The convenience of animal experiments is apparent in the faster breeding cycles, animals do not try to interpret or understand the experiment and there is greater allowance in the ability to test the influence of hereditary and environment on behaviour. This allows for great validity in the experiment itself with only the application of results to humans being open to question.
It’s true that animal experiments have allowed for a great contribution to psychology, however, separate guidelines (i.e. the Animal Scientific Procedures Act of 1986) have been drawn up in order to protect the welfare of animals. These guidelines are generally set up to balance the validity / accuracy of the research and its scientific contributions it can offer, with the amount of suffering that the animals will under go. (Bateson’s decision cube is an excellent quantitative representation of these guidelines). This ensures that unjustified animal suffering will not occur, and helps to motivate researchers to find a way of conducting the experiment with minimal discomfort to the creature.
Speciesism is the term used to describe the suffering one species is put through for the benefit of another. Peter and Singer argue that this concept is unacceptable, as is any animal pain / distress caused in animal research. Medical research attempts to estimate the degree of suffering an animal would be put through; many argue that such measurement is simply not accurate, especially as many animals remain immobile and rigid when threatened with danger and this is not always recognised as a sign of stress.
In defence of the use of animals; it’s important to consider the human suffering that will continue to occur if animals aren’t used for research. For instance, with Alzheimer’s disease, the benefits of the research will allow for an improved quality of life for those with the condition and those who would otherwise have to sacrifice their lives in caring for them as they slowly degenerated.
Ethological research (Field Experiments) on animals represents a new set of ethical issues. Firstly it’s down to the experimenter to keep their level of disruption to the natural world at a minimum as this can cause a lot of harm. Ethological research offers very little to human science, which does not justify the presence of dummies, animal removal, and even phenotype manipulation often employed by researchers.
In conclusion, it’s essential to take a balanced view of ethical issues versus scientific contribution. Public outcry against all forms of animal testing have blinded them to the potential contributions that low suffering, high quality, research could offer to the human world. The guidelines in place are strict enough to ensure that research is justified and of proportional quality to the suffering animals will be put through in the research. Field experiments perhaps have the loosest guidelines due to lack of general understanding and guidelines. The numbers of animals used in research has been reduced significantly over the years except in the category of non-experimental use. This shows that the issues presented are not an escalating problem and suggest that research is of higher quality and less quantity which should be of reasonable satisfaction to researchers and those with rational concern into the ethical issues.
