Overcoming False Dilemmas: An Ethics of Care Perspective on Animal Experimentation and Scientific Progress

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

The assumption that animal experimentation is necessary for the advancement of science creates a tension between our desire for scientific progress and the need to respect the rights of animals. However, the necessity of animal experimentation for scientific progress is not well- founded. Also this tension is an extension of a false dichotomy that implies our values and objective science contradict each other. In recent years, the view that better care for animals will provide more reliable scientific data and will reduce ethical concerns regarding animal experimentation has become widespread. However, the developments in the recently emerging care literature do not offer a new ethical perspective, but only acknowledge the suffering of animals as a factor that should be taken into account within utilitarian ethics. In this article, we will try to show that a feminist ethics of care perspective that is not based on utilitarianism can lead both to a methodologically better science and an ethically acceptable scientific practice.