Bateson, P. (2005) Ethics and Behavioral Biology. Advances in the Study of Behavior, 35, 211-233.

This is the original of the published article, kindly shared by the author.

Ethics and Behavioral Biology

PATRICK BATESON

SUB-DEPARTMENT OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOURUNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE,

CAMBRIDGE CB3 8AA, UNITED KINGDOM

I. INTRODUCTION

Behavioral biologists and experimental psychologists regularly encounter critics who feel that noanimal should be affected adversely by what scientists do in the course of their research. Somescientists may find the vehemence of those who hold such views infuriating, puzzling ordistressing. They may also sympathise with some of what they hear since most of them also careabout the welfare of animals. Behavioral biologists in particular often become interested inanimal behavior because of their love for animals. They may also assume that those colleagueswho do not care for their subjects are likely to be in the wrong job. This assumption stems fromthe belief that their own effectiveness as scientists derives from being sensitive to the state of theanimals they study. Conditions in the laboratory must be good and treatment of animals in thefield must be considerate, if only because frightened or maltreated animals simply will not domost of things in which behavioral biologists are interested, such as court, play, explore, andsolve difficult problems.

Scientists may be as confused about their own feelings as they are by the emotions of thosepeople who bear down on them with such moral indignation. In this article I shall examine someof the ethical positions that lie behind the confrontations in the hope that some readers at leastwill find themselves helped by an explicit treatment of the issues. I am not a philosopher and,indeed, sense that some ethical dilemmas are best resolved by not thinking about them too much.Even so, I do not propose to end the analysis of the ethical uses of animals in quite such aninsouciant manner. To do so would be to surrender the moral high ground to those who have ahostile, one-dimensional view of the ethics of using animals in research. The moral landscape ismuch more complicated and interesting than certain critics of behavioral biology andexperimental psychology seem to realise or, at least, are willing to accept. Nevertheless, those ofus who study animal behavior have to resolve somehow the tension between our science and theresponsibility that we have for the animals in our care. I shall consider how that might done sothat our science makes real contributions to the public good while, at the same time, we treat ouranimal subjects with the respect and consideration that many of us feel they deserve.

II. ORIGINS OF ANIMAL LIBERATION AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

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Beyond simple intuitions, two major streams of thought have fed into the strongly held view thatanimals must be treated well and, as an eventual goal, must not be used in research at all. One ofthese is the utilitarian position deriving from Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The costsand benefits of different actions are to be considered and weighed against each other in order todecide what is the ethically appropriate behavior. Since the moral decision depends on outcomesof possible actions this approach is often referred to as “consequentialist” or “extrinsic” (Reiss,1993). The other position, influenced strongly by the writing of Immanuel Kant, is that certainmorally-based actions are absolutely good or bad in themselves and should not be influenced bycost-benefit calculations. Certain rights and freedoms are especially regarded as fundamental.This position is called “non-consequentialist”, “intrinsic” or “deontological” (from the Greekword deon for duty).

The two philosophers who have had the biggest impact on the subject of animal use are Singer(1990), representing the utilitarians, and Regan (1983), representing the rights and freedomsposition. They are by no means the only ones and, although their views are conventionallypresented as the starting point for any modern discussion, many other ethical positions exist.Indeed, any one person may hold several alternative views at the same time, causing confusionwhen an attempt is made to nail down exactly where they stand. Nevertheless, it is entirelyproper to begin with the two big names since their writings provide much of the intellectualimpetus for the attacks on those scientists who use animals in their research.

The essence of Singer’s thinking is that a person’s act is right if - and only if - its consequencesare better than or at least as good as those of alternative acts open to that person. This is plainlyutilitarian in that the moral decision rests on some kind of weighing against each other of theconflicting outcomes. Singer expresses good and bad outcomes in terms of preferences. Livingsubjects’ interests are expressed in terms of what they prefer and if their preferences are thwarteda wrong has been done to those subjects. Singer believes that when animals are the subjects ofan action, their interests should be taken into account just as those of humans would be. Heargues that by degrees the civilised world has been ridding itself of sexual and racialdiscrimination and now it should rid itself of discrimination against other species. Humans whoare moral agents affecting other individuals should consider animals as moral subjects eventhough animals may never be capable of becoming agents. The analogy is with very youngchildren or with people who are so disabled intellectually by injury or disease that they cannotmake moral decisions yet are worthy of moral consideration.

