Medical Ethics

1. Medical Ethics Fall 2011 Philosophy 2440 Prof. Robert N. Johnson Thursday, July 31, 2014

2. Animal Experimentation

3. Harry Harlow’s primate research @ Wisconsin Total maternal deprivation of monkeys in stainless steel chambers resulting in psychopathy [John Bowlby had already extensively researched maternal deprivation in children.] Cloth ‘monster mother’ monkey experiments Hundreds of such experiements been repeated affecting thousands of monkeys.

5. “Learned helplessness” • Dogs were put in boxes, shocked through the floors hundreds of times and then punished for escaping. Eventually, they stopped trying

6. “Learned helplessness” • Dogs that were first shocked in fixed harnesses hardly tried to escape the box.

7. Heat experiments • Dogs, rabbits, kittens were exposed to 107º-109º heat until they convulsed and died. • What were these experiments supposed to prove? That heat stroke victims should be cooled down. • LD50 tests, Draize eye tests

9. When is it justifiable to experiment on animals? • Peter Singer (utilitarian): • Experiments on humans are restricted because of our self-awareness, sensitivity to pain, and capacity for self-direction. • Animals, especially primates, are more aware of what is happening to them and self-directed than a 6 month old human, and at least as sensitive to pain. • Therefore, it is justifiable to experiment on animals when and only when it would be equally justifiable to experiment on a human orphan under 6 months old.

10. When is it justifiable to experiment on animals? • Objection: 6 month olds have more the potential to become vastly self-aware and self-directed than animals.

11. When is it justifiable to experiment on animals? • Singer’s reply: • This will rule out abortion too. • Or: It is justifiable to experiment on animals when and only when it would be equally justifiable to experiment on a human whose brain is so damaged it will never have any greater mental life than a 6 month old. • To think something can be done to an animal but not to a human with equivalent capacities is arbitrary discrimination: “speciesism”.

12. Analogy with racism Nearly 200 Nazi physicians justified their experiments because they were on “lesser” beings. • Live vivisections • Infected twins with diseases • Punctured or removed children’s livers • Sterilization, castration • Cyanide injections • Flaying leg muscles and administering various medicines

13. Singer’s Standard No experiment on an animal is justified unless it is so important that we would be equally willing to do it on a brain-damaged (and socially unconnected) human.

14. Statistical chicanery Objection: But advances in medicine have boosted life expectancy dramatically!

15. Statistical chicanery Not so. Only 3.5% of falling death rates over the last 100 years can be attributed to medical experimentation. And animal experimentation is only a fraction of that! Indeed, falling death rates are largely attributable to public health measures, such as sewage treatment.

16. Do animals have rights? • Carl Cohen: No • Rights are claims among a community of moral agents. • Animals are not moral agents. • Therefore, animals have no rights.

17. Do animals have rights? • Why aren’t animals moral agents? • Moral agents can exercise and respond to moral claims. • Animals cannot exercise or respond to moral claims. • So animals are not moral agents.

18. Really? • Often rights are based in moral agency. But if they all were, then there could be no ‘inalienable’ rights, or rights that we cannot lose even if we exercise our moral agency to try to give them up. • Some think it is interests and needs that are the source of rights. Animals have interests and needs.