ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the case for the use of animals in biomedical research. Using animals as research subjects in medical investigations is widely condemned on two grounds: first, because it wrongly violates the rights of animals, and second, because it wrongly imposes on sentient creatures much avoidable suffering. Neither of these arguments is sound. The first relies on a mistaken understanding of rights; the second relies on a mistaken calculation of consequences. Both deserve definitive dismissal. The humane treatment of animals requires that one might desist from experimenting on them if one can accomplish the same result using alternative methods — in vitro experimentation, computer simulation, or others. Abandoning reliance on animal rights, some critics resort instead to animal sentience — their feelings of pain and distress. The laboratory use of animals must therefore be ended — or at least very sharply curtailed. Animals certainly can suffer and surely ought not to be made to suffer needlessly.
