Brute Science: Dilemmas in Animal Experimentation

ISBN-13: 9780415131148 / Angielski / Miękka / 1997 / 304 str.

Hugh LaFollette; Niall Shanks

Opis

Animal experimentation is one of the most controversial areas of debate on animal rights. Biomedical research is at the hard edge of these debates: it throws up fundamental questions of moral value - of whether human life is more important than that of animals. Much experimentation is defended by its apparent success in terms of increasing medical knowledge. This study investigates whether biomedical research using animals is, in fact, scientifically justified. The authors show that in scientific terms - using the models that scientists themselves use - these claims are exaggerated, or even false. They argue that we need to reassess our use of animals and, indeed, rethink the standard positions in the debate. Their analysis reveals why research using animals might be a source of hypotheses about human biomedical phenomena, yet would never prove or establish anything about this phenomena.

Spis treści

Part I. Understanding the Debate 1. A First Look: the Prima Facie Case 2. The Problems of Relevance 3. Claude Bernard: The Founder of the Paradigm 4. The Current Paradigm 5. Evolution I: Species and Species' Differences 6. Evolution II: The Widening Synthesis Part II. Evaluating Animal Experimentation: The Scientific Issues 7. Causal Disanalogy I: Strong Models and Theoretical Expectations 8. Causal Disanalogy II: The Empirical Evidence 9. Causal Disanalogy III: Weak Models 10. Evading Causal Disanalogy: It Just Works 11. Avoiding Causal Disanalogy: Transgenic Animals 12. Basic Research Part III. Evaluating Animal Experimentation: The Moral Issues 13. The Moral Debate in Historical Context 14. Speciesism: The Deontological Defense 15. Incalculable Benefits: the Consequentialist Defense.

O autorze

Hugh LaFollette is Professor of Philosophy and Niall Shanks of Associate Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Biological Sciences at East Tennessee State University.