Animal Experimentation

After we discussed in class the necessary and sufficient condition for vegetarianism to be morally obligatory, I wrote a blog post considering which if any of those conditions were currently actualized. And so, now that we have discussed the necessary and sufficient conditions for the moral acceptability of nonhuman animal testing, I figured I would, again, examine the conditions. Unfortunately, as it was relatively easy to determine the actualization of the previous conditions, these seem more difficult.

1. There must exist no morally viable alternative.
2. There must be placed a greater preference to human interests.
3. There must exist a tangible benefit.
4. The human interest that stands to benefit must be equitable to the animal interest being discounted.
4. The suffering of the test subject must be minimized.

I will return to condition 1, as it is, I think, the most problematic. A greater preference is naturally given to human interests as opposed to non-human interests, and while this is a necessary condition, it is a simple one. The benefit from these tests must be more than hypothetically possible, especially for the tests that will result in immense suffering and/or death of the test subject. "There might be a benefit" does not suffice, it must be tangible. The benefit needs, also, to be proportional. Immense animal suffering for the purpose of less dandruff does not suffice. If the test violates an interest of an animal, it must benefit that very interest of the humans. If a test kills an animal the benefit must be able to save the life of a human. Lastly, the suffering of an animal needs to be minimized. No harm can be unnecessary to the specific test.

The difficulty of the first condition is that it seems nigh impossible to verify. What does moral viability look like? When presented with two options is seems to be problematic at best to determine which is more morally viable. That having been said, for a test to be acceptable is must be the most morally viable option for getting that particular result.

Not all tests satisfy all these conditions, and there are few enough that can. This would greatly reduce the number of non-human experiments that would be allowed to be conducted, but as a general principle, animal testing is morally acceptable.

Question: How do we determine between the moral viability of two options?