhancing the quality of living and preserving the dignity of animals as a whole. Striking a balance will be a lesson to explore in the future. In light of a foreseeable medical advancement, using animals for human sake is ethically permissible and warranted.
Reference
1. http://users.ipfw.edu/strayerj/med-ethics/powerpoint/research/5-RGFrey.ppt
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDA#New_drugs
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preclinical_trial