The idea that animal experimentation saves human lives is often cited in defense of the practice, but in fact most of the experiments have nothing to do with benefits to humanity. They are often carried out for the purposes of corporate research, which pays the university to do this research for its own, far less noble purposes.
For example, the big pharmaceutical companies have a big presence at U of T, at the Medical Science building, and it is certain that much of the experimentation that goes on is in fact little more than product testing for them. These are drug that even when approved are certainly not healthy for human beings (see http://www.healthcoalition.ca/pharm.html). Money is the driving force behind this research, not humanity's well-being.
Testing to cure cancer, for example, is used as a smokescreen for testing that will only benefit the pharmaceutical companies insofar as they will have yet another product in the marketplace as a result. Every time you hear a TV ad talking about the side effects of the drugs, you can be sure animals have had to suffer those side effects.
These purposes and ends may be phrased in such a way as to convey a sense of great importance or necessity, but if we compare these ends to the means used to achieve them (i.e. animal testing) they do not measure up - especially when alternative methods could be used.
For a more detailed argument along these lines see http://www.cruelscience.ca/research.htm
Right now, at U of T, the corporations are taking over the campus, allowed by the U of T Administration through the "2030 Vision" outline by President Naylor, and contested by the student unions. Many faculty and students feel this massive infusion of research money (billions of dollars) will erode academic freedoms; we are also concerned that it will also erode ethical standards on many fronts, including the university’s position on human rights, civil rights, and not least, animal rights - especially if military research funding is expanded through MARs, which partners with U of T.
A few years ago, military funding was proposed in connection with OISE but was withdrawn after protest; however, there is a sizable danger that military funding will increase under the current Administration, and that an exponential rise in animal testing will accompany it.
Ethically, there is no substantial difference between human and non-human animals; we all feel pain and none of us wishes to be held captive and tortured. Therefore, if non-consenting experimentation and torture are ethically wrong against human beings on these grounds, it is also wrong to do this to non-human beings.
Animal experimentation may rightly be called institutionalized animal abuse and torture in the name of science, not unlike the atrocities carried by Japanese scientists on Chinese POWs during WWII or the Nazis in the same era.
The only difference one can point at is that these experiments were carried out on human beings. Yet if there is no substantive difference between human and non-human beings in terms of capacity to feel pain (both emotional and physical) on what grounds can the Research Ethics office justify experimentation on animals?
Any possible justification assumes that testing will proceed and seeks only to mitigate the most egregious forms of it; but this mitigating approach serves to sanction continued experimentation! Perhaps the Research Ethics office ought instead to take a strong stand against the practice entirely!
There is no valid ethical justification for animal experimentation, unless you maintain that human life is more valuable, but that is logically indefensible. Attempts to formulate ethical justifications are done so in order to safeguard the research funds which the university gets for doing so.
Some good people in the Research Ethics office may see themselves as mitigating the more horrible practices and without their invention that may very well be true, but mitigation also serves as de facto sanction, and this is the ethical sticking point that cannot easily be resolved.
In an ideal society this would not happen at all. The only thing holding us back from making society better is fear of being isolated and ostracized by those who do not share a vision of a more just society, as well as the comforts that go along with complicity with injustice.
At a certain point, for a few people, these incentives for maintaining an unjust status quo at the expense of innocent creatures is not enough. Liberating yourself from the burden of conscience is not such a terrible fate; more people in ethically compromised situations ought to take this "road less travelled." They and the world would be a better place for it.
Remember: none of us lives forever; in the short time that we are on this Earth, the true measure of our worth is what we contribute to the well-being of others.
Thank you for taking the time to read and reflect on this site, and most importantly, to act upon it.
