Topics Ethics

Question Pet lovers seem to be taking their pets along for 'alternative' therapies for their ailments- e.g. homeopathy, acupuncture, indian traditional medicine, etc. Given there is no scientific basis for these treatments- isn't this sort of thing tantamount to torture? (PETA doesn't think so.) Humans who voluntarily submit themselves to painful treatments are at least getting the 'placebo' given their belief that the treatment will work. I'd imagine that it'd be hard to give a pet a placebo!

Accepted:
October 22, 2009

Comments

If I set my pet up for a treatment that I know won't cure my pet and won't make the animal feel any better, then that might be somewhere in the ballpark of torture, though depending on what we have in mind, "torture" might be too strong a word. But that's not the typical case, is it? First, people who take their pets to the acupuncturist or whatnot typically believe that they're doing good; torturers seldom see things that way. Second, in at least some cases, the pet owners may be right. What you say about the science is too strong. For some conditions, we actually have evidence that some "alternative" treatments can help. And we can add: absence of scientific evidence isn't the same as evidence of inefficacy. Not all alternative remedies have been laboratory-tested. Some of the ones that haven't may work, and it may even be that the anecdotal evidence is good enough to make it reasonable to try the treatment.

Of course, in some cases, the evidence is in and anyone who checks it will find out that the treatment is worthless. A pet owner who knows this and has the pet treated anyway is foolish at best and may even be malicious. The more interesting question is: when can we reasonably expect someone to know that a treatment won't work? When is ignorance culpable? That's a question with no easy answer. It will depend on the person and the circumstances. But the fact that a treatment is known by the wise not to work doesn't meant that the ignorant are automatically fit to be blamed.