The Ethics of Using Animals in Medical Research

The prevalence of animals in medical research is a well-known fact. Whether it is through listening to recent news in health from National Public Radio (NPR) or opening up an old physiology textbook around the house, the chance is that a discovery involving human diseases is likely to accompany itself with previous studies in animals. An opportunity to use an intact, living human for medical research is very uncommon by the obvious reason and ethics.

For instance, when Albert Einstein passed away, his brain became a sensation to scientific and medical community. The details of this incident, which still affect today, can be read here in the last month's article from NPR. Of course, this may not be the best example given the society's curiosity towards Einstein, but the ethics behind study of his brain is still an important issue.

A challenge to current medical research has been that the more we know about humans, the more questions we bring up. Unfortunately, these questions would have remained unanswered if the research development only relied on humans. Indeed, any time the hot issues like "cloning" and "stem cells" come up to the table, special interest groups and religious organizations vehemently express their oppositions. Perhaps, because of this difficulty in conducting experiments directly to humans, some people in the extreme end of spectrum may believe that it is natural or even justified, that animals take the place of humans for medical researches.

Then, there are those who acknowledge the necessity for establishing firm level of ethics but fail to follow up to their words. Tom Regan, professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University, wrote following statements about those types of people, "Factory farming, they say, is wrong - it violates animals' rights - but traditional animal agriculture is all right. Toxicity tests of cosmetics on animals violates their rights, but important medical research - cancer research, for example - does not. The clubbing of baby seals is abhorrent, but not the harvesting of adult seals."¹

As Professor Regan implies, the ethical issue in this situation is very complex. The both sides of this issue are clearly very firm about their beliefs. Thomas Carew, president of The Society of Neuroscience (SfN), spoke to the popular scientific magazine, Scientific American, last year on this issue, "Responsible research has played a vital role in nearly every major medical advance of the last century, from heart disease to polio, and is essential to future advances."²

On the other hand, the same article also showed that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) stated on its website, "Animals should have the right to equal consideration of their interests...An animal's inability to understand and adhere to our rules is as irrelevant as a child's or that of a person with a severe developmental disability."³

Now, I want to take a slight different turn with the issue in this article since it seems clear to me that this is not a topic that can be answered in one article. I want to spend remaining portion of this article focusing on specific diseases and providing links for readers to search to learn about how animals are exactly being used in medical researches. I believe that this is very important to people of both sides because a difficult problem like this is not going to be resolved by a persuasive orator. Instead, it requires an understanding of the issues from both sides' angle, and frankly, my impression is that it is difficult for regular people, who are not in science field, to learn about the situation.

Preparation

Because of scientific jargons, it is necessary to prepare regular readers with all the tools required to comprehend the information they come across and ask any question they may have - all for free. Wikibooks has a book called Human Physiology that can be read by anyone in the globe for free. I have personally read through some parts of this book (nervous system in particular), and it is very detailed. It is not same as physiology textbooks, but it is sufficient enough for regular readers to learn more about the human body.

Now, what happens if you are reading that book and come across a question? Well, one way to answer it is by typing the concept in the Wikipedia. Often times, however, Wikipedia can give you more questions rather than that simple answer you need. Hence, you may need to use a message board such as Science Forum. Similar to the book, membership for this forum is free, and based on my experience there, members in this forum are very intelligent and can often guide you to the right direction.

Starting Points

I want to provide the readers of this article with five diseases they can search about. All of these five diseases share a common theme that they are all autoimmune diseases. These diseases are:

1) Multiple sclerosis

2) Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus

3) Grave's disease and thyroiditis

4) Rheumatoid arthritis

5) Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)⁴

I linked each of the disease with a hyperlink of an Associated Content article to learn more about them. Note: I found these articles by searching, and am not responsible for the accuracy of the articles themselves. This is up to the individual reader to find out.

Putting Everything Together...

Now, you should read about journal articles involving those diseases and see how much of the current and past researches directly involved animals, and if they did involve them, in what manner. I recommend PubMed. It is important to understand that PubMed is used by members of scientific community mostly, and the access is not available for everyone. You can read selected number of free articles by clicking here, but to access other articles, you may need to visit your local county library or university library to have more access.

Ending Point

I don't necessarily think that this article can solve the debate between animal activists and scientific community in regards of the ethics in medical research; holding such a belief would be extremely naïve. Both sides are right on their own, and both sides strive to do the best for the humans. The only way to ease the tension is to allow more information to be available for the both sides, and this article is one idea for that suggestion.

As a side note, the author of this article does not endorse either point of view, and this article was an informative, not a persuasive, article about the situation.

¹ James E. White, Contemporary Moral Problems, 8^th Edition (Belmont: Thomson Learning^TM, 2006) 388.

Note: The original citation for the essay by Tom Regan is given in this book as: Tom Regan, "The Case for Animal Rights," from In Defence of Animals, ed. Peter Singer, pp. 13-26.

² Katherine Harmon, "Scientists targeted by opponents of animal research speak out," Scientific American September 15, 2009; this article can be accessed at here.

³Ibid.

⁴ Gerald Karp, Cell and Molecular Biology, 4^th Edition (United States: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005) 724-725.

Note 2: I chose to cite this book because even though those five diseases are well-known, the list itself came from Karp's textbook, which I believe is important that he receives the credit for making the list.