Since a moral decision rests on weighing up alternative outcomes, Singer could see ways inwhich experiments on animals might be justified. The preferences of human subjects mayoutweigh those of animal subjects. Tough judgements are often expressed in terms of thoughtexperiments (sometimes called fantasy dilemmas). Consider four people and a large dog in alife-boat which is too low in the water to be safe. Do you throw overboard a person or the dog tosafeguard the others? Five lives are at stake and, even though the dog may be regarded asmorally valuable as each person, it is considered to have less premonition of its own mortalitythan the people - so the dog is sacrificed. By the same token, if the subject in question were ahuman passenger suffering from Alzheimer’s disease rather than a dog, the senile person wouldbe thrown overboard.

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The solutions to such dilemmas are shocking and often grate against intuition in such a way thatthey suggest more is at stake than some straightforward metric of preference. Singer wouldargue that it is necessary to move towards a morality based on rationality rather than rely on gutfeelings. Even so, the old utilitarian slogan of the greatest good for the greatest number is oftenopposed by the argument that those individuals who benefit are different from those who suffer.Furthermore, measuring ‘good’ or in Singer’s case ‘preference’ is virtually impossible. Far frombeing rational, it is seen as an unsatisfactory basis for making practical moral decisions. Andwhen it comes to animals, which animals? Does a rat have the same status as a moral subject asa chimpanzee? Does an ant have the same status as a rat? Does an amoeba have the same statusas an ant?

By contrast with Singer, Regan takes the view that certain actions are absolutely wrong. Heshares Singer’s view that animals should be treated as moral subjects but disagrees with him thatactions that might adversely affect their welfare can be justified by their beneficial consequencesfor humans or other animals. Animals have inherent rights that should be respected as much asthose of humans. Which animals? Regan understands the problem of continuity from simple tocomplex mental existence and suggests that the cut-off should be between those animals that are“subject of a life” and those that are not. What is meant is that rights are granted to thoseanimals that have beliefs, desires, perceptions, memories, a sense of the future, feelings ofpleasure and pain accompanying a rich emotional life, an ability to initiate action in pursuit ofdesires and goals and a psychological identity over time.

Anybody who deals with animal behavior will recognise at once the difficulty of identifyinganimals that might qualify for rights in the Regan sense. So here again the views of a prominentphilosopher are difficult to implement in practice other than by abandoning further thought andpressing for outright abolition of all animal experiments. More seriously for the integrity of hisposition, Regan retreats from his absolutist views with a series of special considerations thatinevitably lead to a utilitarian position and to the view that animals can be used for humanbenefit after all. He would sacrifice a dog to save his own child. At the most fundamental level,the whole issue of rights is fraught with difficulty. Midgley (1983) pointed out that rights arepart of an implicit contract with the social community; people accept conventions on which thesmooth functioning of society depends and these lead inevitably to the need to honourcommitments. In short, rights bring with them responsibilities with the caveat that the veryyoung and the very disabled are exempted - an issue to which I shall return. Even the mostfundamental human right to life may be waived in emergencies and the irony can be that those inauthority who risk the lives of others may not themselves be at risk and, worse, they may haveconcocted the case for sending other people to their deaths. Midgley argued that, with theexception of those already mentioned, no one should have a right who cannot understand andclaim it. These considerations suggest that giving a right to an animal is about as sensible asgiving it a vote.

The positions of Singer and Regan are the most clearly articulated and the most commonlycriticised. Many have argued that their views, particularly when expressed in pamphleteeringform, are one-dimensional. Petrinovich (1999) has sharply attacked both of them and adopted amuch more pluralistic view. It is still necessary, however, to identify the multiplicity of otherpositions that lie behind a distaste for the use of animals in research.

