Tag Archives: animal experimentation

Alastair Norcross

[T]o the extent that we view morality as not simply a human creation, a device whose sole purpose is to ensure cooperation among humans, and thereby promote human flourishing, we have powerful reasons to reject the view that the interests of animals are less significant than the like interests of humans. Such a rejection will render much animal experimentation morally unacceptable. This is not a conclusion that will be eagerly embraced by the scientific community. It is, however, the conclusion best supported by a careful examination of the relevant moral reasons.

Alastair Norcross, ‘Animal Experimentation’, in Bonnie Steinbock (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics, Oxford, 2007, p. 666

Lori Gruen and Peter Singer

Experimental psychology raises, in an especially acute form, a central contradiction of much animal experimentation. For if the monkeys Harlow used do not crave affection like human infants, and if they do not experience loneliness, terror and despair like human infants, what is the point of the experiments? But if the monkeys do crave affection, and do feel loneliness, terror and despair in the way that humans do, how can the experiments possibly justified?

Lori Gruen and Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A Graphic Guide, London, 1987, p. 81