New Internationalist magazine (which some of you know I work for) have a debate about whether animal testing is necessary in the current issue. It's a feature called the Argument, where we print an exchange between two experts and then invite readers to join the debate on our site and print the best contributions in the next issue. As such, it'd be great if some of you could join in! I guess people may want to discuss it here, but unless you definitely don't want your comment printed (under whatever choice of name), please do also add it there:

http://www.newint.org/sections/argument/2011/06/01/animal-testing-medical-research-laurie-pycroft-pro-test/

Laurie Pycroft's arguing for testing there - fellow Oxford residents may recognise him as the founder of Pro-Test. I always thought he was quite gutsy - my girlfriend actually interviewed him for Oxford years later, and apparently he was a bit odd, though in the nicest possible way I'm sure. My own comment there was that he seemed to have the better side of the science, but that the ethical question was separate from the scientific one, and boiled down to the balance between the suffering caused by testing and the suffering alleviated by cures. And also the standard point about it being odd the focus on medical testing where that balance is so much clearer in, say, cosmetic testing.

As to the science, I'm no expect but this looks depressingly like the climate change case, where people leap on claims that suit their agenda and consider themselves instant experts better placed to judge than the scientific community.

Re your last comment I'm always very wary in getting involved in this type of debate, for precisely that reason - I don't know enough about the successes/failures and what stories underlie them to be able to form a view.

I remember speaking to a guy called Andrew Knight a couple of years ago, who was President/Chairman or similar of the UK political party Animals Count. He identified himself as at least sympathetic to utilitarianism, and said he was mid-way through writing a PhD thesis on the question of how effective animal testing is, and his current view was that it was significantly less so than advocates claimed.

I don't know anything about his methodology, but it might be interesting if someone could get in contact with him and ask if he could contribute to the debate.

I'm a fan of the free market. Charge people for animal cruelty. If you charge the right amount, they'll only do it if it's worth while.

Thanks for the link, tog!

I think it's generally not cost-effective to spend time on animal testing, because the number of vertebrates used annually in research is only 100 million or so, which is dwarfed by factory farms. (Not to mention wild animals. )

Moreover, it's a lot harder to be sure you're doing the right thing when campaigning against lab animals, because there are cases where using animals in research has more benefit than harm, and you have to be an expert to separate the good from the bad. Even "basic research" without direct medical benefit can in the long run be extremely valuable, because it can give us better understanding of animal brains and behavior, which helps us assess sentience, understand what causes the animals happiness and suffering, develop ideas for reducing wild-animal suffering, and so on. Ironically, were it not for animal research, we would have a much weaker scientific basis for caring about and improving animal welfare.

That said, there's an important distinction between (a) whether animals should be used in lab experiments and (b) ensuring that they're treated as well as possible when used. Clearly (b) is always a good thing. But my suspicion is that there's far less low-hanging fruit in the area of lab welfare than farm welfare, not just because of raw numbers, but also because lab technicians are able to take more luxury with providing for animal needs than farm workers are. The majority of literature on animal welfare is in the context of laboratory animals, where every parameter from living space to methods of euthanasia has been studied in great detail.

Finally, in the public eye, "lab testing" is a much touchier issue than "factory farming," because there are real moral concerns about limiting lab testing, while it's harder to feel morally outraged at the suggestion that people eat less meat. So from the perspective of winning hearts and minds for the general cause of reducing animal suffering, the lab-animal issue is riskier.

Does anyone know much about the cost/benefit ratios of testing? I presume different types of research cluster into different groups of ratios, but are there some types where the ratio is clearly favourable on utilitarian grounds, at least on the smallest plausible estimate of the animal suffering involved?

I think that's what Andrew Knight was looking into. Might be worth formally inviting him to the debate?

http://www.andrewknight.info/

They already have to do a cost/benefit analysis to do the study. It costs money, after all. Just make it so that they have to take into account the cost of harming animals.