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III. OTHER ETHICAL POSITIONS

A quite different ethical concern from either that of Singer or Regan is that good treatment ofanimals is important because of the way it affects attitudes to fellow human beings. This viewmight be accompanied by scepticism about the existence of consciousness in animals other thanhumans. The concern is that the human readiness to empathise with other animals means that ifsuch feelings in this direction are denied, they will also be denied to humans. According toThomas (1983), Aquinas interpreted Old Testament biblical teachings about giving respect toanimals in these terms. Many have followed since. In modern times the argument is oftencountered by the observation that Hitler loved dogs and the German Third Reich had the mostdraconian laws to protect animals ever passed. The suggestion is that desensitisation generatedby maltreatment of one group does not necessarily generalise to another group whether it befrom animals to humans or the other way about. George Bernard Shaw is said to have remarkedabout those who kill animals for sport: “I know many sportsmen and none of them are ferocious.I know several humanitarians and all of them are ferocious.” It seems entirely plausible thathumans compartmentalise their empathy and, if that is so, the desensitisation argument for thegood treatment of animals loses much of its force.

A separate strand to the human-orientated approach is to respect the views of those who caredeeply about animals. The argument runs that we should be careful not to cause offence toothers by our actions even if we have doubts about their reasons for being offended. (Of course,people may not beat their dogs because they fear being prosecuted - but that is another matter.)The moral case for old-fashioned good manners works all ways and applies rather more stronglyto those who protest against the use of animals in research than it does to those who quietly geton with their science. Not causing offence to others does not provide a compelling basis forstopping animal research.

Many people who are opposed to the use of animals in research are not simply worried aboutanimal suffering. The killing of an animal disturbs them whether or not suffering is involved.Their ethical position is essentially that adopted by Regan, based on a sense of justice and aprojection of rights from humans to animals. However, an additional thought is that each specieshas its own set of goals (its own telos) and should be accorded dignity on this account (Rollin,1998). This sense of the dignity of the species has been applied to plants as well as animals(Heaf & Wirz, 2001). A related thought springs from a view about the connections between allforms of life, often generalised to include inanimate environments such as mountainsides andwetlands. Jamieson (2002) argues that these inanimate parts of the human environment have amoral claim on us. The exact meaning of such a claim is not entirely clear. Nevertheless nobodyshould doubt the moral fervour of such holism and many biologists and psychologists wouldshare much of it. My sense is that the outrage about the senseless or greedy despoiling of theenvironment extends to the destruction of anything that is regarded as beautiful and can bereadily generalised to much-loved works of art and to architecture.

Some people have ethical concerns about the use of animals in research quite simply becausethey are extremely fond of animals (or at least some animals). This is obvious enough in the way

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that UK legislation is framed to give special status to those groups that vast numbers of thepublic keep as pets, namely cats and dogs, or with which they have close relationships, namelythe horse family (Scientific Procedures (Animals) Act 1986). Many of these positions have notbeen worked into a moral stance as thoroughly as those of Singer or Regan but I believe that theylie behind many strong feelings about the use of animals issue.

If the rights argument is rejected on the grounds that animals cannot be part of a contract thatgrants rights in return for responsibilities, where does that leave very young children and theintellectually disabled? Either because they have not yet achieved full cognitive capacity, neverhad it or have lost such capacity, these people are unable to exercise their responsibilities inreturn for the rights that society freely grants them. Petrinovitch (1999) suggested thatconsideration of human evolution is helpful here. He argued, on the basis of evidence, that in thethought experiment of the unsafe life-boat, most people would throw out an unrelated Nobellaureate before their own child. Humans support close kin first and in-group members next;those fellow humans who cannot fend for themselves are given higher status than any non-human animal. Fifty years before Petrinovitch was considering these issues, Julian Huxley,picking up the interests of his grandfather, Thomas Huxley, wrote:

Is there any external standard for morals? Any touchstone by which goodnessmay be recognised, any yardstick by which it may be measured? Does there existany natural foundation on which human superstructure of right and wrong maysafely rest, any cosmic sanction for ethics? (Huxley & Huxley, 1947)

Julian Huxley implied that if we could only understand the "cosmic sanction", then we shouldknow how to conduct our lives. Even so, he was ambivalent and the relativism which he clearlydetected in ethical judgements and the sheer complexity of cultural evolution deterred biologistsfrom contributing much to the debate about the origin of ethics for many years. Subsequentlythe writings of two men, Wilson (1978) and Alexander (1980), were especially influential inreawakening the old subject of evolutionary ethics that interested Petrinovitch (see also Ruse,1986). More recently Hinde (2002) has discussed these issues with great care and insight.

