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David Sztybel, PhD
The Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC)
purports to offer a national standard of ethics for the usage
of nonhuman animals in laboratories. Ethics is primarily meant
to restrain us from harmful conduct that is unjust. The real nub
of contention here is what counts as "injustice." How does justice
apply, if at all, to nonhuman animals? Not only do the ethics
guidelines offered fail to offer significant restraints of any
kind towards animals, but they also threaten to perpetuate what
is arguably an unjust practice whose days--or decades--may be
numbered.
Blank Cheques
It can be argued that the ethics guidelines do not effectively
restrict against the harmful treatment of animals in laboratories
at all. There are at least four blank cheques which the CCAC writes
to researchers:
Blank cheque #1. The ethics code itself claims that burning,
freezing, fracturing, staging predator-prey encounters, electrical
shocking, inducing of extremely high or low temperatures, and
striking or beating unanaesthetized animals--among other things
specified--is permissible, so long as an external review is obtained.
However, that review will be carried out by other animal researchers
or research interests, by-and-large, and it is arguable that such
parties have a conflict of interest. Indeed, the scientists have
been trained to regard the animals in a desensitized manner, as
experimental models. Peers tend to support each others work, partly
because whoever one judges may one day judge one's own work. The
allowable practices also indicate that no harsh treatment of animals
is explicitly prohibited, so long as it is approved by animal
researchers' peers.
Blank cheque #2. The code claims that it is acceptable
to use animals in research, teaching, and testing, so long as
it promises to contribute to understanding of fundamental biological
principles, or to the development of knowledge that can reasonably
be expected to benefit humans or animals. A "reasonable expectation,"
in legal terms, is the lowest standard of justification. It does
not necessarily even mean a probable expectation. In any case,
this is a meaningless "restriction," since _any_ details can add
to knowledge of how "fundamental biological principles" operate.
Moreover, particular experiments cannot be judged likely to contribute
to medical knowledge in advance. Rather, most experiments do not
yield useful results, and at best, researchers draw conclusions
from a vast pool of mostly failed experimental objectives. Since
experimentation deals with unknown results, it is difficult to
rule definitively as to what is medically or otherwise useless.
Thus, the code yields no effective tool for screening out any
but the most blatantly unscientific of experiments. It is also
controversial as to what experiments are "useful" or not. Scientists
may well be interested to declare their research useful for the
securing of additional funding or prestige.
Blank cheque #3. The code asks that animals be used only
if researchers' best efforts to find an alternative have failed.
Since there is no test to determine "best efforts," this rule
is virtually unenforceable by the CCAC. Yet codes are only effective
if they are enforced and observed. Professor Sam Revusky, an animal
researcher and psychologist from Memorial University states that
he "knew of no scientist who ever explicitly sought alternatives
to animal use, as allegedly required." [1]
Blank cheque #4. The CCAC is a voluntary set of guidelines,
not law. Some public grants may depend on CCAC approval of facilities.
Private animal testing industries, which do not rely on public
funding, may not be inspected at all. For one thing, they may
not get public research grants, and for another, the CCAC fee
for inspections is $1,800 per day. [2] Ultimately, the guidelines
project a cloak of legitimacy, and do not significantly hamper
animal researchers' ambitions of designing experiments that are
harmful to animals. Indeed, the Code might be worse than none
at all because it gives the illusion of protection to animals,
when its chief impact on animal welfare is that it helps to facilitate
the death and degradation of animals in Canadian laboratories.
CCAC Draws a Moral Blank?
The Code states that animals must not be subjected to unnecessary
pain or distress, which sounds somewhat reassuring, but not at
all in light of the fact that so many blank cheques are issued
to underwrite animal research. The language here, concerning what
is "necessary" suffering, is a standard for all legislation, guidelines,
rules, regulations, and rhetoric around the world with regard
to animal research and animal usage more generally. It does not
mean that we avoid harming animals in research unless we are physically
or psychologically _compelled_ to do so (as in coerced), for that
never happens. Animal research is always freely undertaken at
some level. The real "necessity" claim that the CCAC is making
is twofold. First, some research is necessary for the fulfillment
of human _wishes_, as in curiosity about finding out about fundamental
biological principles, or rather how such principles are involved
in harming animals in various ways. Second, there is the additional
assumption that a fraction of research eventually might find medical
applications. That last claim is different from just morbid curiosity,
and deserves to be evaluated with some care. A primary consideration
here is that we do not harmfully experiment on humans who are
mentally challenged, senile, deranged, etc., or who have limited
cognitive capacities like animals (or to a lesser extent, in many
cases). This is not a fact to be trifled with. It threatens to
make our usage of animals in laboratories morally arbitrary, based
on a kind of blind species-preference. We all know that the mark
of having moral capacity at all is having empathy. Psychopaths
are widely said to lack just this quality. Presumably, we refuse
harmfully to experiment on cognitively limited humans because
we have empathy with them. We identify with their good, no matter
how limited their cognitive capacities. We must not violate them,
even though we might stand to benefit as a result. The chances
of benefiting from medically experimenting on humans, in fact,
are much higher, since even small interspecies differences can
skew predictions as to what effect an experimental substance or
procedure will have on humans. Many scientists hold that proving
something safe or harmful on animals neither clears nor damns
what is being tested for human use. Upon reflection, I must conclude
that the CCAC fails to extend the same kind of empathy, which
prohibits potentially useful research on our cognitively limited
fellow humans, only out of prejudice. This commentary is an examination
of broad principles at work in the CCAC ethical guidelines, and
of basic moral principles that I find oppose the harming of animals
even for putative medical gains. The moral theoretical issues
here are admittedly complex, and demand nothing less than a detailed
treatise. Still, the problem may boil down to understanding and
respecting certain relatively simple insights, without evasion
or rationalization to the contrary. In my experience as an ethicist,
much of the complications of moral theory involve fending off
more or less elaborate contortions of reason. Ethics seems to
come down to something very much like the Golden Rule, but even
that may be tarnished, if it is not extended to our nonhuman fellows.
Notes
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Mark A. Davidson
in fine-tuning the legalistic aspects of this essay.
[1] Sam Revusky, _Battles with the Canadian Council on Animal
Care: A Memoir_ (St. Johns, Nfld.: Yksuver Publishing, 1997),
quoted in Charlotte Montgomery, _Blood Relations: Animals, Humans,
and Politics_ (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2000), p. 116.
[2] Montgomery, _Blood Relations_, p. 106.
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David Sztybel, PhD
Philosophy Department, University of Toronto, Canada
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~sztybel
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