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6 Lives in the Balance: Utilitarianism and Animal Research Robert Bass In the long history of moral theory, nonhuman animals—hereafter, just animals—have often been neglected entirely or have been relegated to some secondary status.1 Since its emergence in the early nineteenth century, utilitarianism has made a difference by focusing on happiness or well-being (and their contraries) rather than on the beings who fare well or suffer. Inevitably, that has meant that human relations to and use of other animals have appeared in a different light. Some cases have seemed easy: once admit that the interests of animals matter and there can be little hesitation in condemning their cruel treatment. Among the more difficult cases has been the bearing of utilitarianism upon the use of animals in various kinds of research where, though the animals might suffer, there were believed to be prospects of great human benefit and where no cruel or malicious motives need be involved. In this chapter I provide an extended discussion of the bearing of utilitarianism upon practices of animal research. Since such practices have attracted both utilitarian criticism and defense, this will require the examination of arguments on both sides, including consideration of the human benefits, the animal costs, and the ways in which one can be weighed against the other. Utilitarianism and Animal Research The Historical and Theoretical Background The historical connection of utilitarianism to animal research is both complex and disputed. It is common to ascribe a role to the early utilitarians in establishing the world’s first animal protection society, Britain’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), and in the first anti-cruelty legislation in 1824.2 Although animal research in some form was an ancient practice—Galen dissected animals for clues to human physiology—and the use of animals for crude toxicological 82 Chapter 6 tests is no doubt of antique vintage, it was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that animal experimentation attracted widespread popular opposition. Perhaps, this was a matter of increasing scale and hence noticeability, since “the number of animal experiments conducted in Britain increased from 250 in 1881 (the first year that records were kept) to 95,000 in 1910 (Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2005, 18). Perhaps it had to do with the emergence of an increasingly large and prosperous middle class with leisure to devote to causes beyond the immediate earning of a living. And perhaps utilitarianism was a factor. Utilitarian advocacy may have been cause, consequence, or both, but it is surely safe to say that the same impulses appear to have been manifest both in utilitarianism and in the nineteenth-century development of the antivivisection movement. Moreover, regardless of the historical relation, the conceptual and theoretical bearings of utilitarianism upon animal research are worthy of investigation, given the importance of utilitarianism as an approach to moral theory and the worldwide scale of animal research. The investigation requires something further to be said about how both animal research and utilitarianism are to be understood. First, when we speak of animal research, let us limit ourselves to harmful and nontherapeutic research on animal subjects, for it is such research that most acutely raises questions of justification. Thus, we will set aside any research that is therapeutic in motivation, aimed at treating some disease or infirmity of the animal itself, and also any research that, whether therapeutic or not, is not harmful to the test subjects, such as, perhaps, observational studies of their social lives. Our present area of concern is animal research that is both nontherapeutic and harmful to the animals themselves. There is much of this kind, with perhaps twenty-two million animals killed annually for research in the United States and up to one hundred million worldwide3 (Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2005, 7). Three large categories can be distinguished. First, there is toxicological and safety testing, aimed at determining what substances are likely to be harmful to human beings.4 Second, there is biomedical research, aimed at discovering and determining the efficacy of treatments, preventive interventions, and therapeutic options. Finally, there is the partially overlapping category of pure research, pursued for the sake of hoped-for gains in biological understanding, but that may or may not lead to other human benefit. As for utilitarianism, it is most readily introduced in its classical form, as it was worked out by Bentham and Mill (Bentham [1823] 1879; Mill [3.141.24.134] Project MUSE (2024...

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