EMPTY CAGES
Animal Rights and Vivisection
by
Tom
Regan
from Debating Matters –
Animal Experimentation:
Good or Bad? (2002)
(available from http://www.amazon.co.uk/)
Richard
Ryder, Mark
Matfield, Stuart
Derbyshire, Tom
Regan
Animals are
used in laboratories for three main purposes: education, product safety
testing, and experimentation, medical research in particular. Unless otherwise
indicated, my discussion is limited to their use in harmful, nontherapeutic
medical research (which, for simplicity, I sometimes refer to as
“vivisection”). Experimentation of this kind differs from therapeutic
experimentation, where the intention is to benefit the subjects on whom the
experiments are conducted. In harmful, nontherapeutic experimentation, by
contrast, subjects are harmed in the absence of any intended benefit for them;
instead, the intention is to obtain information that might ultimately lead to
benefits for others.
Human beings,
not only nonhuman animals, have been used in harmful, nontherapeutic
experimentation. In fact, the history of medical research contains numerous
examples of human vivisection, and it is doubtful whether the ethics of animal
vivisection can be fully appreciated apart from the ethics of human
vivisection. Unless otherwise indicated, however, the current discussion of
vivisection, and my use of the term, are limited to harmful, nontherapeutic
experimentation using nonhuman animals.
The Benefits Argument
There is only
one serious moral defense of vivisection. That defense proceeds as follows.
Human beings are better off because of vivisection. Indeed, we are much better off because of it. If not
all, at least most of the most important improvements in human health and
longevity are indebted to vivisection. Included among the advances often cited
are open heart surgery, vaccines (for polio and small pox, for example),
cataract and hip replacement surgery, and advances in rehabilitation techniques
for victims of spinal cord injuries and strokes. Without these and the many
other advances attributable to vivisection, proponents of the Benefits Argument
maintain, the incidence of human disease, permanent disability, and premature
death would be far, far greater than it is today.
Defenders of
the Benefits Argument are not indifferent to how animals are treated. They
agree that animals used in vivisection sometimes suffer, both during the
research itself and because of the restrictive conditions of their life in the
laboratory. That the research can harm animals, no reasonable person will
deny. Experimental procedures include
drowning, suffocating, starving, and burning; blinding animals and destroying
their ability to hear; damaging their brains, severing their limbs, crushing
their organs; inducing heart attacks, ulcers, paralysis, seizures; forcing them
to inhale tobacco smoke, drink alcohol, and ingest various drugs, such as
heroine and cocaine.
These harms are
regrettable, vivisection’s defenders acknowledge, and everything that can be
done should be done to minimize animal suffering. For example, to prevent
overcrowding, animals should be housed in larger cages. But (so the argument
goes) there is no other way to secure the important human health benefits that
vivisection yields so abundantly, benefits that greatly exceed any harms that
animals endure.
What the Benefits Argument Omits
Any argument
that rests on comparing benefits and harms must not only state the benefits
accurately; it must also do the same for the relevant harms. Advocates of the
Benefits Argument fail on both counts.
Independent of their lamentable tendency to minimize the harms done to
animals and their fixed resolve to marginalize non animal alternatives,
advocates overestimate the human benefits attributable to vivisection and all
but ignore the massive human harms that are an essential part of vivisection’s
legacy. Even more fundamentally, they uniformly fail to provide an intelligible
methodology for comparing benefits and harms across species. I address each of
these three failures in turn. (For a fuller critique, see my contribution to The Animal Rights Debate. New York,
London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
1. Concerning
the overestimation of benefits: Proponents of the Benefits Argument would have
us believe that most of the truly important improvements in human health could
not have been achieved without vivisection. The facts tell a different story.
Public health scholars have shown that animal experimentation has made at best
only a modest contribution to public health. By contrast, the vast majority of
the most important health advances have resulted from improvements in living
conditions (in sanitation, for example) and changes in personal hygiene and
lifestyle, none of which has anything to do with animal experimentation. (For a
summary of the relevant literature, see Hugh Lafollette and Niall Shanks, Brute Science: Dilemmas of Animal
Experimentation. London: Routledge, 1996).
