Every year millions of animals undergo testing by scientific researchers. The author of an article from the scientific journal Nature, entitled “Call to Curb Lab Tests with Dogs”, argues that scientific testing on dogs is cruel and should be reduced and lesser rodent species should be used for testing when applicable. However, I argue that testing on all animals should cease, as it is a form of speciesism.
In the Nature article, the author starts off by presenting the idea of how testing the effects of medical drugs on dogs is bad and is something that most people will agree should not happen. This seems to make sense. After all no one wants to see “man’s best friend” be injected with a lethal disease and suffer as the doctors try different drugs to see if they work. Usually drugs will not work and the animal will innocently be killed as a result. Then the author proceeds to describe the current regulations of dog testing and how they are wrong. She provides evidence from credible scientists who are the ones in the field of research yet they still are against using dogs for testing. I agreed completely with this article until it moved to what the action taken should be. After stating that dog testing is bad, and that it should not be done, the author suggests that the regulations be changed in order to limit the number of dogs used in laboratory studies. One way of doing this she suggests is to use animals of the rodent species whenever possible instead of dogs. This is what does not make sense to me. Although the author has attempted ot make a kind gesture at regulating animal testing, she has made a claim that is ultimately speciesist and wrong.
The problem is, a large percent of the population in America does not even know what Speciesism is. To prove that fact, the word itself is not recognized by spell check in google documents as a real word. To understand why all animal testing is bad, you must first understand speciesism. Speciesism refers to the widely held belief that the human species is inherently superior to other species and so has rights or privileges that are denied to other sentient animals. Most human beings are speciesists. “We take an active part in and allow our taxes to pay for practices that require the sacrifice of the most important interests of members of other species in order to promote the most trivial interests of our own”. (Singer, 9) We as humans understood and have worked to proudly abolish, racism, sexism, and homophobia, yet speciesism still widely exists without problems. The claim made by the author of the Nature article that other rodent species should be used instead of dogs is a perfect example of speciesism. She speaks of rodents as lesser to not only humans but even dogs in this case. This could be related to a man saying, “instead of doing testing on black men, let’s do tests on white females. That will be better.” Any human being would immediately say that this statement is blatantly racist or sexist and would have a problem with it.
Now, you might be thinking in objection, “how could the testing of rats be as bad as testing on an adult human? We physically have a higher mental ability, and for us to undergo an experiment that involves horrible suffering, we will be affected more because we have social relationships, and we are aware of everything else we could be.” So then let us assume that this is true. I would then ask you if you would be ok with using a mentally retarded orphan child that’s mental cognition has stopped progressing at the level of a rat. Mentally the child and the rat are the same. Would you then consider performing this experiment on the child? Or does it automatically seem wrong and cruel? Most of us would be appalled at this thought. So what if I were to go even further to say that the child is in fact completely unaware of their existence in reality and is in a vegetative state. With this, the mental capacity of the child is now lesser than that of the rats. So according to the counter argument made before, you should use the child. Yet most of us would still say no to the child and yes to the rat. It seems that the only reasoning here that the child should not be used, is that it is a human being and this is a direct discrimination of species, thus speciesism. In the words of Peter Singer, a well known philosopher, “ To avoid Speciesism, we must allow that beings who are similar in all relevant respects have a similar right to life --- and mere membership in our own biological species can not be a morally relevant criterion for this right. (Singer 19)
Unfortunately speciesism has existed forever. There have been dozens of experiments done with animals in the military, psychology, pharmacology, and cosmetics that produce the worst possible suffering in animals imaginable. One such study was a study performed by the US military in 1987. The goal of the study was to observe the effects that large amounts of radiation exposure had on pilots in War. Their means to doing this was to use Monkeys and strap them into a pilot’s chair. They were first trained through electrical shocks to maneuver a joystick as thus simulating flying an airplane. Then they were exposed within an enclosed room to large amounts of radiation everyday. The scientists observed their ability to complete tasks with the joystick simulating airplane flight after each exposure. The monkeys were said to be vomiting up to 5 times in thirty minutes while completing the tasks. Their hair would fall out. Their eye sight would deteriorate. All of which continued until either they died or the scientist was satisfied with their results. Surely if the monkey was to be replaced with a child of the same mental capacity, we would not allow it. So then why do we let such things happen with animals just because they are not human.
Another possible counter argument you might have is that “well the experimentation on animals is a bad thing sure, but it is justified by the results obtained becuase it furthers science and mankind.” Ironically, experiments done that inflict suffering to animals, a large majority of them provide no applicable results. But sure there is no doubt in saying that there are some advances in knowledge that would not have been obtained through animal experimentation. Though “even if valuable discoveries were made using animals, we cannot say how successful medical research would have been if it had been compelled from the outset to develop alternative methods of investigation. Some discoveries would probably have been delayed, or perhaps not made at all, but many false leads would also not have been pursued, and it is possible that medicine would have developed in a very different and more efficacious direction emphasizing healthy living rather than cure”(Singer 92) That quote from Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation portrays perfectly the possibility of not using animals for testing. He also then goes on to further argue how the results are not a justifiable claim to animal testing. He states “there is nothing sacred about the right to pursue knowledge. We already accept many restrictions on scientific enterprise. We do not believe that scientists have a general right to perform painful or lethal experiment on human beings without their consent although there are many cases in which such experiments would advance knowledge far more rapidly than any other method.” (singer 92) He says this to show the reader that if we aren’t doing this to humans, than why are we doing it to animals because they are of different species.
In conclusion, I find the argument made by the Nature article to be a form of speciesism and that instead of dog testing be regulated or replaced with rats, we should abolish all forms of animal testing allowed. I have presented two counter arguments to my claim and provided further explanation of why that counter argument is wrong. I believe that the discrimination of animals if widely overlooked and should become a liberating movement as was racism, or sexism. In the words of Peter Singer “to stop them we must change the policies of our government, and we must change our own lives, even to the extent of changing our diet. If these officially promoted and almost universally accepted forms of speciesism can be abolished, abolition of the other speciesist practices cannot be far behind.
Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. 2nd. Australia: Pimlico, 1995. Print.
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