Is animal testing ethical?

Engaging in research is a part of human nature

Question: Is animal testing ethical?
Position1 of 3›: Animal testing is ethical
Argument‹2 of 2: Engaging in research is a part of human nature

It is an essential trait of humans to strive for knowledge through experiments, regardless of whether they involve animals or not. Indeed, it is morally wrong to restrain humans' intrinsic desire for knowledge by forbidding animal experimentation on ethical grounds.

The argument

From earliest infancy, humans sort the world into categories, predict how things work, and test those predictions. The behaviour appears before it is taught, which is the point: a disposition present in an infant who has been instructed in no method cannot be an artefact of training or culture. On evolutionary terms, scientific thinking is essential for human survival, since a creature that can anticipate how the world behaves acts upon the world rather than only reacting to it. Therefore, it is an innate trait of humans to seek knowledge through methodological inquiry. The presence of such a trait means that research activity holds an intrinsic value. This value is independent of the value of the research’s results, and that is the step which distinguishes this argument from the usual defence of animal testing. Most such defences weigh the benefits of a discovery against the costs of obtaining it; this one holds that the activity carries worth in itself, so that even an inquiry whose results disappoint was worth undertaking as an expression of what humans are. To use an analogy, undertaking research (including that involving animals) is equal to the value of nest-building for birds or foraging for apes. The comparison is chosen to make the point about naturalness: no one asks whether a bird is justified in building, because the behaviour is constitutive of the creature rather than a policy it has adopted and could drop. In expecting humans to cease undertaking animal studies, we want them to abandon their natural behavior, which is to ask them to be something other than what they are. Overall, it is ethical to conduct animal testing. Expecting humans to cease animal testing would be ethically wrong.

Premises

[P1]From infancy humans categorise the world, predict how things work, and test those predictions, making methodical inquiry an innate, evolutionarily essential trait. [P2] Because this drive is natural—like nest-building for birds or foraging for apes—research activity holds intrinsic value, and asking humans to cease animal studies asks them to abandon their natural behaviour. [C] Since engaging in research is part of human nature, animal testing is ethical.

Counter-arguments

The alleged natural drive for humans to undertake research would not be irredeemably frustrated if they refrained from using animals in research. Human creativity, which is also innate, can produce other solutions to achieve the same research goal. While conducting animal research is allegedly a means to satisfy one of the humans’ natural drives, it is also a means to undermine one of the animals’ natural drives (namely, survival). Animals do not have the option to not participate in an experiment; they are forced by humans. Such an argument for animal research is, therefore, anthropocentric. It does not make animal research ethically justifiable.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That a behaviour is natural or evolutionarily useful establishes nothing about its permissibility — the same premise would license any widespread human disposition — so the argument turns on the step from what humans are inclined to do to what they may do, which it never makes. [Rejecting P2] The analogy also breaks where the argument needs it: nest-building and foraging are not performed on unwilling subjects, and the objection to animal testing concerns the harm done to the animal rather than the inquiry — nothing in a drive to seek knowledge selects for the particular method, so refraining from using animals would restrict how the drive is satisfied rather than frustrate it.

Proponents cited

Celeste Kidd
“Curiosity is such a basic component of our natures that we are nearly oblivious to its pervasiveness in our lives. It seems clear that curiosity serves to motivate acquisition of knowledge and learning. In the domain of evolution, it seems that curiosity can tentatively be said to improve performance, yielding fitness benefits to organisms with it, and is likely to be an evolved trait.”
Edward Wasserman
“Science is basically working at understanding the world around us. It's in our job description.”
Aristotle
“All men by nature desire to know. And indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sites. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer site to almost anything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.”