2. Concerning
the failure to attend to massive human harms: Advocates of the Benefits
Argument conveniently ignore the hundreds of millions of deaths and the
uncounted illnesses and disabilities that are attributable to reliance on the
“animal model” in research. Sometimes the harms result from what reliance on
vivisection makes available; sometime they result from what reliance on
vivisection prevents. The deleterious effects of prescription medicines is an
example of the former.
Prescription
drugs are first tested extensively on animals before being made available to
consumers. As is well known, there are problems involved in extrapolating
results obtained from studies on animal beings to human beings. In particular,
many medicines that are not toxic for test animals prove to be highly toxic for
human beings. How toxic? It is estimated that one hundred thousand Americans
die and some two million are hospitalized annually because of the harmful
effects of the prescription drugs they are taking. That makes prescription
drugs the fourth leading cause of death in America, behind only heart disease,
cancer, and stroke, a fact that, without exception, goes unmentioned by the
Benefits Argument’s advocates.
Massive harm to
humans also is attributable to what reliance on vivisection prevents. The role
of cigarette smoking in the incidence of cancer is a case in point. As early as
the 1950s, human epidemiological studies revealed a causal link between
cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Nevertheless, repeated efforts, made over more
than 50 years, rarely succeeded in inducing tobacco related cancers in animals.
Despite the alarm sounded by public health advocates, governments around the
world for decades refused to mount an educational campaign to inform smokers
about the grave risks they were running. Today, one in every five deaths in the
United States is attributable to the effects of smoking, and fully 60 percent
of direct health care costs in the United States go to treating tobacco-related
illnesses.
How much of
this massive human harm could have been prevented if the results of vivisection
had not (mis)directed government health care policy? It is not clear that
anyone knows the answer beyond saying, “A great deal. More than we will ever
know.” One thing we do know, however: advocates of the Benefits Argument
contravene the logic of their argument when they fail to include these harms in
their defense of vivisection.
3. Not to go
unmentioned, finally, is the universal failure of vivisection’s defenders to
explain how we are to weigh benefits and harms across species. Before we can
judge that vivisection’s benefits for humans greatly exceed vivisection’s harms to other animals,
someone needs to explain how the relevant comparisons should be made. How much
animal pain equals how much human relief from a drug that was tested on
animals, for example? It does not suffice to say, to quote the American
philosopher Carl Cohen (Cohen is the world’s leading defender of the Benefits
Argument), that “the suffering of our species does seem somehow to be more
important than the suffering of other species” (The Animal Rights Debate, op. cit.: p. 291). Not only does this
fail to explain how much more important our suffering is supposed to be, it
offers no reason why anyone should think that it is.
Plainly, unless
or until those who support the Benefits Argument offer an intelligible
methodology for comparing benefits and harms across species, the claim that
human benefits derived from vivisection greatly exceed the harms done to
animals is more in the nature of unsupported ideology than demonstrated fact.
(I note, parenthetically, that this challenge must be met by any contributor to
this volume who uses this argument; if they fail to provide the necessary
methodology, the thoughtful reader will place no credence in what they say).
Human Vivisection and Human Rights
The Benefits Argument suffers from an even more fundamental defect. Despite appearances to the contrary, the argument begs all the most important questions; in particular, it fails to address the role that moral rights play in assessing harmful, nontherapeutic research on animals. The best way to understand its failure in this regard is to position the argument against the backdrop of human vivisection and human rights.
Human beings
have been used in harmful, nontherapeutic experiments for thousands of years.
Not surprisingly, most human “guinea pigs” have not come from the wealthy and
educated, not from the dominant race, not from those with the power to assert and
enforce their rights. No, most of human vivisection’s victims have been
coercively conscripted from the ranks of young children (especially orphans),
the elderly, the severely developmentally disabled, the insane, the poor, the
illiterate, members of “inferior” races, homosexuals, military personnel,
prisoners of war, and convicted criminals, for example. One such case will be
considered below.
The scientific
rationale behind vivisecting human beings needs little explanation. Using human
subjects in research overcomes the difficulty of extrapolating results from
another species to our species. If “benefits for humans” establishes the
morality animal vivisection, should we favor human vivisection instead? After
all, research using members of our own species promises even greater benefits.
