Kay Peggs

An Insufferable Business: Ethics, Nonhuman Animals and Biomedical Experiments.

Simple Summary This paper explores the ways in which biomedical research that uses nonhuman animal subjects generates financial profits and gains for humans who are associated with the industry. Research establishments, scientists, regulators and persons that inspect laboratories for compliance, those associated with granting licences, companies that sell nonhuman animal subjects and that supply equipment for the research, and corporations that market the resulting products are among those that benefit financially. These profits are rarely discussed—they seem to be camouflaged by the focus of the moral convention that assumes that human health-related needs prevail over those of the nonhuman animals who are so used. The paper concludes by calling for an end to the denigration of nonhuman animals as experimental subjects who can be used as commodities for profit-maximisation and as tools in experiments for human health benefits. Abstract Each year millions of nonhuman animals suffer in biomedical experiments for human health benefits. Clinical ethics demand that nonhuman animals are used in the development of pharmaceuticals and vaccines. Nonhuman animals are also used for fundamental biomedical research. Biomedical research that uses nonhuman animals is big business but the financial gains are generally occluded. This paper explores how such research generates profits and gains for those associated with the industry. Research establishments, scientists, laboratories, companies that sell nonhuman animal subjects, that supply equipment for the research, and corporations that market the resulting products are among those that benefit financially. Given the complex articulation of ethical codes, enormous corporate profits that are secured and personal returns that are made, the accepted moral legitimacy of such experiments is compromised. In order to address this, within the confines of the moral orthodoxy, more could to be done to ensure transparency and to extricate the vested financial interests from the human health benefits. But such a determination would not address the fundamental issues that should be at the heart of human actions in respect of the nonhuman animals who are used in experiments. The paper concludes with such an address by calling for an end to the denigration of nonhuman animals as experimental subjects who can be used as commodities for profit-maximisation and as tools in experiments for human health benefits, and the implementation of a more inclusive ethic that is informed by universal concern about the suffering of and compassion for all oppressed beings.

Animal Experiments and Animal Rights

This chapter explores grass-roots activism as it is associated with other animals in society. Grass-roots activism works at the level of subpolitics (Beck, 1992) rather than at the level of political parties. Grassroots groups, such as Greenpeace, the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), endeavour to generate public support for campaigns against the ill-treatment of animals. Other grass-roots groups, such as Pro-Test, try to generate public support for the use of animals when it is beneficial to humans (in this case for the use of other animals in experiments). Sociology has a good deal to say about such subpolitical expression. Using sociological perspectives on social movements that organize around specific goals, this chapter explores the ways in which humans have mobilized around issues associated with the human (ab)use of other animals. Although I draw on a number of issues, the main focus of the chapter is on the contentious issue of experiments on other animals. Experiments on other animals are a major focus of political engagement, with campaigning groups advocating for and against such actions. The chapter provides a more in-depth discussion of animal advocacy than that provided in Chapter 4 and draws out some of the policy issues associated with such experiments.

Animals and Biology as Destiny

Sociology has been regarded traditionally as the study of humans in societies. Sociological theories that centre on action, which stress the role of meaning in social interaction, point us to the social rather than the biological foundations of sociological analysis. Because other animals have been, and continue to be, associated with the biological rather than with the social it has been argued (by Mead (1934) and others) that the appropriate focus in sociology is on humans alone. However, Bryant (1979) argues that sociology has a great deal to offer in the study of the ‘zoological connection’. In this chapter I take this further by beginning to explore issues associated with other animals in society as they might be examined in sociology. Because sociological theories point us in the direction of the social rather than the biological, I begin by exploring sociological thinking on the role of biology. Although the history of the development of sociology and biology has been entwined (Fuller, 2006, p. 80), this entanglement has at times been less than harmonious, not least because sociology has sought to challenge biological deterministic notions about differences among humans. In this chapter I explore the challenge that sociology has made to biology and critique naturalistic approaches that view the biological composition of beings as a justification for inequalities.

Animals, Crime and Abuse

One of the most serious charges that can be laid against humans is that they have behaved like ‘animals’ (Midgley, 2004). This insult is often reserved for the most shocking of human behaviour, behaviour associated with crimes such as rape and murder. Consequently, in the popular media as well as in the news media it is not unusual to find humans who have perpetrated the most awful of crimes being called ‘animals’. However, it is not other animals who commit such acts; the perpetrators are human. Indeed, many of the victims of human crimes are other animals. The abuse of other animals is a daily occurrence in many societies and the criminal law authorizes the abuse of other animals (e.g. in laboratories and on farms) in their billions. This chapter explores the abuse of other animals through the lens of the sociology of crime, and in doing so examines the ways in which the perpetrators of crime are ‘animalized’ (Arluke and Sanders, 1996), the ways in which other animals are at risk from humans (e.g. through neglect and cruelty) and the ways in which humans use other animals for hazardous purposes (e.g. as status symbols and as weapons in gang violence). The chapter also explores the relationships between the abuse of other animals and the abuse of humans, which has been a key focus of crime and other animals. I begin by considering the interactions between morality and crime.

