ABSTRACT
Two key pillars of medical ethics and morality are Beneficence – doing good and not harm, and Autonomy – respecting others’ rights to self-determination. Schweitzer’s “reverence for life” position implies that these principles should apply not just to humans, but to all sentient creatures. If we are to put them into practice we need to understand animal needs and desires. This requires us to explore the nature of their sentience. The biological foundations of sentience are elegantly expressed through application of the five orders (skandhas) of Buddhist teaching: matter, sensation, perception, mental formulation, and consciousness. All life is worthy of respect but our approach to care of individuals and species must be informed by the extent to which they display more complex forms of sentience, namely perception, mental formulation, and consciousness. We can only discover answers to these questions through observation and scientific inquiry. Our duty of care must, in practice, be based on our best understanding of animal behaviour, emotion and cognition, and ultimately, animal needs and preferences. Morality requires us to offer no special favours to the species we find most useful or attractive. The quality of life of a sentient animal is defined by its own perception, not ours.