Understanding the evolutionary origins of our behavior may well be helpful in dealing with themuddles and inconsistencies that arise in dealing with moral issues - such as the use of animalsin research. They explain our intuitions but do not help us to understand where our adaptabilitymight take us. The general point was emphasised by Alexander (1980). A functionalinterpretation of human behavior only makes sense in the environment to which the behaviorpatterns were adapted. Even if human cleverness was the product of blind Darwinian evolution,such intelligence can clearly be turned towards maladaptive practices such as procuring ofaddictive drugs for self-use. The cognitive rules that give rise to rational action may haveincreased reproductive success in one set of conditions, while having quite differentconsequences in the modern world. Hinde (2002) has developed these points much moreextensively in his book Why Good is Good.

Since adaptive propensities can lead to the expression of characteristics with emergent and evennon-adaptive features, it is not plausible to argue that every ethical judgement represents a"good" solution to some present (or past) problem in the social environment (Williams, 1983).

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Julian Huxley may have hoped that biology would eventually offer a "cosmic sanction for ethics"(see Huxley & Huxley, 1947). So far biology has failed to deliver. What it has done, however,is to suggest ways in which human propensities, shaped by Darwinian and cultural evolution,have played their part in influencing the historical development of socially transmitted norms ofbehavior (Bateson, 1989). In the context of the rights argument, Petrinovitch (1999) is surelycorrect to point to these influences when attempting to explain why most people intuitively valuean incapacitated human being more highly than a non-human animal. Whether they are right todo so is another matter.

Thomas (1983) described how the moral concerns of those who had preached and pamphleteeredagainst cruelty to animals had remained remarkably constant in England from the fifteenth to thenineteenth century. He summarised their views as follows:

Man, it was said, was fully entitled to domesticate animals and to kill them forfood and clothing. But he was not to tyrannize or to cause unnecessary suffering.Domestic animals should be allowed food and rest and their deaths should be aspainless as possible. Wild animals could be killed if they were needed for food orthought to be harmful. But, although game could be shot and vermin hunted, itwas wrong to kill for mere pleasure. (Thomas 1983, p. 159)

This account still captures the views of many people to this day, particularly in relation tosuffering. Certainly a great many behavioral biologists who work on animals in the course oftheir own research are strongly bound to an ethic of caring for them. This view is stronglyexpressed in the ethical guidelines offered to authors of papers submitted to the journal AnimalBehaviour and has been the subject of much comment in recent years (Bateson & Klopfer, 1991;Bekoff & Jamieson, 1990; Rogers, 1997). In its guidance to scientists working on animals, theRoyal Society (2004) states uncompromisingly: “All possible measures must be taken tominimise the suffering of animals used in research.” (p. 27). Not everybody speaks with thesame voice, however. One colleague told me that he gave up laboratory work in favour of fieldstudies because he did not like having to kill animals at the end of an experiment. Some fieldbiologists are more concerned about the death of animals than they are about suffering. This ispresumably because their interest is in populations, biodiversity and conservation rather than inanimal welfare. Conservation is placed above welfare because, in their eyes, suffering is a partof natural life. The clash of views is brought into sharp focus when suffering is causedintentionally - by poisoning cats, for example, in order to protect an endangered species of birdwhose existence is threatened by the cats. These tensions within the biological community andthe ways in which they may sometimes be resolved lie outside the scope of this article but arediscussed elsewhere by Bradshaw & Bateson (2000).

IV. THE ETHICAL CASE FOR USING ANIMALS IN RESEARCH

In addition to the moral objections to the use of animals in research, strong ethical arguments aremounted on the other side for using animals in scientific studies. In the past, many biologiststook the view that they had a right to pursue knowledge for its own sake and this aspect ofacademic life, highly valued in universities, trumped all other considerations. Not many would

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adopt such an unvarnished view these days, but most of us would continue to argue that greatbenefits flow from biological research. These benefits might be in terms of improvements inmedical or veterinary practice achieved in the short to medium term or in terms of fundamentalcontributions to the understanding of biological processes. The provision of such benefits is seenas good and morally important.

Those who favour work on animals commonly wish that, by such work, suffering of humans orother animals will be alleviated. Many scientists who work on animals do so because they feelstrongly that their research will help to relieve suffering. They may feel this way because theyare directly involved in attempting to discover a cure for a human or animal disease or becausethey aim to uncover fundamental principles that will have general benefits for understanding.Scientists in favour of this moral stance hope that their research will lead to a fundamentalunderstanding of aspects of biology that such understanding in turn may facilitate thedevelopment of therapeutic measures for both animals and humans.

