A consideration of policy implications: a panel discussion - In the Company of Animals

Unlike the animal rights movement, I believe for all the obvious reasons that scientists need to be able to conduct experiments on lower animals. But I realize those same reasons would seem not nearly so obvious to me if cited by advanced extraterrestrials to justify their research on humans. The animal rights movement deserves every credit for confounding the certainty and restraining the behavior of those of us who eat meat, wear leather, and support biomedical research.

The animal rights movement, of course, has been enormously effective at the margin. It has not stopped testing on animals. But campaigns by New York's Henry Spira and others have encouraged many companies to look for alternative testing methods that do not require animals. Patient lobbying by Christine Stevens of the Animal Welfare Institute has secured important changes in the minimum standards for keeping laboratory animals. Though some animal rightists believe these standards do not go far enough, universities complain bitterly of the extra costs.

But I suspect there are limits to what can be achieved by the movement's traditional campaigns. The health establishment, with the public's firm support, is not about to test new drugs on humans without first seeing if the drugs make rats keel over. Though a few scientists conceive of even monkeys as mere biological systems and have grossly abused them, I would like to think that most take good care of their laboratory animals, both for ethical reasons and because poor conditions make poor experimental subjects. Given the victories already won in improving the treatment of laboratory animals and minimizing their use, it may be that further efforts will bring only diminishing returns.

It is certainly an important goal, and a test of our civilized values, to protect monkeys and cats and dogs from maltreatment by researchers. But I think an even higher goal, to be pursued in parallel, is to protect whole species from being driven to extinction by the destruction of their habitat.

It is, of course, for the movement to decide what its goals should be. But many would not be sorry to see some of its formidable energies deployed in the effort to save endangered species and their habitats, both in the United States and abroad. Peter Singer's Great Ape Project--a proposal to accept chimpanzees, gorillas, and orang-utans into the community of moral equals with humans--is an interesting first step in this direction. The Project, as I understand it, is not directly aimed at preserving their habitat, but this goal is implied in the requirement that the great apes not be killed, caged, or tortured without due process.

The core of the animal rights agenda is ethical issues, and it may seem that the preservation of species is more an environmental cause. Singer's initiative points the way to laying an ethical groundwork for species preservation.

Respect for the domestic animals around us is the first step to enlarging our imaginations to those in distant oceans and jungles. Few would wish the animal rights movement to abandon its traditional agenda of seeing that pets are not abused and that farm animals are decently treated. But some extensions of this agenda, such as the absolutist demand to abolish zoos, can be seen as misdirected, since zoos are an effective way of teaching people about the richness of nature.

Primitive peoples respect nature because they consider it populated with supernatural powers. Our respect for nature is based on biologists' understanding of evolution and the intricacy of plant and animal communities. In the wider scheme of things, animal rightists could see scientists as their natural allies, not their opponents. Perhaps the time has come to declare victory in the laboratory and to move on to the wider battlefield of protecting the wild animals in the world's forests and oceans, whose right to existence is under daily challenge.

The questions asked of the panelists are, of course, questions for philosophers, of which I am not one. So instead of jumping into the minefield, I will tiptoe round its edges.

(1) Proudhon said all property is theft, but economists see property as the basis of value. Animals that cannot be owned as property are likely to be animals that have no value and, hence, to be treated as worthless. Slaves, being owned, were generally afforded the necessities of life. Though it is, of course, morally repugnant to treat humans that way, as the basic framework for treating animals, it is not so bad. Farm animals, having value, are given adequate food and shelter because it is in the farmer's own interest to do so.

Ownership rarely conveys absolute rights. I may own my land, but many laws and ordinances constrain how I use it. I cannot keep peacocks, throw wild parties that disturb the peace, raise a satellite dish to more than a certain height, acid a building that defies the town's zoning laws, or chop down a wood that contains an endangered species. People's rights over the animals they own are similarly constrained, and the constraints can be loosened or tightened exactly as much as the laws require.