Most animal rights activists insist that humans receive no benefit from animal research. I make a big point of rebutting this in my upcoming book, which I think convincingly demonstrates that biological science would be materially impeded if animals could no longer be used. One such area is basic research in which scientists learn about biological processes or are able to test hypotheses regarding potential areas of future research. Sometimes, this work can be done with computer models, cell lines, or other non animal studies. But sometimes you need an intact, operating biological organism, which either means animals or humans.
Here’s a good example: Scientists have learned a way to interfere with the workings of the gene that causes muscular dystrophy in mouse studies. From the story:
U.S. researchers have found a way to block the genetic flaw that causes a common form of muscular dystrophy, the team reported on Thursday. Mice injected with a compound that neutralizes faulty gene activity regained the use of muscles frozen by myotonic dystrophy, the researchers said. “We haven’t corrected the underlying gene abnormality,” said Dr. Charles Thornton of the University of Rochester in New York, whose study appears in the journal Science. “What we’ve done is made it behave in a more mannerly fashion,” Thornton said in a telephone interview.
Will this turn into a treatment for the human disease? There is no way to tell at this point. But the success of these experiments–which involved the taking of the lives of many mice–pointed scientists into a potentially fecund area of research into this and other genetic-caused diseases.
It is too bad that a defense of animal research needs to be mounted–but it does. This is how science moves forward. Animal rights activists would stifle such activities and choke off many efficacious approaches to alleviating human suffering.
July 17th, 2009 | 1:28 pm
Personally, I think this argument is very dangerous. It basically says that if something has utility it has all the justification we need to proceed. This argument can be turned around to justify experimentation on the pre-born whom will be/have been aborted as well as the Josef Mengele’s of the world.
It’s either okay to experiment on mice or not. If so, then we can turn to ethical treatment of mice (for which current animal research has to go through anyway). If not, then it doesn’t matter what the benefit. It’s wrong. Not excuses. No “it’s better them than us”. It should not be done.
From the Christian perspective, I believe it is okay to experiment on mice, but since we are God’s stewards, we can’t be too presumptuous that mice exist for solely our use. They exist, like the 350000 species of beetles, to glorify God. And if we use them for our purposes, we need to treat them well.
Having seen the care that animal researchers are forced to make by the animal ethics board (in Canada), I’m comfortable that we are. (For those who don’t know: You can’t work on animals without a protocol where you specify the species and the numbers you’d use and breed. If you ask for a monkey, you’re forced to justify why you’re not using a dog, and if a dog why not a mouse, and if a mouse why not cultured cells or a computer model. If you ask for 100 mice, you’re forced to justify why not 10, and if 10 why not 1. etc.).
July 17th, 2009 | 3:54 pm
As a Christian, I concur. Stewardship of animals also entailed our benefits from animals when God offered Adam & Eve the very first animal skins for our use. It also followed that Jacob reaped the benefits of genetic Sciences when he engineered his Father-in-laws Herd, to create a bigger herd for himself by taking the spotted lambs for himself. One thing that modern man has a problem with is the further we go into the Sciences the tougher the ethical choices have become. In the case of protecting our human health I would suggest that our health is supported by animals whether we use them for food or for animal research. I know some might not like my opinion in this regard but I feel that Darwinian Awards are in the offing for humans unless we continue to used our most exceptional gift. Solving the mysteries of our own health and thus existence.
July 19th, 2009 | 11:23 pm
I agree with the first paragraph and the part of the second paragraph that begins with ‘If not’ of Ralph’s comment. Among the many reasons for which I abjured the Christianity into which I was born is its illogical and facile justification of the immoral based on its own sayso, and its enslaving of the mind. I’m not big on “belief.” I like what’s logical and empirically obvious. You can’t do what’s immoral, such as inflict disease and suffering (because there are protocols and regulations the lab animals don’t suffer? gee that’s like turning water into wine, loaves into fishes, or whatever) on sentient beings in ways they would never act toward other creatures and certainly do not act toward us, and make healthy (god-created, no less) creatures unhealthy, in the cause of alleviating our own suffering, and not suffer consequences for such a utilitarian — not moral — act — and we do suffer consequences. On the one hand we may cure disease in some in this primitive and barbaric manner that is unworthy of humanity, but on the other hand, that approach has led to others of us who didn’t even have such a disease to be cured to be at the mercy of what that approach has created — medical callousness, utilitarianism, and “futile care theory.” It has destroyed medicine and medical ethics, and done the reverse of advance them. And now we all have to pay for it, when we become as helpless and vulnerable and defenseless as the disabled, which any of us could become, and the elderly, which most of us will become, which is as helpless and vulnerable and defenseless as laboratory animals are. For God’s sake, THINK!!! It’s SIMPLE!!! As are morality and ethics themselves. Yes, “human exceptionalism,” in this regard, is circular, self-serving, and self-defeating reasoning.
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