Debating the Value of Animal Research
Debating the Value of Animal Research
This chapter highlights at least one additional source of potential common ground: by better defining and assessing animal distress, researchers could likely reduce such distress and also improve the quality of research results. It analyzes some of the issues that arise in attempts to assess the “value” and “costs” of animal research and describes some of the criticisms of a reliance on animal studies to advance biomedical knowledge and therapies. It argues that the techniques for measuring either the benefits or the costs of animal research are too crude to produce a clear “for-or-against” answer. This chapter suggests that assessing costs (in terms of distress and suffering) is extraordinarily difficult and there has been very little serious scholarship on the question of the “costs” of animal research.
Keywords: animal research, costs, animal distress, suffering, value, animal studies
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