Critics respond by questioning the motives of biologists, suggesting that the real goals are fame,career advancement and occasionally fortune, coupled with extraordinary insensitivity when itcomes to the treatment of animals used in research. An unwillingness to use alternatives toliving animals is attributed to vanity, laziness or conservatism. Some scientists will doubtlesshave the base motives attributed to them and you will find among the scientific community thosewho are just as vain, lazy and conservative as would be found in any other group of people.However, others are strongly motivated by a desire to relieve suffering and understand thefundamental problems of biology - an understanding that must underpin most advances inmedicine.

One serious moral critique of the scientists’ position is that the individual animals suffering inthe course of scientific research do not benefit from any advances in knowledge that derive fromtheir suffering. In human and veterinary medicine causing pain or suffering in a patient is oftenconsidered unethical unless it is for the direct benefit of that patient. If it is not for the humanpatient’s benefit, informed consent is crucial. In research involving animals, one ethicalprinciple (not harming individuals) is in direct conflict with another (helping the majority). Thedilemmas seem inescapable. Before considering how they might be resolved, I shall discussbriefly whether scientists are correct in their belief that work on animals has led to major medicaland veterinary benefits.

The sins of the non-violent anti-vivisectionists are ones of omission. Protection of the animals iscarried out at the expense of stopping medical research. When the activists come into contactwith lobbying groups formed by human patients, they are aware that they are on weak groundand seek to argue that no benefit has flowed to medicine from studies of animals (Pound et al2004). In justifying the demand that current research be stopped, activists suggest that theanimal work is scientifically trivial, of no medical importance, could be done without usinganimals, or would be better done on humans. Most scientists would disagree (The RoyalSociety, 2004). Blanket denials that medical advance has ever been served by the animal studiesis not simply a matter of opinion and is susceptible to the test of evidence. The US Departmentof Health and Human Services (1994) concluded that almost every form of conventional medicaltreatment, such as drugs, vaccines, radiation or surgery, required the study of animals. In the UK

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a House of Lords Select Committee, after listening carefully to both sides of the argument,concluded that the case for research on animals was strong (House of Lords, 2002). They alsoargued that more effort should be made to find replacements - a view that is supported by theRoyal Society, the UK’s academy of science.

V. TOWARDS RESOLUTION

Both the extreme animal rights activists and the most zealous scientists defending their work onanimals tend to suppose that the values they hold dear are more important than those of theiropponents. Even when people holding such different moral positions are totally inflexible andseem set for a fight to the finish, it is possible to devise practical ways of helping the majority toresolve the undoubted moral conflicts. In much of the debate about the use of animals inresearch, a particular moral stand is taken as an absolute, over-riding all other moral claims. Thealternative to such absolutism on either side of the debate is to respect both positions and attemptto minimise suffering inflicted on animals used in research while maximising the scientific andmedical gain. Varner (1994) has written sensitively and optimistically about the prospects forsome convergence in the animal rights debate. Rawls (1999) has been at the forefront ofdeveloping what he calls an “overlapping consensus”. He considers how to achieve fairagreements between reasonable people who accept that they must give some ground in order toachieve a peaceful solution.

As Hinde (2002) notes, many different and seemingly incompatible concerns claim highestpriority for action. The apparent oppositions are familiar enough: fish stocks versus fishingvillages; pure air versus abundant energy; and abundant food versus biodiversity and unpollutedenvironments. Reducing matters to single issues makes for rousing rhetoric, convenient slogansand easily understood manifestos. But it is not a good way to organise a society in which peoplehave to go on living with each other. Intransigence can end up with outcomes that are regardedas undesirable by everybody: no fish and no fishing villages; dirty air and devastated sources ofenergy; dead waterways, unproductive land and massive reductions in biological diversity. Theequivalent messy outcome of allowing intransigence to dominate the debate about the use ofanimals in research is that medical research is seriously delayed and animals are treated poorly inthe unregulated laboratories of countries lacking appropriate legislation. In the UKpharmaceutical companies are threatening to withdraw their research activities to other parts ofthe world (Mansell, 2004) and Singapore is making itself attractive to them by minimisingregulation and maximising protection from animal rights activists (Tomlinson, 2004).