No serious advocate of human rights (and I count myself among this number) can support such research. This judgment is not capricious or arbitrary; it is a necessary consequence of the logic of basic moral rights, including our rights to bodily integrity and to life. This logic has two key components. (For a more complete discussion of rights, see my The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983).
First, possession
of these rights confers a unique moral status. Those who possess these rights
have a kind of protective moral shield, an invisible "No Trespassing"
sign, so to speak, that prohibits others from injuring their bodies, taking
their life, or putting them at risk of serious harm, including death. When
people violate our rights, when they “trespass on our moral property,” they do
something wrong to us directly.
This does not mean that it must be wrong to hurt someone or even to take their life. When terrorists exceed their rights by violating ours, we act within our rights if we respond in ways that can cause serious harm to the violators. Still, what we are free to do when someone violates our rights does not translate into the freedom to override their rights without justifiable cause.
Second, the obligation to respect others’ rights to bodily integrity and to life trumps any obligation we have to benefit others. Even if society in general would benefit if the rights of a few people were violated, that would not make violating their rights morally acceptable to any serious defender of human rights. The rights of the individual are not to be sacrificed in the name of promoting the general welfare. This is what it means to affirm our rights. It is also why the basic moral rights we possess, as the individuals we are, have the great moral importance that they do.
Why the Benefits Argument Begs the Question
Once we understand why, given the logic of moral rights, respect for the rights of individuals takes priority over any obligation we might have to benefit others, we can understand why the Benefits Argument fails to justify vivisection on nonhuman animals. Clearly, all that the Benefits Argument can show is that vivisection on nonhuman animals benefits human beings. What this argument cannot show is that vivisecting animals for this purpose is morally justified. And it cannot show this because the benefits humans derive from vivisection are irrelevant to the question of animals’ rights. We cannot show that animals have no right to life, for example, because we benefit from using them in experiments that take their life.
It will not suffice here for advocates of the Benefits Argument to insist that “there are no alternatives” to vivisection that will yield as many human benefits. Not only is this reply more than a little disingenuous, since the greatest impediment to developing new scientifically valid non animal alternatives, and to using those that already exist, is the hold that the ideology of vivisection currently has on medical researchers and those who fund them. In addition, this reply fails to address the substantive moral issues. Whether animals have rights is not a question that can be answered by saying how much vivisection benefits human beings. No matter how great the human benefits might be, the practice is morally wrong if animals have rights that vivisection violates.
But do animals have any rights? The best way to answer this question is to begin with an actual case of human vivisection.
Willowbrook State Hospital was a mental hospital located in Staten Island, one of New York City’s five boroughs. For fifteen years, from 1956 to 1971, under the leadership of New York University Professor Saul Krugman, hospital staff conducted a series of viral hepatitis experiments on thousands of the hospital’s severely retarded children, some as young as three years old. Among the research questions asked: Could injections of gamma globulin (a complex protein extracted from blood serum) produce long term immunity to the hepatitis virus?
What better way to find the answer, Dr. Krugman decided, than to separate the children in one of his experiments into two groups. In the one, children were fed the live hepatitis virus and given an injection of gamma globulin, which Dr. Krugman believed would produce immunity; in the other, children were fed the virus but received no injection. In both cases, the virus was obtained from the feces of other Willowbrook children who suffered from the disease. Parents were asked to sign a release form that would permit their children to be “given the benefit of this new preventive.”
The results of the experiment were instrumental in leading Dr. Krugman to conclude that hepatitis is not a single disease transmitted by a single virus; there are, he confirmed, at least two distinct viruses that transmit the disease, what today we know as hepatitis A and hepatitis B.
Everyone agrees that many people have benefited from this knowledge and the therapies Dr. Krugman’s research made possible. Some question the necessity of his research, citing the comparable findings that Baruch Blumberg made by analyzing blood antigens in his laboratory, where no children were put at risk of grievous harm. But even if we assume that Dr. Krugman’s results could not have been achieved without experimenting on his uncomprehending subjects, what he did was wrong.