Arepo wrote:I think that's what Andrew Knight was looking into. Might be worth formally inviting him to the debate?

http://www.andrewknight.info/

I have done - he commented, and I've also worked with him on the following blog post:

http://www.newint.org/blog/2011/07/07/animal-testing-costs-benefits/

Thanks for the tip!

DanielLC wrote:I'm a fan of the free market. Charge people for animal cruelty. If you charge the right amount, they'll only do it if it's worth while.

Might work, but it's not what I'd call a free market. Also, whatever amount you charge, people will (tend to) do it iff it's worthwhile. And then you have to rate all types of animal cruelty, which seems like it might be a huge admin strain.

You have to rate all types of animal cruelty anyway if you want to figure out if it's worth doing.

DanielLC wrote:I'm a fan of the free market. Charge people for animal cruelty. If you charge the right amount, they'll only do it if it's worth while.

I wonder if someone would apply this logic to forced human testing.

Alan Dawrst wrote:Finally, in the public eye, "lab testing" is a much touchier issue than "factory farming," because there are real moral concerns about limiting lab testing, while it's harder to feel morally outraged at the suggestion that people eat less meat. So from the perspective of winning hearts and minds for the general cause of reducing animal suffering, the lab-animal issue is riskier.

Hi Alan. I'm not sure about that.

I know a lot of people against animal testing, pretty more than vegans or vegetarians. I guess to be against animal testing is "easy" (someone only must say it), while to be against animal farming is more "difficult" (it supposes to change eating habits).

I wonder if someone would apply this logic to forced human testing.

You'd have to make the researches pay the government to test on people. It's simpler just to take out the middle man, pay the people directly, and make it voluntary human testing.

It does apply when it's something where that doesn't really work. For example: pollution. It's not feasible to pay everyone who's air you're polluting to let you pollute it.

You can strengthen Daniel Dorado's point by supposing that the victims of testing are young, old, disabled and someone unable to consent.

I don't see how being young, old, or disabled would enter into it. Unable to consent would work if it's something where you specifically need someone like that.

It seems like lethal testing (crash testing and such) could also work, since they won't be able to use your money if they're dead. You still probably could find someone who'd do it to pay someone else. You could subsidize it.

What exactly is the alternative? I don't see how you could justify no human testing. You can't develop new medicine without eventually testing it. I'd rather have a 0.1% chance of dying from a test than a 1% chance of dying from a disease that could have been cured if you allowed human testing.

Also, this reminds me: why don't they use capital criminals for human testing?

DanielLC wrote:You'd have to make the researches pay the government to test on people. It's simpler just to take out the middle man, pay the people directly, and make it voluntary human testing.

...which as we know already happens. It's a bit hard to imagine a scenario where the test subjects have to be unable to consent, which we'd need to do to really consider Ryan's thought experiment.

Andrew Knight responded to my question above on his blog post by giving the example of experimental treatments for a condition the animal subjects has as examples of acceptable experiments. I was really looking for the most marginal case of a plausibly net-beneficial experiment, so I'll follow up by asking him for this...

which as we know already happens.

Eventually. I would prefer it if they let them do it sooner.

It's a bit hard to imagine a scenario where the test subjects have to be unable to consent, which we'd need to do to really consider Ryan's thought experiment.

Not really. If you want to cure a condition that causes people to be unable to consent, you'd have to test it on such people. For example, if you want to see if you can wake a guy up from a coma with deep brain stimulation, you can't exactly get permission from a guy in a coma.

DanielLC wrote:Not really. If you want to cure a condition that causes people to be unable to consent, you'd have to test it on such people. For example, if you want to see if you can wake a guy up from a coma with deep brain stimulation, you can't exactly get permission from a guy in a coma

OK, that's true. However in that case testing is clearly in the subject's interest - can you think of a real example where it's decidedly not, but testing on a subject who can't accept is the only way to do some significant good?

If it's already established that it works, it's clearly in their interest. That wasn't known when they first tried it, was it? It's not obvious that it won't make things worse. If it's only barely worth testing, it will be clearly not worth it for the one it's tested on.

It could also be something for children who are too young to consent.