Animals, Leisure and Culture

On the BBC Radio 4 programme A Point of View (first broadcast on Friday 8 July 2011) Alain de Botton claimed that ‘animals, as we know, don’t loom very large in culture’ (de Botton, 2011); he could not have been more wrong. If only, as a schoolchild, Alain had read Bryant’s (1979) newly published paper about the zoological connection he would not have made such an error over 30 years later. Other animals are everywhere in culture; but like Mr de Botton we often fail to notice them. Perhaps the problem stems from our definitions of culture. As we use the word in everyday life, ‘culture’ has a number of meanings. We often experience ‘different cultures’ on a city break, we can be seen as having ‘no culture’ when we are uncouth, and we can be thought to be improving ourselves with ‘a bit of culture’ when we go to the theatre. For reasons discussed below, we associate ‘culture’ in all its forms with humans; however, other animals appear in all manifestations of ‘culture’. For example, ‘bullfighting’ is associated with Spanish culture; accusing someone of talking ‘bullshit’ in a meeting would be considered to be coarse; and the tale in the opera Carmen takes place on the day of a bullfight. Although other animals are central to these notions of culture, they are often invisible within them. Moreover, other animals are conventionally not seen as having culture themselves.

Animals, Social Inequalities and Oppression

In sociology, the examination of inequalities and oppression centres on the power relations, inequalities and disadvantages that are fundamental to most social systems. Apart from being central to relations among humans such inequalities and oppressions are fundamental to relations between humans and other animals. Despite the prevalence of inequalities associated with being ‘animal’, sociological analysis has largely centred on power relations among humans. In this chapter I aim to explore how other animals have been (and can be further) drawn into sociological analysis of social inequalities and oppression. In order to do this I examine sociological work that considers human relationships with other animals and the contradictory ways that humans view other species, and investigate the ways in which the oppression of other animals is interconnected with oppressions related to, for example, gender, class and ‘race’. In addition, I draw on sociological thinking about difference, similarity and ‘otherness’ as central aspects of stratification and oppression. The chapter is organized around David Nibert’s (2002) theoretical framework, which sets out to explain the origins of the oppression of humans and other animals. To put this theoretical framework in context the chapter begins with discussion of how stratification has been discussed in sociology.

Sociology and Animals

In his book The Compleat Observer, Jack Sanger (1996, p. 5) recounts the story of a man who crosses the border between two countries each day, with a donkey pulling a cart full of straw. The border guard notices that the man looks wealthier each time he crosses and so concludes that the man must be smuggling. The next time the man tries to cross the border the guard orders the straw to be searched for smuggled goods, but nothing is found. On subsequent crossings he orders the straw to be cut into pieces, to be boiled and finally to be burned, but still the guard finds nothing. Meanwhile, the man gets wealthier and wealthier. Eventually the guard gives up. Some years later the guard bumps into the man, who has now retired to a beautiful house in the country. Astounded, the guard asks him to come clean and tell him how he became so rich. Since the man is no longer smuggling, he is happy to own up; he used to smuggle donkeys. Sociology has acted rather like the guard in this story in largely concentrating on what it expects to find rather than opening itself up to the possibilities of what might be out there, and in doing so has often overlooked other animals.

Town and Country: Animals, Space and Place

In Britain we often picture the countryside as a rural idyll; a landscape inhabited by domesticated other animals (such as sheep and cows) in patchwork fields surrounded by wilder areas populated by red squirrels and deer who live in the woods and forests. In the city or town our encounters with other animals are more likely to be found in walking with dogs, sightings of cats sitting in windows and encounters with welcome visitors (such as blackbirds and robins) or unwelcome creatures (such as gulls and pigeons). If we go out to sea we might hope to come upon other animals such as puffins, gannets, dolphins and seals. Like in all countries across the world the different landscapes and seascapes are associated with a variety of other animals and, depending on where we are, we will have different ideas about the other animals we might meet. Although these ideas are often idyllic, they demonstrate that, as a grouping, other animals are ‘subjected to all manner of sociospatial inclusions and exclusions’ (Philo, 1995, p. 655). In this chapter I explore spatial relationships between humans and other animals and examine how these are related to power relations. Thus I ask how are other animals included and excluded from different places? In order to answer this question I compare urban areas such as towns and cities with places viewed as natural (which, for ease, I call the countryside), and consider how humans make a distinction between places for other animals and places not for other animals (or not for specific other animals).

Conclusions: Sociology for Other Animals

As we have seen, societies are broader than the human. Back in the 1970s, Bryant (1979) argued that other animals play important roles in society and, consequently, are relevant for sociological study. His zoological connection revealed a range of ways in which other animals are central to human societies, and the preceding chapters have shown that this is indeed the case. Other animals are everywhere. Other animals are central to every aspect of our lives: in what we say and what we do; in what we eat and what we wear; in our industry and in our leisure time; in what we worship and what we despise; in how we progress and how we do not. Other animals are central to who we think we are and who we think we are not. Moreover, we are central to the lives of other animals, most notably in our oppression of them. We take away their selves, take away their space, take away their freedom and take away their lives; yet still they seem invisible to us. Sociology is part of the seeing of other animals and, although still somewhat marginal to sociology, that sociological seeing is changing things in sociology. However, it is not just seeing other animals that should be a central component of sociology; the role of sociology in countering the oppression of other animals is also pertinent. This returns me to Bryant.

Consumption of the Animal

A major way in which humans experience other animals in their everyday lives is through the consumption of food. Many humans eat ‘meat’-based products, drink milk and consume related products such as cheese and butter. Not only are parts, pieces and derivatives of other animals present in many of the foods that humans eat, they are ubiquitous (while often invisible) components of a range of other consumer products such as wool in fabrics and furnishings; fur in clothing; feathers in pillows and cushions; skin in shoes, coats and bags; bone in glue, ornaments and jewellery; and gelatine in photographs and capsule casings. Shopping is the second most popular leisure activity in Britain and other animals are a major component of what we buy. From the living ‘pet’ for the home to the dead creature on the plate, our shopping experiences are replete with other animals, and increasing wealth along with the concomitant growth of consumption has led to an increased demand for other animals for consumption.