The purpose of his research, after all, was not to benefit each of the children. If that was his objective, he would not have withheld injections of gamma globulin from half of them. Those children certainly could not be counted among the intended beneficiaries. (Thus the misleading nature of the parental release form: not all the children were “given the benefit of this new preventive”). Instead, the purpose of the experiment was possibly to benefit some of the children (the ones who received the injections) and to gain information that would benefit other people in the future.
No serious
advocate of human rights can accept the moral propriety of Dr. Krugman’s
actions. By intentionally infecting all the children in his experiment, he put
each of them at risk of serious harm. And by withholding the suspected means of
preventing the disease from half the children, he violated their rights (not to
mention those of their parents) twice over: first, by willfully injuring their
body; second, by risking their very life. This grievous breach of ethics finds
no justification in the benefits others derived. To violate the moral rights of
the few is never justified by adding the benefits for the many.
Those who deny
that animals have rights frequently emphasize the uniqueness of human beings. We
not only write poetry and compose symphonies, read history and solve math
problems; we also understand our own mortality and make moral choices. Other
animals do none of these things. That is why we have rights and they do not.
This way of
thinking overlooks the fact that many human beings do not read history or solve
math problems, do not understand their own mortality or make moral choices. The
profoundly retarded children Dr. Krugman used in his research are a case in
point. If possession of the moral rights to bodily integrity and life depended
on understanding one’s mortality or making moral choices, for example, then
those children lacked these rights. In their case, therefore, there would be no
protective shield, no invisible “No Trespassing” sign that limited what others
were free to do to them. Lacking the protection rights afford, there would not have been anything about the
moral status of the children themselves that prohibited Dr. Krugman from
injuring their bodies, taking their life, or putting them at risk of serious
harm. Lacking the protection rights afford, Dr. Krugman did not—indeed, he
could not—have done anything wrong to the children. Again, this is not a
position any serious advocate of human rights can accept.
But what is
there about those of us reading these words, on the one hand, and the children
of Willowbrook, on the other, that can help us understand how they can have the
same rights we claim for ourselves? Where will we find the basis of our moral
equality? Not in the ability to write poetry, make moral choices, and the like.
Not in human biology, including facts about the genetic make-up humans share.
All humans are (in some sense) biologically the same. But biological facts are
indifferent to moral truths. Who has what genes has no moral relevance to who
has what rights. Whatever else is in doubt, this we know.
But if not in
some advanced cognitive capacity or genetic similarity, then where might we
find the basis of our equality? Any plausible answer must begin with the obvious:
The differences between the children of Willowbrook and those who read these
words are many and varied. We do not denigrate these children when we say that
our life has a richness that theirs lacked. Few among us would trade our life
for theirs, even if we could.
Still, as
important as these differences are, they should not obscure the similarities.
For, like us, these children were the subjects
of a life, their life, a life
that was experientially better or worse for the child whose life it was. Like
us, each child was a unique somebody, not a replaceable something. True, they
lacked the ability to read and to make moral choices, for example.
Nevertheless, what was done to these children, both what they experienced and
what they were deprived of, mattered to them, as the individuals they were,
just as what is done to us, when we are harmed, matters to us.
In this
respect, as the subjects of a life, we and the children of Willowbrook are the
same, are equal. Only in this case, our sameness, our equality is important
morally. Logically, we cannot claim that harms done to us matter morally, but
that harms done to these children do not. Relevantly similar cases must be
judged similarly. This is among the first principles of rational thought, a
principle that has immediate application here. Logically, we cannot claim our
rights to bodily integrity and to life, then deny these same rights in the case
of the children. Without a doubt, the children of Willowbrook had rights, if we
do.
We routinely
divide the world into animals, vegetables, minerals. Ameba and paramecia are
not vegetables or minerals; they are animals.
No one engaged in the vivisection debate thinks that the use of such
simple animals poses a vexing moral question. By contrast, everyone engaged in
the debate recognizes that using nonhuman primates must be assessed morally.
All parties to the debate, therefore, must “draw a line” somewhere between the
simplest forms of animate life and the most complex, a line that marks the
boundary between those animals that do, and those that do not, matter morally.
One way to
avoid some of the controversies in this quarter is to follow Charles Darwin’s
lead. When he compares (these are his
words) “the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals,” Darwin restricts his
comparison to humans and nonhuman mammals.
