Is animal testing ethically justified? Why am I in favor of animal testing?

I believe that animal testing is ethically valid. Let’s take a look at why I’m in favor of animal testing.

 

I once came across a statistic that only about 14% of animals used in animal testing survive the experiment. Because of this negligible sacrifice, animal testing has long been debated as to its efficacy and appropriateness. Is it ethical to sacrifice animals for the benefit of humans?
In short, I don’t think there is anything ethically wrong with animal testing per se.
The ultimate goal of animal testing is the advancement of humanity. The goal is to prove scientific facts about humanity and life so that we can apply them to improve the quality of human life. But is it ethical to benefit humans at the expense of non-human species? In conclusion, I believe that there is nothing ethically wrong with the act of benefiting at the expense of other species. Consider the idea of humans eating food, which can also be seen as fulfilling human needs at the expense of non-human species. Of course, in this case, since humans are not autotrophs, we can say that killing is necessary for survival, but I believe that survival is also one of the basic human needs (survival desire). The basic idea is that satisfying human needs is no different from satisfying the ‘need for exploration’ through animal testing, or the ‘need for comfort’ through improving the quality of life, and satisfying the ‘need for survival’ through eating.
However, there is a catch. Is it ethically right to sacrifice a random other entity to fulfill your own needs? My answer to this question is that, while it is legally and ethically problematic between humans and humans, it is not legally and ethically problematic between humans and animals.
Before we get to the heart of this thesis, which is the relationship between humans and animals, let’s first look at the relationship between humans and humans. When we look at human-human relationships, it’s hard to explain them without mentioning the concept of society. We can satisfy our needs by killing others, but we are afraid of dying ourselves. This is generally true for all of us, so we organize like-minded individuals into societies that set rules for each other. When one person does an action A that affects another person, and the benefit x of doing the action A to the other person is outweighed by the harm y of doing the action A to the other person, they create a “law” to prohibit each other from doing the action. This is the case with murder, for example. In most cases, the sacrifice of the need to survive, which is the harm of being murdered, is incomparably greater than the fulfillment of the need to live, which is what the law promises to prohibit.
On the other hand, if the difference between x (benefit) and y (harm) as defined above is not very large, or if the magnitude of y is smaller than x, or if y is larger than x but the behavior cannot be clearly defined to be prohibited by law (for example, bullying behavior or minor name-calling), then another social contract called “ethics” is applied. Unlike the law, there is no definite punishment from the state for violating this code, but small damages such as remorse and guilt from the person’s own conscience or a cold stare from others are applied. In this case, since x, y, and small damages from others generally move within a small range, it cannot be said that even if a person always follows the law honestly, the person’s rational judgment is to follow all ethics.
Basically, when a human being is born in a country (society), he or she is considered to have agreed to the laws and ethics of that country. Ideally, it would be most reasonable to ask him/her if he/she agrees with the laws and regulations of the society as soon as he/she is born, and decide whether to accept him/her as a member of the society and require him/her to abide by the laws and ethics, or to exclude him/her from the society, depending on his/her opinion, but in reality, it is pointless to ask a newborn baby to do this, and it is clear that almost all humans agree with the laws and ethics, so in reality, he/she will automatically become a member of the society and have to abide by the laws. Once a human being is born and becomes a part of a society, he or she is restricted by law from harming others. Therefore, among humans of the same species, harming others for one’s own benefit is a legal and ethical problem.
As such, I’m going to use the ambiguous word “ethics” in this article in the same sense as above: it’s a set of norms that guide humans as members of society to avoid harming other members of society. But does “members of society” really only include humans? We need to clarify this in order to discuss the ethical issues of animal testing. I believe that it is impossible in many senses to include animals as members of society, and therefore it is right to define society as human beings.
The main argument for the inclusion of animals in society is that humans are heterotrophs. In other words, humans cannot sustain their lives without the sacrifice of other species, which means that if we were to consider all animals as part of society, we would starve to death. Even if only inedible animals were to remain part of society, this would mean different standards for different humans, and it seems unreasonable to make such a distinction between non-human species. This is also reflected in the law, which is why almost all countries make a clear distinction between humans and animals, limiting the membership of society to humans only, and requiring lesser standards for animals than for humans.
The second rationale is that all living things have a natural order of prioritization, from individual to species to nature. This means that any organism prioritizes its own life first, then the life of its own species, and finally the life of nature, including other species. Of course, there are exceptional circumstances in which these priorities are sometimes reversed, but I don’t think there’s much debate that this is the basic idea of life. In fact, it can be seen in the six characteristics of life (metabolism, stimulus and response, homeostasis, reproduction and inheritance, development and growth, adaptation and evolution), which all have in common that they support the longevity of their own life or the life of their species. In other words, for any organism, there are bound to be significant differences between its own species and other species, and this is quite natural.
Finally, another position is that humans are uniquely altruistic and rational among all living things. Altruism is a very rare phenomenon in nature as a whole, and the occasional altruistic behavior seen in bees and some birds is clearly different from the “altruism” we are used to seeing in human society, as it can be interpreted as a form of kin selection to preserve their own genes. In addition to altruism, “rationality” is another characteristic that is unique to humans. While other animals make judgments based on the external reactions of the moment, simple experiences, or for their own pleasure, humans have a depth of thought that is incomparable to other animals. This is called “reason” and is one of the major differences that distinguishes humans from other animals. Of course, these two traits, reason and altruism, are not direct evidence that animals cannot be included as part of human society. However, as indirect evidence that humans and other species are very different, they are significant enough.
