In 2012, The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness declared that animals are as aware of their immediate surroundings as humans are. The declaration, signed at a conference in the presence of Stephen Hawking, states that animals can feel emotions just as strongly as humans can. This brings the ethics of animal testing back into question.
While I agree animal testing in cosmetics is unnecessary and should be eradicated, animal testing in the sciences is far too essential – especially in the worlds of psychology and biology – to be abolished. Human lives matter far more than animal lives.
There are some laws already in place to protect animals undergoing testing. The Animal Welfare Act regulates how animals should be fed, housed and treated. The law excludes rats, mice, bird, cold-blooded animals and farm animals from the right to life, but it also states these animals must suffer as little as possible if they are to be killed. Most experiments in psychology are done on these types of animals.
According to PETA, the experiments that originally lead to conversations about animal cruelty were Harry Hallow’s monkey studies.
Hallow’s experiments are important in understanding the connection between infants and their mothers. He experimented on monkeys by taking them away from their mothers at birth, and placing them in an environment without socialization. He had two objects in the new environment, “a wire mother” with food, and a “cloth mother” without food. The baby monkeys chose the cloth mother every time.
As cruel as these experiments were to monkeys, we learned that some living things, including humans, are predisposed to forming attachments with their caregivers at birth.
This finding was significant because it lead to forcing many orphanages across Europe to make changes in the way caregivers raised children in orphanages. Baby orphans were no longer left in their cribs for days, and caregivers now knew these babies needed to be given more attention.
In biology, scientists experiment on animal organs to find what helps kill pathogens in order to help heal humans with those diseases. This practice involves killing animals.
There are some agencies like the New England Anti-Vivisection Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals who are trying to eradicate all animal testing. They believe in humane treatment of animals at all times. Unfortunately for science, this ideal is just not obtainable.
Biology and psychology are both going to continue to need subjects to experiment on. The options are experiment on humans, or experiment on animals. Killing humans to help humans seems counter-intuitive.
Personally I love animals and I hate that animal testing has brought so many animals pain; but I also recognize the necessity of sacrificing animals for scientific disciplines. Important discoveries have come forth from it, and I believe important discoveries will come from it in the future.
Disclaimer – I am not a psychologist, I am a student studying psychology at the undergraduate level.
