Transforming the Brute : On the Ethical Acceptability of Creating Painless Animals

• Main Author: Mittelstadt, Brent
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Linköpings universitet, Centrum för tillämpad etik 2009
• Subjects: transforming; brute; nociception; pain; genetic; engineering; manipulation; modification; modify; gene; genes; bernard; rollin; animal; microencephalic; lumps; decerebrate; aml; amls; painless; painlessness; integrity; dignity; rights; companionship; telos; alteration; biomedicine; biomedical; experiment; experimentation; agriculture; farm; suffering; distress; capacity; bioethics; ethics; applied; mice; scn9a; nav1.7; therapy; germ; line; Ethics; Etik
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-19447

Transforming the Brute addresses the ethical acceptability of creating painless animals for usage in biomedical experimentation.  In recent decades the possibility of creating genetically decerebrate animals or AMLs for human ends has been discussed in scientific, academic, and corporate communities.  While the ability to create animals that cannot feel, experience, and are more plant than animal remains science fiction, biomedicine may now be able to eliminate or significantly reduce the capacity to feel pain and nociception through genetic engineering.  With this new technology comes the opportunity to vastly increase the welfare of animals used in biomedical experimentation, yet this possibility has largely been ignored by the scientific and academic community.  This work seeks to reveal the moral necessity of creating painless animals for usage in biomedical experimentation for animal welfare ends.  Intrinsic objections relating to animal integrity, rights, companionship, the alteration of telos, humility and virtue are considered.  The benefit of eliminating nociceptive pain in experimental animals is addressed, and differences are examined between biomedical experimentation and other usage of animals for human ends which makes the proposed creation of painless animals ethically unique.  Finally, an argument is presented for the moral necessity of replacing normal animals with painless animals in biomedical experimentation with consideration given to genetically decerebrate animals.