Posted by The panel discussion took place, as planned, on the evening of Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at UCLA. The hall was well-populated, if not completely packed, with members of the UCLA community. (Honestly, for week 7 of a 10-week quarter, during a spell of lovely weather, I’m impressed they had such a high turnout of students.) There was also a serious security presence (which the university felt was needed in light of past instances where strong feelings have been displayed in more than just words).
Both Pro-Test for Science and Bruins for Animals deserve huge props for all the work they put into planning and coordinating the event. For their troubles, Bruins for Animals had to put up with a fair amount of abuse from people who were nominally on their side. Nonetheless, they stuck to their guns and worked very hard to create an event that was a dialogue, not a debate.
The event itself was videotaped (from two cameras), with the hope that the picture and sound quality will be good enough that the video can be posted online. When it is, I’ll post a link to it so you can see it for yourself. In the meantime, I’ll give you my impressions as a participant (which is to say, you shouldn’t count on my for an account that is complete in all its details or even very objective).
David Lazarus, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, moderated the discussion. To my mind, he did a really good job asking the panelists hard questions, some from the audience (written on index cards) and some of his own. What I think worked here was the hard questions weren’t “gotcha!” questions aimed at discrediting a view, but rather questions aimed at probing the basis for a view, or the consequences of a view, or the ways in which some of the diverging views voiced by the six panelists might rest on some common ground.
The format of the event involved each of the six panelists giving an “opening statement” (laying out his view on the science and/or ethics of animal research) of 15 minutes or less. Yes, in theory that’s an awful lot of talk before we actually get to the dialoguic part. I wasn’t watching the clock, but my impression is that not all the panelists used the full fifteen minutes, and in any case, people did end up being somewhat responsive in their opening statements to what folks who spoke before them said in theirs (or at least acknowledged some of these points).
I do not have anything like reliable notes from the opening statements (and my Twitter followers will notice that I didn’t live-tweet them). I have some notes in my notebook on big issues that struck me as worth discussing at more length, but even these are a little sparse. See, I came prepared with two pens. One of those was appropriated by our moderator (who, for the record, didn’t return it at the end — I haven’t forgotten, David Lazarus!). The other I ended up sharing with the panelist next to me when his pen ran out of ink.
Dario Ringach, a professor of neurobiology and psychology at UCLA, spoke first about the role basic research plays in advancing biomedical science and medicine. He emphasized the unpredictability of scientific discovery. (Dario has also posted his introductory remarks.)
Niall Shanks, a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Wichita State University, spoke next about whether animal-based research to determine whether compounds that might be useful as drugs are toxic to humans or teratogenic to humans can properly be said to be “predictive”. There were some interesting questions here about how scientists evaluate the goodness of model systems. What I would have liked to discuss even more was the broader methodological issue of setting up experimental conditions of models that are significantly simpler than the systems “in the wild” that we really want to understand. Any model necessarily abstracts away some of the stuff from the system being modeled. The tricky question becomes how much we can abstract away and still maintain enough of the core features that we’re entitled to conclude that the behavior of the model tells us something meaningful about the system being modeled.
This is not just an issue for the biomedical sciences.
Also, I think it would have been interesting to have scientists who do preliminary screens of drug toxicology involved in the discussion so they can talk about how they design their experiments. It strikes me that the rationale for asking a particular experimental question may have a big influence on whether you’d prefer to err on the side of false positives or false negatives — and potentially, you might decrease predictive power while still getting the kind of information you need.
Colin Blakemore, a professor of neuroscience at Oxford University, went next. He spoke briefly about the history of animal activism and of regulations covering animal use in Britain. As well, he talked about the importance of openness in debate about research on animals.
The next panelist to speak was Ray Greek, president of Americans for Medical Advancement. He asserted that animals are too different from humans to tell us anything useful about humans, and suggested that this is why so few basic research studies end up resulting in knowledge or therapies that are useful in treating human patients. He claimed that while the public is broadly supportive of the use of animals in research with clear applications to human health, the public is not supportive of the use of animals in basic research — an that such research, therefore, ought to be halted.
Then it was my turn. My aim was to lay out my view of the ethics of our use of animals for scientific research. Here’s the draft of what I said:
Humans have real obligations to non-human animals. Their use has moral weight. While I see the appeal of drawing clean moral lines that put animal use completely out of bounds, our real obligations to our fellow humans make the ethical landscape more complicated.
The special regard in which we hold non-human animals is built into the regulations governing scientific research, regulations which prioritize reduction of animal pain, discomfort, and distress. Scientists do not take animal research lightly.
But our regard for non-human animals falls short of including them as full members of our moral community.
