ABSTRACT
The strategies of persuasion used by the animal research industry discussed in this chapter are based on a patriarchal, speciesist, and anthropocentric paradigm, thus undermining and damaging the compassion and empathy of the public, relevant decision-makers, legislators, interest group representatives, and even the people who research and manipulate nonhuman individuals. Even though the use of animals to find a cure to human or animal diseases is no frivolous matter, the basis of animal experimentation rhetoric needs to be overcome by strengthening an ethics of care that inspires individual and institutional decision-making and allows for a reorientation of the roadmap to a global ethics, inclusive of other sentient beings not as tools for research but as full individuals. This chapter introduces the harms of the animal experimentation industry from an ethical perspective and discusses some of the dilemmas and problems that arise from the acts of persuasion carried out by this particular industry.
