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MONTH: December 2006
Animal Liberation author Peter Singer ires activists by calling some animal testing "justifiable"
LONDON--Philosopher
and Great Ape Project cofounder Peter Singer, whose 1975 opus Animal Liberation
provided intellectual support to the early animal rights movement, allegedly
endorsed biomedical research on monkeys during an on-camera discussion
with Oxford University neurosugeon Tipu Aziz.
Aired by BBC-2 on November 27, Singer's
remarks were previewed a day earlier by Gareth Walsh of the London Times,
under the headline "Father of animal activism backs monkey testing."
"I am a surgeon and also a scientist,"
Aziz told Singer. "Part of my work has been to induce Parkinsonism
in primatesSąTo date 40,000 people have been made better with [one of
Aziz's discoveries], and worldwide at the time I would guess only 100
monkeys were used at a few laboratories."
Responded Singer, "Well, I think
if you put a case like that, clearly I would have to agree that was a
justifiable experiment. I do not think you should reproach yourself for
doing it, provided--I take it you are the expert in this, not me--that
there was no other way of discovering this knowledge. I could see that
as justifiable research."
Aziz told Walsh that Singer's remarks
show that opponents of a new primate lab at Oxford "haven't a case."
Replied Oxford anti-lab campaign leader
Mel Broughton, "I would not accept that at all." Singer's remarks,
Broughton said, "certainly do not represent the views of SPEAK,"
Broughton's organization, "or the vast majority of people who campaign
against animal research."
Commented Tom Regan, author of The Case
for Animal Rights (1983) and Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal
Rights (2004), "What makes Singer's opinion noteworthy is not what
he thinks, but who he is said to be. He is, we are told, 'The father of
the modern animal rights movement.' Animal Liberation, we are told, 'is
considered the Bible of the [animal rights] movement.' Neither inference
is true. Singer believes that consequences determine moral right and wrong.
Right actions bring about the best consequences. Wrong actions fail to
do so.
"People who believe in animal rights
could not disagree more," Regan asserted. "The role of basic
moral rights, whomsoever's rights they are, is to protect individuals
against the very type of abuse so painfully illustrated by monkey research.
The basic moral rights of the individual, the rights to life and bodily
integrity, for example, should never be violated in the name of reaping
benefits for others."
Rutgers University Law School professor
Gary Francione, author of Animals, Property, and the Law (1995) and Rain
Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (1996), told
National Review columnist Wesley J. Smith that, "It simply doesn't
matter what Singer said...I suspect that other than possibly causing [PETA
founder Ingrid] Newkirk to announce an 'I'd rather go naked than have
Parkinson's' campaign to further fill PETA's coffers, and my getting hate
mail from 'animal rights' people who think I am a heretic for criticizing
Singer, nothing much will happen."
Responded Singer to his critics, "Neither
in Animal Liberation, nor anywhere else, have I ever said that no experiments
on animals could ever be justifiable. My position has always been that
whether an act is right or wrong depends on its consequences. I do insist,
however, that the interests of animals count among those consequences,
and that we cannot justify speciesism, which I define as giving less weight
to the interests of nonhuman animals than we give to the similar interests
of human beings.
"In Animal Liberation," Singer
continued, "I suggested that a test for whether a proposed experiment
on animals is justifiable is whether the experimenter would be prepared
to carry out the experiment on human beings at a similar mental level--say,
those born with irreversible brain damage. If Professor Aziz is not prepared
to say that he would think such experiments justifiable, his willingness
to use animals is based on a prejudice against giving their interests
the same weight as he gives to the interests of members of our own species.
"Whether or not the occasional experiment on animals is defensible," Singer added, "I remain opposed to the institutional practice of using animals in research, because, despite some improvements over the past thirty years, that practice still fails to give equal consideration to the interests of animals. For that reason I oppose putting more resources into building new facilities for animal experimentation. Instead, these funds should go into clinical research involving consenting patients, and into developing other methods of research that do not involve the harmful use of animals."