CHAPTER 2: ETHICS
2.1 There is no doubt that the issues raised
by the remit of the Select Committee, besides being practical,
are also moral or ethical. They centre on the question of how
human beings should treat other animals. Moral beliefs and sentiment
differ about the answer to this question.
2.2 There are those who, following a suggestion
by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century, hold that all creatures
capable of suffering are on an equal footing with human beings,
regardless of "the number of the legs, the villosity of the
skin, or the termination of the os sacrum".[39]
These people hold that being sentient confers a moral right on
animals that they should not be used by human beings for research
whose purpose is mainly to benefit humans.[40]
Some activists are prepared to uphold this view by violence.[41]
2.3 More commonly, there are those who hold that
the whole institution of morality, society and law is founded
on the belief that human beings are unique amongst animals. Humans
are therefore morally entitled to use animals, whether in the
laboratory, the farmyard or the house, for their own purposes.
And this belief is sometimes combined with a further belief that
there is a moral imperative for human beings to develop medical
and veterinary science for the relief of suffering, among both
humans and other animals. This moral imperative permits the use
in research laboratories of animals, whose suffering must be weighed
against the ultimate relief of suffering towards which research
is directed. This is encapsulated in the weighing of harms and
benefits (the "cost/benefit" assessment) in the 1986
Act.
2.4 The belief that human beings have the moral
right, and in some contexts the moral imperative, to use animals
in research, does not entail that animals may be bred and kept
for human purposes with total disregard for their suffering. The
deliberate or negligent causing of suffering to another, whether
human or animal, is a moral vice, cruelty, which is sometimes
a crime. Therefore we have a moral duty to avoid or minimise animal
suffering wherever possible.
2.5 The unanimous view of the Select Committee
is that it is morally acceptable for human beings to use other
animals, but that it is morally wrong to cause them unnecessary
or avoidable suffering.
39 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation (1789), chapter 17 "Of the Limits of the
Penal Branch of Jurisprudence", section 1, footnote. The
note concludes, "the question is not, Can they reason?
nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?". Back
40
This is the view taken by philosophers such as Peter Singer (whom
the Committee met during their visit to the United States), and
organisations such as the BUAV (Q. 393) and PETA (Q. 1172). Back
41
None of those who presented evidence to us said that they endorsed
violence, though we did not receive written evidence from some
of the more extreme animal rights groups. Back
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