Vegan Practically

Last week I had the pleasure of being an examiner for a truly brilliant PhD thesis by philosopher, Jess Du Toit, entitled, What Do We Owe the Other Animals in Health-Related Research. It’s a compelling and sustained philosophical analysis for what is wrong with the majority of health-related animal research and what major reforms would be required to make it right. Jess did an outstanding job at both the public lecture and the defence. She’s truly an expert in her field, doing important work the main goal of which is to protect the interests of non-human animals. Her research question: “What protections ought to be in place for non-human animal research participants?”

Clearly, we have a general moral sense of how much risk research participants may be exposed to for the sake of research that benefits others. As Jess points out, how much risk a participant may be exposed to depends on whether they are human or not. If human, all sorts of protections fall into place. If they are vulnerable humans, such as children, the protections are even more stringent. But if they are non-human, no such concern for their vulnerability exists. This, despite that in fact there is a high degree of “translational failure” with respect human application of results from non-human animal experimentation. Consider that had Sir Alexander Fleming tested penicillin not on rabbits (for whom there is no ill effect), but instead on rats (for whom it is teratogenic) or mice or guinea pigs (for whom it is fatal), its discovery as an effective antibiotic might have been significantly delayed or not materialized at all. This is but one example used to make the more general point that “we cannot be sure of the value of pre-clinical testing” (Du Toit, 2023, p. 54).

Ultimately, Du Toit argues that we owe non-human animal research participants protections that parallel what we owe pediatric research participants. These amount to the following:

1. They are not a population of mere convenience. That is, their inclusion is required by the relevant study hypothesis.
2. When research participation does not offer the participating animals the prospect of a direct benefit, it should not expose those animals to more than minimal risk.
3. The researcher obtains and maintains consent from authorized third parties — namely, the relevant animals’ guardians — in accordance with the best interests of the animals concerned.
4. The researcher ascertains the animals’ wishes regarding their research participation. That is, to the extent that each animal is relevantly capable, her assent to research participation should be sought, and her dissent ought ordinarily to be respected.
5. The research has been approved by an appropriately constituted research ethics board.

Of course more needs to be said by all of these, and there are particular issues concerning protection three (having to do with its connection to autonomy, which animals arguably lack and will never have). The difficulties with three shift the focus onto protections four and five. And while it is clear that non-human animals will never be able to comprehend the full measure of what they are assenting or dissenting to, Du Toit argues that dissent is less cognitively demanding. In the pediatric case a child’s dissent may be overridden if they stand to gain a direct benefit. But non-human animal research participants will never be such beneficiaries. And so, Du Toit argues, when animals express dissent, their dissent ought to be respected.

This has significant implications for research on lab animals, the vast majority of which are kept confined in cages, a condition which they experience as stressful (p. 165). While Du Toit recognizes that animal research is likely to continue and any reform will be slow in coming, current animal research participants are not receiving the protections they are due.

I can’t do justice to the entire thesis here. But it is important work that needs attention. The differentiation between non-human and human animal participants is speciesist in nature, resting on the assumption that humans are entitled to use other animals for their benefit.

This brings me back to the quote cited the other day from Cora Diamond, where she asks what it would look like to lead lives in which it is not the case that “animals are for us mere things”?

My overriding concern is that even if Jess is right about everything she argues in her thesis, the culture change required is at the very level of ideology. The vast majority of humans believe that it goes without saying that human lives are the most important. Given that the end-game for a research animal after a life of captivity and being experimented on is typically death, and that possible benefit to human health is enough to justify their use, speciesist justifications serve as a normalized background.

To argue for more significant protections, and for much-reduced use, as Jess does, is to embark on a project that requires a major shift in most people’s thinking.

Jess made a really interesting point during her thesis defence, and I’d like to close with it. One of the examiners asked her if these arguments have any implications for the consumption of animals for food. Her response was that the arguments against the consumption of animals for food are much easier to make and significantly more decisive.

Why? Because at least people can cite possible health benefits to humans as the desired outcome of non-human animal medical research, and we are not as clear what alternative models could be used instead. Where food is concerned, all sorts of reasonable alternatives exist, the extensiveness of animal suffering is far more vast, and their sacrifice is in the service of nothing more than humans’ taste for their flesh and other by-products. So the research animal arguments are harder to make successfully.

Given how challenging it is to get uptake on the supposedly “easier” arguments about consuming animal products as food, you can just imagine how long of a road significant change will be on the research front. But clear-headed discussions such as Jess’s are a step towards a new perspective that takes the interests of non-human animals seriously.

Congrats, Jess Du Toit! And thanks for a compassionate and brilliant philosophical contribution.