Scientific American February 1997 [antikvár]

From the Editors The Animal Question Some readers, on first seeing our cover story, will think they smell a rat, and not just the one pictured. Researchers may fear that Scientific American is giving comfort to the enemy, the animal-rights protesters trying to turn laboratories upside down. Animal wel-farists, on the other hand, may assume our coverage will be a biased slam dunk of their arguments. I'm not in the business of disappointing readers, but those are two sets of expectations that won't be met here. Unfortunately, as our staff writer Madhusree Mukerjee points out in her overview beginning on page 70, it is the polarization of opinions on the experimental use of animals that has often discouraged a reasoned search for a middle ground. We have tried to present some of those divergent views, as well as the efforts at compromise. Some of the ideas expressed here are far from those of the editors, but we are presenting them because one function of this magazine is to be "WHAT HUMANE LIMITS ' should be on scientific curiosityf" f ' , In my opmion, the arguments for banning experiments on animals—that there are empirically and morally superior alternatives—are unpersuasive. And even some of the moral philosophies favoring reduced use of animals offer little in the way of real guidance. Utihtarians, for instance, ask that the suffering of animals be counterbalanced with good results. But that principle is unmanageably subjective and may even be prejudiced against research realities. The short-term benefits of most experiments are virtually nil, and the long-term benefits are incalculable. How do we enter them in a utilitarian ledger? Does increasing the sum of human knowledge count as a good? The conflict between animal welfarists and scientists is not just one of differing moral philosophies. Higher animal care costs constrain research budgets and make some investigations unaffordable—and not always the ones that the welfarists would like to see disappear. The question inevitably revolves back to. What humane limits should we impose on the exercise of our scientific curiosity? Researchers around the world ask and answer that for themselves every day. Their answers may not be perfect, but in general, they are neither ignorant nor willfully bad. Scientists should have the humility to recognize, however, that outsiders have often forced them to reexamine questions of animal welfare they might not otherwise have considered. The debate on animal rights may be frustrating and endless, but it may be constructive after all. JOHN RENNIE, Editor in Chief editors@>;ciam.com