His reasons for
doing so depend in part on structural considerations. In all essential
respects, these animals are physiologically like us, and we, like them. Now, in
our case, an intact, functioning central nervous system is associated with our
capacity for subjective experience. For example, injuries to our brain or
spinal cord can diminish our sense of sight or touch, or impair our ability to
feel pain or remember. By analogy, Darwin thinks it is reasonable to infer that
the same is true of animals who are most physiologically similar to us. Because
our central nervous system provides the physical basis for our subjective
awareness of the world, and because the central nervous system of other mammals
resembles ours in all the relevant respects, it is reasonable to believe that
their central nervous system provides the physical basis for their subjective
awareness.
Of course, if
attributing subjective awareness to nonhuman mammals was at odds with the
implications of evolutionary theory, or if this made their behavior
inexplicable, Darwin’s position would need to be abandoned. But just the
opposite is true. That these animals are subjectively present in the world,
Darwin understands, is required by evolutionary theory. And far from making
their behavior inexplicable, their behavior is parsimoniously explained by
referring to their mental capacities.
For example,
these animals enjoy some things and find others painful. Not surprisingly, they
act accordingly, seeking to find the former and avoid the latter. Moreover,
both humans and other mammals share a family of cognitive abilities (we both
are able to learn from experience, remember the past, anticipate the future) as
well as a variety of emotions (Darwin lists fear, jealousy, and sadness). Not
surprisingly, again, these mental capacities play a role in how they behave.
For example, other mammals will behave one way rather than another because they
remember which ways of acting had pleasant outcomes in the past, or because
they are afraid or sad. Concluding his comparison of the mental faculties of
humans and “the higher animals” (by which he means other mammals), Darwin
writes: “[T]he difference in mind between man and the higher animals . . . is
one of degree and not of kind” (The
Descent of Man, Chapter IV).
The
psychological complexity of mammals (henceforth “animals,” unless otherwise
indicated) plays an important role in arguing for their rights. Just as it is
true in our case, so is it true in theirs: they are the subjects of a life, their life, a life that is
experientially better or worse for the one whose life it is. Each is a unique
somebody, not a replaceable something. True (like the children of Willowbrook),
they lack the ability to read, write, or make moral choices. Nevertheless, what
is done to animals, both what they experience and what they are deprived of,
matters to them, as the individuals they are, just as what was to done to the
children of Willowbrook, when they were harmed, mattered to them.
In this
respect, as the subjects of a life, animals are our equals. And in this case,
our sameness, our equality, is important morally. Logically, we cannot maintain
that harms done to us matter morally, but that harms done to animals do not
matter morally. Relevantly similar cases must be judged similarly. As was noted
earlier, this is among the first principles of rational thought, and one that
again has immediate application here. Logically, we cannot claim our rights to
bodily integrity and life, or claim these same rights for the children of
Willowbrook, then deny them when it comes to animals. Without a doubt, animals
have rights, if humans do.
Some Objections, Some Replies
Many are the
objections raised against animal rights. While each is well intended, none
withstands critical examination. It is to be recalled that the rights in
question are the moral rights to bodily integrity and to life. Here, briefly,
are the most important objections and my replies.
1. Objection:
Animals do not understand what rights are. Therefore, they have no rights.
Reply: The children of Willowbrook, all children
for that matter, do not understand what rights are. Yet we do not deny rights in
their case, for this reason. To be consistent, we cannot deny rights for
animals, for this reason .
2. Objection:
Animals do not respect our rights. For example, lions sometimes kill innocent
people. Therefore, they have no rights.
Reply: Children sometimes kill innocent people.
Yet we do not deny rights in their
case, for this reason. To be consistent, we cannot deny rights for animals, for
this reason.
3. Objection:
Animals do not respect the rights of other animals. For example, lions kill
wildebeests. Therefore, they have no rights.
Reply: Children do not always respect the rights
of other children; sometimes they kill them. Yet we do not deny rights in their
case, for this reason. To be consistent, we cannot deny rights for animals, for
this reason.
