Question Why shouldn't we test drugs and cosmetics on mentally challenged or severely disabled human beings, rather than animals?

Accepted:
August 19, 2006

Comments

I just answered another question related to this one. Please see my answer to that one. In gist, (1) which animals did you have in mind--"animals" is too generic for me to get much traction on an ethical issue. And (2) why do you think it is more appropriate to run experiments on mentally challenged or disabled human beings? Are (some species of) animals somhow more deserving of our moral respect? Why? Are (some species of) animals more ethically important than (some) human beings? What makes you think that?

I can think of a great variety of what seem to me to be ethically significant issues that need to be visited here. One is the question of consent, which I discussed in my answer to the other question. Others include: ability to experience pain, cognitive capacities (such as memory, self-awareness), normal life-expectancy of the creature, normal "quality of life" expectancy of the creature (and how much experimentation would lead to deviation from such expectancies).

I tend to think that we do a great deal of projection of our own capacities onto other species, and I also tend to think that our doing so leads us to misjudge ethical issues and their degree of applicability to other species. I certainly do NOT think that it is OK to torture cats and dogs for kicks--but I do think that global judgments about what is and is not ethically appropriate involving animals is likely to be far more complex than the kind of simplicity your question assumes.

Other things being equal, perhaps we might. But of course they're not equal. Our social morality -- the morality we live by -- is 'speciesist' in the sense that human beings -- whatever their mental or physical capacities -- are considered to be due special protection. If we were to seek to remove that protection, chances are that it would probably degrade our ethical sensitivities to the point that things went overall worse for non-human animals than they do at present. What we should be asking, rather than your question, is: Why should we continue testing drugs and cosmetics on non-humans to the extent we do, when we wouldn't dream of carrying out such testing on human beings with similar capacities?

Question Why shouldn't we test drugs and cosmetics on mentally challenged or severely disabled human beings, rather than animals? Accepted:August 19, 2006

Question Why shouldn't we test drugs and cosmetics on mentally challenged or severely disabled human beings, rather than animals?

Accepted:
August 19, 2006