Lori Gruen

Concise Review: Scientific and Ethical Roadblocks to Human Embryonic Stem Cell Therapy

Despite the identified therapeutic potential of embryonic stem cells for treating human disease and injury, a number of roadblocks, scientific and ethical, stand in the way of progress toward this goal. We identify six areas of particular interest: tumorigenicity, animal product contamination, genetic compatibility, funding, cell type for transplantation, “embryo‐friendly” derivation methods and discuss avenues for moving beyond the difficulties.

Animals in science: some areas revisited

Abstract Science is a human activity, and as such, it is not value-free. Not only do subjective views permeate all types of science, they also prevail in many moral debates concerning how animals are used for primarily anthropocentric ends, even when formal philosophical argument is put forth. Four issues are addressed that demand closer attention by those who are seriously engaged in the collection, interpretation, and explanation of behavioural data. (1) It is important to recognize that an animals point of view is actually an animals point of view from a humans point of view. (2) Attempts to quantify pain and suffering in animals are fraught with difficulties, and despite the best intentions, do not eliminate human responsibilities. (3) Appeals to science to resolve difficult questions concerning animal suffering must be combined with other factors including common sense and moral and ethical commitments. (4) When in doubt, err on the side of the animals. Those who study animal behaviour and behavioural ecology need to be particularly aware of problems of animal welfare for these types of research involve field observations, studies of captive animals, and experiments. In addition, findings from cognitive ethological investigations are used to inform and motivate discussion of human moral and ethical obligations to animals.

Biomedical and Environmental Ethics Alliance: Common Causes and Grounds

In the late 1960s Van Rensselaer Potter, a biochemist and cancer researcher, thought that our survival was threatened by the domination of military policy makers and producers of material goods ignorant of biology. He called for a new field of Bioethics—“a science of survival.” Bioethics did develop, but with a narrower focus on medical ethics. Recently there have been attempts to broaden that focus to bring biomedical ethics together with environmental ethics. Though the two have many differences—in habits of thought, scope of concern, and value commitments—in this paper we argue that they often share common cause and we identify common ground through an examination of two case studies, one addressing drug development, the other food production.

Changing Values: A Commentary on Hall

We think Hall (2013) is correct in arguing that the environmental movement needs a stronger narrative and believe that such a narrative requires significant nuance. Hall rightly recognizes the importance of appropriately framing the current narratives appealed to by the environmental movement. They are too simplistic and, as such, misleading. The optimistic frames tend to ignore the real losses people experience in trying to live greener lifestyles. The ‘doom and gloom’ frames are apt to foster a sense of hopelessness rather than motivate change. However a stronger narrative, as we think Hall would agree, requires that the more qualitative, multifaceted, and mutable nature of value be considered. Consider Hall’s discussion of sacrifice. In her response to the optimistic reformers who choose a positive frame, she argues that there is too great a readiness to discard the notion of sacrifice. While reformers view sacrifice as being excessively focused on loss, Hall suggests that inherent in the notion of sacrifice is the willful exchange of a loss of something valued for something valued more deeply. Though Hall recognizes that sacrifice is not merely deprivation when she defines it as a ‘surrender of something valued . . . for the sake of something regarded as more important’ (Hall, 2013), sacrifice seems to be understood as a sort of quantitative transaction—where something of x value is exchanged for something else of greater value y. To think of sacrifice in this way is an over-simplification. While sacrifice does involve giving something up for the sake of something else as Hall suggests, it is more complicated than that. Consider actual cultural practices involving, or commonly understood as, sacrifice—such as cases of willful self-denial or fasting for Lent or Ramadan. In these cases, what might be seen as the loss associated with the fasting is a price paid for a valued religious tradition but it is not only that. To frame what is given up as merely a price paid for something more worthy does not capture that the act of self-denial is important and valuable in itself. The value of sacrifice is more than what one receives in exchange. The putative loss may not be a loss at all. Rather, it expresses an aspiration of the self. In some circumstances it is a way to achieve simplicity, self-control, and empathy for others who have experienced loss. In others, it is part of a practice that reinforces virtue, such as when giving selflessly—which often means anonymously—is seen as an important practice. The greater the value of what is given, the greater the value of what the giver

Incarceration, Liberty, and Dignity

Currently an unprecedented number of individuals live in captivity. There has been an increase in attention to the harms of human bondage and confinement, and the harms of captivity for non-human animals is beginning to come into sharper view. Those who do focus on other animals in captivity have tended to focused on pain, suffering, and killing with much less attention to the potentially devastating effects of denying liberty. Incaceration does cause physical and psychological harm, but it also is a violation of autonomy. I argue that other animals have autonomy, they make choices within their species-typical behavioral repertoire and these choices are meaningful to them. Denying them the freedom to exercise their autonomy by keeping them incarcerated, under captive control, is thus ethically problematic.

More Risky Than Radical

The threat of Ebola is terrifying. As I write, a new outbreak of the viral disease is affecting areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo near the Uganda border. As of August 3, 2018, the World Health Organization reported 43 people had contracted the disease and 33 infected people had died (Disease Outbreak News, 4 August 2018: http://www.who.int/csr/don/4august-2018-ebola-drc/en). That toll is expected to rise. The recent pandemics have been as tragic as they have been horrifying; tens of thousands of deaths have been attributed to the Ebola virus. Even though a recent census of great apes has revealed that wild populations aren’t quite as diminished as previously thought (Bakalar 2018), the ongoing threats to the future existence of chimpanzees and gorillas remain extreme. Ebola is one of those threats. Thus, planning to prevent these mass casualties from occurring is certainly an ethically worthy aspiration. The One Health model proposed by Edwards and colleagues (Edwards et al. 2018) is an important focus in such planning. As they note, this model “moves us away from an anthropocentric approach to public health—one that puts humans’ health at the center of public health campaigns—and toward an ecological approach—one that looks to control or mitigate common threats to organisms within shared environments through innovative and integrative measures” (35). However, the radical measure Edwards and her coauthors propose—to experiment on wild endangered chimpanzees and gorillas by administering an unapproved and minimally tested vaccine—is ethically risky. Edwards and colleagues argue that this experimentation on wild populations of great apes should occur to test the safety and effectiveness of new vaccines to reduce interspecies Ebola transmission, to protect the apes, and to accelerate vaccine development for use with humans. Because there are, fortunately, not many opportunities to perform vaccine trials with humans in large outbreaks (since they don’t occur that often), they argue this form of experimentation on wild endangered populations is a good alternative, that “the ethical case is already strong.” I disagree. This is not an ethically justified alternative, keeping in mind that there is currently no oversight mechanism for such experimentation, for two reasons: First, we have learned that human interventions like the one proposed too often have unforeseen and unforeseeable consequences; second, the environmental factors of the One Health model that focus on the environmental causes of the cross-species transmission of the virus are overlooked in Edwards and colleagues’ discussion. Focusing on environmental causes may shift the discussion from preventative vaccination to more effective, less experimental preventative interventions, with less unpredictable consequences available, that don’t put endangered great apes at risk.

The Ethical Limits of Domestication: A Critique of Henry Heffner's Arguments

ABSTRACT Henry E. Heffner argues that “animals bred for research are properly viewed as animals who have successfully invaded the laboratory niche, relying heavily on kin selection to perpetuate their genes.” (1999, p. 134). This view of human–animal interactions is the corner-stone of his defense of animal experimentation in two widely-distributed papers (Heffner 1999, 2001). We argue that Heffners defense lacks adequate attention to ethical distinctions and principles.