4. Objection:
If animals have rights, it follows that we will need to make arrangements for
them to vote, marry, file for divorce, and immigrate, for example, which is
absurd. Therefore, animals have no rights.
Reply: Yes, this is absurd; but these
absurdities do not follow from claiming rights to life and bodily integrity in
the case of animals any more than they follow from recognizing the rights of
the children of Willowbrook, for example.
5. Objection:
If animals have rights, then mosquitoes and roaches have rights. This would
make it wrong to kill them, which is absurd. Therefore, animals have no rights.
Reply: Not all animals have rights because some
animals do. In particular, neither mosquitoes nor roaches have the kind of
physiological complexity associated with being a subject of a life. In their,
case, therefore, we have no good reason to believe that they have rights, even
while we have abundantly good reason to believe that other animals (mammals in
particular) do.
6. Objection:
If animals have rights, then so do plants, which is absurd.
Therefore, animals have no rights.
Reply: “Plant rights” do not follow from animal
rights. We have no reason to believe, and abundant reason to deny, that carrots
and cabbages are subjects of a life. We have abundantly good reason to believe,
and no good reason to deny, that mammals are. That is the morally relevant
difference. In claiming rights for animals, therefore, we are not committed to
claiming rights for plants.
7. Objection:
Human beings are closer to us than animals are; we have
special relations to them. Therefore, animals have no rights.
Reply: We do have special relations to humans
that we do not have to other animals. We also have special relations to our
family and friends that we do not have to other human beings. But we do not
conclude that other humans do not have rights, for this reason. To be
consistent, we cannot deny rights for animals, for this reason.
8. Objection:
Only human beings live in a moral community where rights are understood.
Therefore, all human beings, and only human beings, have rights.
Reply: At least among terrestrial forms of life,
only human beings live in a moral community in which rights are understood. But
it does not follow that only human beings have rights. It is also true that, at
least among terrestrial forms of life, only human beings live in a scientific
community in which genes are understood. But we do not conclude that therefore
only human beings have genes. Neither should we conclude that only human beings
have rights.
9. Objection:
Animals have some rights to bodily integrity and life, but the rights they have
are not equal to human rights. Therefore, human vivisection is wrong, but
animal vivisection is not.
Reply: This objection begs the question; it does
not answer it. What morally relevant reason is there for thinking that humans
have greater rights than animals? Certainly it cannot be any of the reasons
examined in 1-8. But if not any of them, then what? The argument does not say.
The objections
just reviewed have been considered because they are the most important, not
because they are the least convincing. Their failure, individually and
collectively, goes some way towards suggesting the logical inadequacy of the
anti-animal rights position. Morality is not mathematics certainly. In
morality, there are no proofs like those we find in geometry. What we can find,
and what we must live with, are principles and values that have the best
reasons, the best arguments on their side. The principles and values that pass
this test, whether most people accept them or not, are the ones that should
guide our lives. Given this reasonable standard, the principles and values of
animal rights should guide our lives.
Conclusion
As was noted at
the outset, animals are used in laboratories for three main purposes:
education, product safety testing, and experimentation, harmful nontherapeutic
experimentation in particular. Of the three, the latter has been the object of
special consideration. However, the implications for the remaining purposes
should be obvious. Any time any animals’ rights are violated in pursuit of
benefits for others, what is done is wrong. It is conceivable that some uses of
animals for educational purposes (for example, having students observe the
behavior of injured animals when they are returned to their natural habitat)
might be justified. By contrast, it is not conceivable that using animals in
product testing can be. Harming animals to establish what is safe for humans is
an exercise in power, not morality. In the moral universe, animals are not our
tasters, we are not their kings.
The
implications of animal rights for vivisection are both clear and
uncompromising. Vivisection is morally wrong. It should never have begun, and,
like all great evils, it ought to end, the sooner, the better. To reply (again)
that “there are no alternatives” not only misses the point, it is false. It
misses the point because it assumes that the benefits humans derive from
vivisection are derived morally when they are not. And it is false because,
apart from using already existing and developing new non animal research
techniques, there is another, more fundamental alternative to vivisection. This
is to stop doing it. When all is said and done, the only adequate moral
response to vivisection is empty cages, not larger cages.