ABSTRACT
The purpose of medical science is to alleviate suffering, human in the case of general medicine and animal in the case of veterinary medicine. It is necessary to make some assessment of animal suffering in all of the cases, not only as a basis of therapeutics but also for minimizing suffering in experimental psychiatry. Apart from arguments against animal experiments in psychology on the grounds of dogma there are also ethical reasons given against experimentation with animals. These usually consist of reasons for not conducting experiments, but they may take the more positive form of guidelines or directives for the employment of certain experimental precautions. The standards of welfare for animals would be based on scientific judgment and scientific judgment alone. Criteria for moral judgments rest on contributions to the welfare of the powerless, concern for others, about which scientific judgments are in principle neutral.
