Bernice Bovenkerk

The Animal Factor in Human Health

Lisa Lee (2017) laments the fact that two fields of inquiry that share a common ancestry—environmental ethics and bioethics—have drifted apart. Both these fields used to be broadly and inclusively defined, encompassing science and the humanities and including all living beings. Today, while environmental ethics addresses questions about environmental health and puts emphasis on systems— ignoring questions regarding human health—bioethics focuses on human health and on principles for conflict resolution, with an emphasis on individual autonomy. Due to such fragmentation, we miss the opportunity to address health issues in a more integrated manner. This is problematic, because the current health problems we encounter are “a complex combination of individual-level factors such as genetic predisposition and health-harming behavior, communityand population-level factors such as income and health infrastructure disparities, and environmental factors such as habitat and climate” (Lee 2017, 6). Lee argues that the relatively recent discipline of public health ethics shows overlaps with both fields and can serve as a bridge between them due to its focus on the interconnectedness of health factors on individual, community, and population levels, with environmental factors that influence our health. This is also emphasized in the recent popularity of the One Health approach. In the One Health approach the interrelatedness of human, animal, and environmental health is foregrounded and therefore, just like in public health ethics, there is a focus on both the individual and the collective (Verweij and Bovenkerk 2016). Indeed, the One Health approach is premised on the fact that “ethical dilemmas set up as human health versus the environment provide a false choice” (Lee 2017, 9). As ethicists working from respectively environmental, public health, and veterinary backgrounds, we could not agree more. Nevertheless, we want to take Lee’s arguments a step further and argue, first, that the role of the animal in human health should not be underestimated, and second, that public health ethics can also serve as a bridge between two other estranged fields of ethics: environmental ethics on the one hand and animal ethics on the other.

Between Individualistic Animal Ethics and Holistic Environmental Ethics Blurring the Boundaries

Due to its emphasis on experiential interests, animal ethics tends to focus on individuals as the sole unit of moral concern. Many issues in animal ethics can be fruitfully analysed in terms of obligations towards individual animals, but some problems require reflection about collective dimensions of animal life in ways that individualist approaches can’t offer. Criticism of the individualist focus in animal ethics is not new; it has been put forward in particular by environmental ethics approaches. However, the latter tend to be so far removed from the concerns of animal ethicists that both groups talk at cross purposes. We think the gap between environmental and animal ethics could be bridged by on the one hand focusing more on the collective dimensions of our concerns with animals—after all, individuals are constituted by the collective of which they are a part—and on the other hand, by showing that moral status can also be attributed to groups in an indirect way, related to the moral status of their individual members. In our paper we explore various (novel) ways of conceptualising the moral relevance of collectiveness in animal life. We draw on insights from public health ethics, as this field of inquiry has also developed—at least partly—in response to individualist approaches in human bioethics, creating more room for recognizing the value of population health, interpersonal relations, solidarity, and ways in which a collective is constituted.

The Use of Animal Models in Behavioural Neuroscience Research.

Animal models are used in experiments in the behavioural neurosciences that aim to contribute to the prevention and treatment of cognitive and affective disorders in human beings, such as anxiety and depression. Ironically, those animals that are likely to be the best models for psychopathology are also likely to be considered the ones that are most morally problematic to use, if it seems probable that (and if indeed they are initially selected as models because) they have experiences that are similar to human experiences that we have strong reasons to avoid causing, and indeed aim to alleviate (such as pain, anxiety or sadness). In this paper, against the background of contemporary discussions in animal ethics and the philosophy of animal minds, we discuss the views that it is morally permissible to use animals in these kinds of experiments, and that it is better to use less cognitively complex animals (such as zebrafish) than more complex animals (such as dogs). First, we criticise some justifications for the claim that human beings and more complex animals have higher moral status. We argue that contemporary approaches that attribute equal moral status to all beings that are capable of conscious strivings strivings (e.g. avoiding pain and anxiety; aiming to eat and play) are based on more plausible assumptions. Second, we argue that it is problematic to assume that less cognitively complex animals have a lesser sensory and emotional experience than more complex beings across the board. In specific cases, there might be good reasons to assume that more complex beings would be harmed more by a specific physical or environmental intervention, but it might also be that they sometimes are harmed less because of a better ability to cope. Determining whether a specific experiment is justified is therefore a complex issue. Our aim in this chapter is to stimulate further reflection on these common assumptions behind the use of animal models for psychopathologies. In order to be able to draw more definite conclusions, more research will have to be done on the influence of cognitive complexity on the experience of (human and non-human) animals.

Changing Expectations of Experts: The Symbolic Role of Ethics Committees

Complex policy issues pose a conundrum for liberal democratic governments. Disagreement about complex policy issues can often be traced back to fundamental value differences and governments aim to avoid heavy political conflicts based on these, while at the same time they face the need for expedient decision making. One solution is to seek advice of or even defer decisions to expert committees, in particular ethics committees. In this paper, we focus on the role of ethics committees by putting the role of ethicists as experts up for discussion. We argue that governments and the public foster wrong expectations regarding the role and mandate of ethics committees. Normative expertise is essentially different from scientific expertise. Lumping them together has resulted in false expectations and an overvaluation of the role of various types of experts. It is therefore necessary to explicate the roles the various players have and to define what is to be expected from them.