Based on the above, my argument is that animals cannot be included as members of human society, and therefore it is not ethically problematic to use animals to (indirectly) benefit the human species through animal testing. Animal testing is essentially no different from eating animals in terms of “advancing humanity and satisfying human needs,” in the same way that humans satisfy their “survival needs” (appetite) by eating animals, and this is clearly different from the ethical issues that arise from humans harming their fellow humans.
However, there are a number of counterarguments to this argument. For example, some people argue that animal testing is ethically problematic and should be avoided because animals are capable of feeling emotions and pain, and the cruel treatment or infliction of pain on them for testing is frowned upon by many people. They argue that humans and animals are equal in the sense that they are “living beings” and that we shouldn’t subject them to suffering that we wouldn’t want to subject humans to.
I’d like to rebut this argument from two perspectives. The first is that it is wrong to equate humans and animals as “living beings”. It is of course true that humans and animals are the same “life form”. However, it is a logical leap to equate humans and animals based on this. This has been discussed before. Animals are generally not included in the “society” that humans have committed to in order for the species to thrive. If all animals were included in this society, even the most basic and physiological act of eating animals would become legally and ethically wrong, and the society would no longer be sustainable.
Another objection is that there is a strict ethical distinction between “animal testing” and “how we conduct animal testing”. I don’t think “animal testing” is ethically problematic, but “how to conduct animal testing” can be ethically problematic, depending on the circumstances. The two sound like the same thing at first glance, but not distinguishing between them is like not distinguishing between “swinging your hand” and “hitting the person in front of you with your hand”. There is nothing ethically wrong with “swinging your hand”, but “swinging your hand and hitting the person in front of you” is ethically wrong because it causes harm to the person in front of you, even if it is caused by “swinging your hand”. Just as we cannot say that the act of ‘swinging a hand’ is ethically wrong based on the existence of the situation ‘swinging a hand and hitting the person in front of you’, we must distinguish between ‘animal testing’ and ‘how to conduct animal testing’.
I’m not saying that ‘animal testing’ is ethically problematic because it can cause harm to animals depending on how it’s done. What I’m saying is that it’s ethically problematic because depending on how the animal testing is done, humans can be harmed. Let me explain with a concrete example. Let’s say an experimenter performs a cruel experiment, such as slowly heating a live rat. There are two types of victims from this experiment. One is the rat that suffered and was heated, and the other is the people who heard about the experiment and were outraged. I want to focus on the latter, because if an animal test stimulates human “empathy” and makes humans feel bad, this is ethically problematic because the animal test has caused a small harm y to humans. The suffering of the former of the two victims, the rat, is not ethically problematic because it is outside the norms of human society, but the suffering of empathic humans caused by seeing or hearing the rat’s suffering may be ethically problematic. In other words, the “animal test” itself is not problematic, but the way it is conducted may cause ethical problems when humans hear about it. In some ways, these two victims are closely linked in cause and effect, but it makes sense to think of them separately, as in the example of the “hand waving” example described earlier.
While this has nothing to do with the ethical validity of animal testing, I’d like to briefly introduce a way to minimize the ethical problems of animal testing methods. The 3Rs stand for Replacement: It is right to avoid animal testing if the same result/effect can be achieved with a non-animal test, Refinement: When designing an animal test, the test should be designed to reduce the suffering of the animal as much as possible without affecting the results, and Reduction: The number of animals used in the test should be minimized. If it is possible to achieve the same results with less animal suffering, then it is less likely to raise ethical concerns about the methods of animal testing. By following the principles of replacement, refinement, and reduction, we can minimize the harm that these experiments cause to empathetic people.
On the other hand, another argument against animal testing is the “uncertainty of benefit,” which is a fundamental difference between animal testing and eating animals. For example, they point to cases where the safety of a drug learned through animal testing does not translate to humans, resulting in the sacrifice of a pampered animal, or where the sacrifice of a large number of animals is ultimately wasted because no meaningful data is obtained. Their argument is that these uncertainties can cause the benefits of animal testing to be significantly lower than the suffering and lives of the animals sacrificed, which can be ethically problematic because the sacrifice is ultimately for nothing.
I would strongly disagree, and the rationale for this is that just because an animal test fails and is not applicable to humans does not make the data meaningless. The essence of human science is the human desire to explore. The process of learning about the unknown is itself a human pleasure and desire. This is not to say that pure science is a lower priority than applied engineering because it has a narrower scope of application, but rather that both fields are meaningful. We can apply this principle of curiosity to the failed animal tests. The fact that the results are not applicable to humans or do not support existing theories does not make the experiment any less meaningful. In other words, it can be seen as a kind of “fulfillment of human needs at the expense of other species,” and I think it is ethically unproblematic because it is in line with the instincts of the human species.
So far, we have discussed the ethical validity of animal testing, and to summarize my argument in a nutshell: animals cannot be included as members of human society, so it is not ethically problematic to take advantage of another species. However, there may be secondary ethical issues that arise depending on how the animal testing is conducted, but these should not be related to the ethical validity of animal testing, and I believe that these secondary ethical issues can be addressed to some extent through the 3Rs principle introduced earlier.