Rite of passage to brute science with bias at the bench? Widening the ethical discussion of animal-based research

I.A.S. Olsson; O.E. Varga; P. Sandøe

Rite of passage to brute science with bias at the bench? Widening the ethical discussion of animal-based research

In: Global food security: ethical and legal challenges

Authors:

I.A.S. Olsson

I.A.S. Olsson ¹IBMC – Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre 823, 4150-180 Porto, Portugal
²Danish Centre for Bioethics and Risk Assessment, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Rolighedsvej 25, 1958 Frederiksberg C, Denmark
olsson@ibmc.up.pt

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O.E. Varga

O.E. Varga ¹IBMC – Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre 823, 4150-180 Porto, Portugal
²Danish Centre for Bioethics and Risk Assessment, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Rolighedsvej 25, 1958 Frederiksberg C, Denmark

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, and

P. Sandøe

P. Sandøe ²Danish Centre for Bioethics and Risk Assessment, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Rolighedsvej 25, 1958 Frederiksberg C, Denmark

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 400–405

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.3920/9789086867103_065

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As biomedical researchers are well aware, animal experimentation is a highly controversial activity, with the main worries centring on the harm caused to non-human animals. Whether this harm is acceptable and can be balanced against benefits, as well as how in practice to minimize it, has been widely addressed in the ethics and laboratory animal science literature, and the scientific community has developed a number of mechanisms to handle these questions. However, scientists and ethics committees usually only look at specific experiments and do not raise more general questions about the value of animal experimentation. When we widen the discussion to consider these more general questions, research from other fields becomes relevant. The aim of this paper is to discuss examples of such research which may serve to broaden the ethical discussion of animal-based research. Within the philosophy of science there is a primarily theoretical epistemological analysis of the role of animal models in biomedical and biological research (e.g. LaFollette and Shanks’ analysis of ‘brute science’), which may provide a critical perspective on questions about the type of knowledge to be gained from research with animals. This is related to a more empirical analysis of actual animal research within at least some of the biological and biomedical research disciplines (e.g. the CAMARADES consortium analysis of ‘bias at the bench’), challenging the idea that when animals are used, this is always done in the best way. The sociological and anthropological studies of the culture of the scientific research laboratory (e.g. Birke’s descriptions of the ‘rite of passage’ students go through to become laboratory scientists) may help us to understand how the utility of animal experimentation comes to be widely accepted within the scientific community.

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Global food security: ethical and legal challenges

E-Book ISBN:: 9789086867103

Publisher:: Wageningen Academic

Print Publication Date:: 30 Oct 2010

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- Life Sciences

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Rite of passage to brute science with bias at the bench? Widening the ethical discussion of animal-based research

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Global food security: ethical and legal challenges

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