UPF-CAE board member Catia Faria (Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society, Universidade do Minho) has published the commentary “A flimsy case for the use of non-human primates in research: a reply to Arnason” in the Journal of Medical Ethics (Published Online First: 14 October 2017).

In her commentary, Faria replies to a paper by Gadar Arnason where he argues for the Weatherall Report’s claim that research on non-human primates (NHPs) is permitted and morally required.

Faria commentary shows that Arnason’s arguments do not succeed. First, were we to assign moral status depending on cognitive capacities (as Arnason believes) consistency would require experimenting on human beings as well. Only speciesist attitudes seem to explain the difference in our moral judgments concerning NHPs in similar circumstances.

Second, the alleged difference in the capacity to suffer of humans and non-humans (inferred from different cognitive capacities) is unwarranted since it is highly dubious that differences in cognitive capacities correlate with differences in individuals’ capacity for suffering.

Third, the appeal to an utilitarian calculus which stresses the small number of NHPs used in research in comparison to the number of human beneficiaries cannot support the priority of human interests either. This is because on an unbiased utilitarian calculus equal interests should be equally considered, irrespective of species membership. Even if it may be true that in the short term some human individuals would benefit from experiments on NHPs, it would not follow that ending animal experimentation would be net negative for humans in the long term.

Finally, Faria shows that the arguments provided by Arnason to justify that it is impermissible to experiment on cognitively impaired humans again point at speciesist attitudes.

Rhesus macaque

Image by Smerikal (https://www.flickr.com/photos/smerikal/)