Introduction
Various medical research institutions continue using animals as test subjects. As a matter of fact, they modify or subject these animals into circumstances necessary for obtaining knowledge regarding human disease. Nonetheless, animal testing has continued to raise ethical issues for several years. In particular, the topic of animal testing has been contentious, generating a lot of feelings and ideas from both sides. The proponents of animal testing maintain that it is acceptable on condition that human benefits that could not be attained through the other means are achieved. They also maintain that it is acceptable on condition that suffering is reduced in all the experiments (BBC, 2014). The opponents argue that animal testing is unacceptable since human benefits are not established. They also claim that human benefits as a result of animal testing can be gained through other methods (BBC, 2014). They also base their arguments on the fact that animal testing causes suffering to the animals. Consequently, the present paper applies utilitarianism and especially the felicific calculus to demonstrate why animal testing is not justifiable.
As a branch of consequentialism/teleological ethics, utilitarianism is essentially focused on the consequences of actions instead of the actors’ intentions. Ideally, this theory requests us to act in ways, which create as much pleasure as possible on earth. Consequently, the wellbeing of every person counts according to utilitarianism. Foëx (2007) claims that utilitarianism utilizes the aggregation of benefits as well as harms to determine the correct course of action. As a matter of fact, this theory requests humans to carry out actions, which capitalize on the good consequences for all sentient beings, that is, both humans and nonhumans. Utilitarianism is, therefore, incompatible with the discrimination against the nonhuman sentient beings. According to the utilitarianism theorists, the interests of the nonhuman animals ought to be respected as same as those of the human beings.
Animal testing according to utilitarianism is only acceptable if the happiness produced by their exploitation is more than the harm produced (Olsson, Robinson, Pritchett, & Sandøe, 2002). The felicific calculus contains the principles by which animal testing can be assessed to determine whether it is justifiable. Notably, these principles are applied in measuring pain or pleasure. The measures of pain or pleasure include intensity, extent, certainty, propinquity, purity, fecundity/richness, and duration. Animal testing causes intense pain to the animal. In fact, the pain that hundreds of millions of animals endure every year outweighs the intensity of pleasure the humans get if the experiment is successful. Thus, according to the measure of intensity, animal testing is unjustifiable. Additionally, more animals are tested on compared to the number of human beings who may pass away from a disease. Consequently, animal testing is not acceptable.
Moreover, the animal certainly feels pain. Nonetheless, the pleasure for human beings is not certain since the testing to find the cure might not be successful. The likely pleasure for human beings is essentially much more distant compared to the pain for the animals that is taking place. Thus, animal testing is not acceptable. Furthermore, the human pleasure acquired from animal testing is extremely impure since a great number of animals endure pain to find the cure. The other reason why animal testing is not acceptable as per felicific calculus is that animals will experience recurrent pain over many years as more research will be required. What is more, although the animals will endure pain for a short period, the cure might not be found in the long run. It is clear that animal testing is not justified strongly enough by all the seven measures of pain and pleasure. Thus, it is not morally acceptable.
References
BBC. (2014). Ethics- Animal ethics: Experimenting on animals. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/using/experiments_1.shtml
Foëx, B. A. (2007). The ethics of animal experimentation. Emergency Medicine Journal, 24(11), 750.
Olsson, I. A. S., Robinson, P., Pritchett, K., & Sandøe, P. (2002). Animal research ethics. Hau J, Van Hoosier Jr GL, Handbook of Laboratory Animal Science, 2, 13-31.
