EXPERIMENTAL ANIMAL TESTING

Experimental Animal Testing

Experimental Animal Testing

Introduction

Animal rights stem from early animal welfare organizations. However, there is a difference between the two movements. Animal rights advocates believe in letting animals live according to their nature and not are used as commodities. These activists believe that animals are similar enough to humans to deserve serious moral consideration and deserve a life lived not according to human goals. Thus, they do not eat meat, dairy products, or eggs; they do not wear leather, fur, or wool products; and they do not patronize corporations that produce these items or participate in animal testing. Animal welfare advocates believe that animals may not be able to reason, but they still feel pain and can suffer. This view differs from the animal rights perspective in that they can be used as commodities but must be treated humanely. Another term often used in animal rights circles is speciesism. (Speciesism is the unjust discrimination of members of other species)

Discussion

The theory of animal rights stems from feminism and environmentalism. These theories stem from the critique of instrumentalism. Instrumentalism is said to prevail in contemporary society in which nature, women, and animals are reduced to the status of tools and things to promote technology, markets, and bureaucracies. Theorists argue that animals and humans should not be used for economic gains. Animal rights activists believe that animals should not be used as a means to an ends but allowed to lead their own lives. This idea of “rights” is a non-negotiable moral value in which living, sentient beings have a right to live as they choose.

Charles Darwin's evolutional theory began to question the creation theory by reexamining human origin. This theory sought to show the similarities of humans and nonhumans by exhibiting common ancestry and the remnants of both anatomical and systemic similarities, in addition to common mental powers. Darwin found that animals felt pain, guilt, despair, joy, devotion, ill temper, anxiety, disgust, pride, helplessness, fear, horror, shyness, and modesty.Regan, 2003)

By the 1860s, the first societies were formed to prevent animal cruelty. Humans began to see animals more as pets rather than as instruments of labor and production. By 1950, the Humane Society was formed and focused on overpopulation, abandonment, shelters, and cruelty to animals. Philosopher Peter Singer, from New York University, taught a course on animal liberation, thus beginning to inform most of the early movements around the animal rights belief system. He also wrote the books Animal Liberation and In Defense of Animals.

By the 1970s, advocates started to target larger systematic activities of institutions. By researching scientific abstracts and grant proposals, Henry Spira, a student of Peter Singer, started to mobilize animal rights sensibilities into the beginning of contemporary animal rights activism. The American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan funded two psychologists in the Department of Animal Behavior. They were studying the neurological bases of sexual behavior through experiments on cats deprived of various sensations and brain ...