Animal welfare regulations require that pain killers be administered to experimental animals subjected to painful experimental procedures even if the animal is subsequently killed. From the point of the animal, is there any utility in this requirement? Assume that there is no utility if the animal is killed immediately after the pain since it will no longer have a memory of the pain when it is dead. Then, it would seem the regulations are misguided (if their intent is only to protect the animal) and it would be ethical to not administer a pain killer. With this assumption, is there some interval in which it would become unethical? If it is concluded that it is impossible to define an interval since for every interval the animal would no longer have a memory of the pain at the end of the interval when it is dead. If this is the case, then would it always be ethically acceptable not to administer pain killers, since all animals will die eventually.