Seemingly irreconcilable views can sometimes be brought together. Indeed the UK Act ofParliament specifically concerned with the use of animals in research states: “In determiningwhether and on what terms to grant a project licence the Secretary of State shall weigh the likelyadverse effects on the animals concerned against the benefit likely to accrue as a result of theprogramme to be specified in the licence” (Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 5. (4)).UK law requires the Animal Procedures Committee, the committee appointed to advise on therunning of the 1986 Act, to operate such a cost/benefit approach. The ‘weighing’ required bylaw is not an exact process since the assessment of scientific and medical benefit and that ofanimal suffering, in as much as either can be quantified, are not expressed in the same terms.

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The assessments are incommensurate and, therefore, referring to the judgement as cost-benefitanalysis is strictly speaking misleading.

How then is this weighing process to be carried out? Most people consciously, or more oftenunconsciously, take many different things into account when making everyday decisions.Suppose, for instance, you want to buy a new pair of shoes. You will want good quality and youmay well want shoes that are not unfashionable or at least are acceptably classical. At the sametime you are also likely to want to pay as little as possible. You will probably set an upper limitfor how much you will pay and a lower limit for the quality. If you are forced to pay more, youwill expect higher quality and maybe shoes that conform to current fashions. I suggest that theanalogy is relevant to the present case: a much lower amount of animal suffering would betolerated in scientific research if the work were not regarded as being important. Conversely ahigh expected return from the science would justify more suffering.

When I first used the shoe-buying analogy at a public meeting some 25 years ago, some of thosepresent were unhappy because they felt that no animal suffering could be justified merely in thename of good science. If the words "medical benefit" were added to "important science", the answerseemed more satisfactory to them, however. Great human suffering, and plenty of it exists in theworld, was felt to be worse than the possibility of pain inflicted on an animal in the course ofresearch. Of course, the likely benefits of biological science for human and animal welfare are noteasily predicted. The best bet is often to back science that is likely to lead to the discovery offundamental and unifying principles. Many governmental and charitable funding bodies accept thatthe funding of high quality biological research is one of the most satisfactory ways of contributing tothe medicine of the future. Nonetheless, the delivery of real benefits to humans or animals isuncertain. Many people would be deeply unhappy about animals suffering when the possiblemedical or veterinary value of the experiments had not been estimated. It was for that reason Iincluded in the decision rules the probability of generating medically important results (Bateson,1986). The model for achieving an overlapping consensus was republished by Driscoll & Bateson(1988) for the benefit of behavioral biologists and further developed in Smith & Boyd (1991) andBateson (1992).

One advantage of a set of rules, such as those suggested by the decision cube shown in Figure 1,is the acknowledgement that, in deciding whether a particular activity should be tolerated in acivilised society, more than one thing matters. This is a general point even though the figurefocuses on the use of animals in research. For the purposes of making decisions about possibleanimal use in a scientific project, three separate dimensions are to be assessed independently: thescientific importance of the research, the probability of medical benefit and the likelihood ofanimal suffering. Animal suffering should be tolerated only when both the importance of theresearch importance and the probability of medical benefit are assessed as being high.Moreover, certain levels of animal suffering would generally be unacceptable regardless of thequality of the research or its probable benefit. The decision rules used would permit research ofhigh importance involving little or no animal suffering - even if the work had no obviouspotential benefit to humans. This feature takes note of the concern of scientists who want tounderstand phenomena that have no immediate and obvious benefit for humans. This is seen asa ‘good’ in itself even though an indirect but unforeseeable benefit might be an advance inmedicine.

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Figure 1. A decision cube for representing the rules, arrived at by consensus, aboutwhether a scientific research project should be allowed to proceed. Threeindependent assessments are made. The first assessment is of the maximumsuffering that the animals are likely to endure in the course of the project, the secondis of the overall scientific importance of the project and the third is of the likelihoodof medical benefit. If the three assessments fall into the solid part of the cube, theproject would be deemed unacceptable, otherwise it would be deemed acceptable(from Bateson, 1986).