What makes someone a member of our moral community? I think a central part of it is their capacity to be a moral actor — to be able to consider an act in advance of performing it and evaluate whether it would be right or wrong to perform it. Ideally, one wants the evaluation to inform whether the act is then performed, but messing up — either in acting in accord with one’s evaluations, or in making those evaluations — is something moral actors do. The key feature is that they have the ability to recognize certain ways of acting as “messing up.”
What about moments in history or places where some people have been judged to be outside the moral community, for example because of their race or gender? I’m inclined to say we can identify these judgments as mistaken, not just because the people being marginalized arguably had a capacity to be a moral actor, but because they demonstrated at the time that they shared the capacity (within the bounds of their imposed circumstance) to act morally in this community.
We don’t hold non-human animals accountable for making moral decision or performing moral acts — indeed, we would be wrong to do so. To the extent that non-human animals might have the cognitive powers necessary to evaluate the goodness of actions or goals, whether their own or others’, there is no reason for us to believe that their “morality” would extend to humans, that it would grant is rights or any sort of special consideration.
The human moral community is where we live. Our duties to other human, thus, are the closest to home. We should do what we can to help our fellow humans live lives that let them achieve their fullest potential. The knowledge built through scientific activity — including well-regulated research with animals — helps us fulfill this duty.
Again, this does not mean that animal use is something to be taken lightly. We do care for non-human animals, and we view their unnecessary suffering as a bad thing. But our duties to humans are stronger.
Finally, Robert C. Jones, a philosophy professor from CSU-Chico (and a friend of mine from grad school), laid out his view of the ethical terrain. He argued that there isn’t a good reason to make membership in Homo sapiens a morally relevant characteristic, any more than making race, or religion, or sex, or gender a morally relevant characteristic. In contrast, he said, sentience is a morally relevant characteristic — and one that should place all sentient non-human animals out of bounds for experimentation. Bob pointed out that it’s only been 35 years since the publication of Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation, and that this is a reasonably short time for a social justice movement; abolition, for example, took longer.
I’ll be able to say something sensible about the discussion that followed after the video is available.
One issue we did talk about a bit was what exactly we can conclude from the fact (assuming it is a fact) that the public does not support the use of animals in basic research. In particular, I’m not sure that this sentiment necessarily tells us something clear about the public’s moral commitments. After all, the public seems largely supportive of the use of animals to make Happy Meals. I wonder whether lack of support for animal use in basic research tells us more about the public’s understanding of how science works or the value they assign to building knowledge that doesn’t help them in some obvious way. (Heck, I live in a state whose people often seem unconvinced that supporting public education is of value to them. Thinking down the causal chain is not always the most pronounced skill on display.)
And, as Bob pointed out, one of the important facts of ethics is that it’s possible that widely accepted practices are simply wrong. So drawing ethical conclusions from public sentiments is already iffy.
Something we didn’t really get into that I think should be a part of future conversations about this issue is whether it’s appropriate to cast the quest for animal rights as a social justice movement that is morally equivalent to the abolition of slavery, or the fight for civil rights, women’s rights, rights for people with disabilities, etc. As it happens, I am a member of a group that has had to keep asserting that we are fully human (despite the fact of not being male), and in the light of this experience, I would be horrified not to be supportive of the efforts of others to be recognized as such, even on the basis of some characteristic I do not share. But, to my ear (and my gut), there is an important difference that undermines the analogy to animal liberation.
Articulating that difference is hard, but it’s what I tried to get at with this part of my opening statement:
What about moments in history or places where some people have been judged to be outside the moral community, for example because of their race or gender? I’m inclined to say we can identify these judgments as mistaken, not just because the people being marginalized arguably had a capacity to be a moral actor, but because they demonstrated at the time that they shared the capacity (within the bounds of their imposed circumstance) to act morally in this community.
Really, I don’t think it’s a matter of one oppressed group wanting to pull up the rope ladder after achieving its liberation. I think the proponents of animal rights could learn something useful by talking to members of other groups fighting for social justice and listening to why this comparison doesn’t always sit right for them.
Was it a perfect dialogue? No, but I don’t think anyone expected it to be? Was it a productive discussion? If the aim was to articulate differing views, to ask and answer questions about those views, and even to identify some common ground, then I think it’s fair to say it was very productive.
I hope it was also useful in demonstrating that people can hold quite different views on a subject while still doing their best to be intellectually honest. There were no monsters on the panel, and some of us on opposite sides of the issue like and respect each other quite a lot. Putting that on display can only be good for the prospects of moving forward on these issues.
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The Nature news blog has a brief write-up of the event. However, I’m fairly sure (contra their reporting) that I never invoked animal rights. I suppose this is another place where the videotape may end up being useful.
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