Animals, Property, and the Law by Gary L. Francione

Author:Gary L. Francione [Francione, Gary L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Abolitionism
Amazon: B003NVMH04
Publisher: Temple Univ Pr
Published: 1995-05-01T21:00:00+00:00

prior to 1963, all 27 prospective and retrospective studies of human patients showed a strong association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. However, almost all eft its to cause lung cancer in laboratory animals failed.... This lack of correlation between human and animal data delayed health warnings for years; subsequently, thousands of people died of cancer."

An appeal to past benefits is intended to evoke the past successes of animal ex- perimmntation. But such successes are difficult to link causally to animal use; the number of medical successes (whether or not linked to animal experimentation) is dwarfed by the number of still unsolved mysteries: and there is strong evidence that animal experimentation has retarded medical progress, not facilitated it.

Although all appeals to the supposed benefits of animal experiments assume the property status of animals and assume that animals have no respect-based rights, the argument that the benefits of basic research, which may have no application whatsoever, can justify the suffering and death of animals demonstrates most clearly the futility of the supposed balancing of human and animal interests. That is, an argument from basic benefits maintains that human curiosity is a sufficient justification for using animals in experiments. For example, one defender of animal experimentation, who acknowledges that "most" animals who suffer in the course of neurobehavioral research suffer in vain, nevertheless maintains that scientific knowledge outweighs animal suffering and states that "it is an affront to [his] ethical sensibility to hear arguments that the suffering of animals is of greater moral weight than are the advancement of human understanding and the consequent alleviation of human suffering."15 Another researcher admitted that "when evaluated by the standards of utilitarianism, my research is useless, as is all other basic research, because it does not have an immediate, known beneficial application." He adds that such "research must be judged by the links that it adds to the chain of knowledge, even if those links seem at the time to lack value."[('

If the acquisition of knowledge can count as a "benefit" that entitles or morally justifies a researcher in inflicting pain or death on an animal, and if scientists ultimately determine what "benefit" means, then virtually any use of animals can be justified.

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