The decision cube, sometimes denigrated as traditionally utilitarian, is emphatically not a cost-benefit piece of accountancy since it does not depend on a common currency or on balancingincommensurable properties. It is a set of pragmatic rules that can be helpful, I believe, indetermining whether or not a particular piece of research should be carried out. I did not imaginethat the positions of the lines indicating whether or not to give assent to a research project would

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be forever frozen. The positions represent a political consensus acceptable to the majority of thepublic. Therefore they would require debate in the institutions set up in democracies in order tobring together a representative set of opinions. All the evidence suggests that in highlydeveloped countries the political consensus has been moving towards a more restrictive view ofwhat is acceptable. However, it might well change in the opposite direction were affluent humanpopulations to be afflicted by a new and terrible plague and vaccines could only be developed onanimals very similar to humans.

Emlen (1993) criticised the cube because he believed (incorrectly) that I had couched benefitlargely in terms of knowledge that has obvious benefit to humans. He wrote: “In this era ofdiminishing biodiversity it is imperative that we increase our knowledge of organisms that canserve as general models for larger categories of species.” I agree, but I think that my formulationwould cover the type of work he would like to see carried out. My representation of what Ibelieved to be a consensus view was that high grade research that increased fundamentalknowledge would be acceptable if the level of suffering was low. The acceptance bar would,indeed, be lowered if the research were also like to have medical benefit. Nevertheless, highgrade research with a conservation goal or that aimed to find general models for larger categoriesof species would be acceptable even if some suffering were inflicted on the animals used.

The decision cube has not captured universal admiration. Finsen (1990) felt that it does not offera way of transcending subjective and individual judgements and concluded that the model is toovague to be of any use. Her mistake was to suppose that the model proposes an ethic. It doesnot. It proposes a way of dealing with competing ethics. Reiss (1993) was more generous in hiscriticism. He wrote: “The most obvious problem with this approach is not so much in decidingwhere a piece of research lies on these three axes, but on deciding how to balance the costs(animal suffering) against the benefits (quality of research and medical benefit).” However,Reiss went on to point out that the approach had been used successfully by the Association forthe Study of Animal Behaviour in Europe and its sister organisation in the United states whendeciding whether or not to publish papers in their jointly run journal, Animal Behaviour.Petrinovich (1999) concurred, judging the model to be useful.

UK law protects all vertebrates, but the use of more complex vertebrates such as primates is evenmore strictly controlled. The use of animals is not permitted where a replacement alternative isavailable. Where no replacement alternative is available, then experimental protocols must berefined in such a way as to reduce any pain or suffering to a minimum using, for example,analgesics and humane end-points. Finally, the number of animals used must be reduced to theminimum consistent with achieving the scientific objectives of the study. These general pointsare derived from a famous book by Russell & Burch (1959) who developed the principle of the3Rs (Replacement, Refinement, Reduction).

Some people have suggested to me that the principle of the 3Rs requires that another dimensionto be added to the decision cube. This would be a mistake in my view. If animals were replaced,the cube would not be needed since it is designed specifically for the purposes of decidingwhether or not a project involving animals should proceed. If procedures were refined, animalsuffering would be improved by definition. If numbers were reduced with good experimentaldesign, in all probability the quality of the research would go up. This is partly because the

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replacement of one experimental treatment by the simultaneous use of two or more treatmentswithin the same experiment leads to a reduction in the total number of animals required but alsobecause interactions between independent variables are more likely to be discovered. In short afourth dimension, however it were to be drawn, is unnecessary.

VI. MAKING THE ASSESSMENTS

The benefits of research must be assessed and are based on likely contributions to humanunderstanding, education, the economy and the environment, as well as to human and veterinarymedicine. Finsen (1990) was sceptical that it would be possible to find a way of measuring thefuture importance of research since so much depends on luck. I had foreseen the objection (Bateson,1986). Virtually all funding of future scientific research depends on making informed judgementsabout how particular projects will develop. Nobody denies that funding decisions are difficult andcan be mistaken, but nobody who lives in the real world supposes that grant applications should bedecided by tossing a coin. The same applies to the assessment of medical benefit. Difficult though itmay seem, committees judging planned medical research are asked to assess the probability of atherapeutic outcome. They manage to do so. For these reasons I reject Finsen’s sweeping assertionthat “… it is not really possible to use the dimension of “expected benefits”.”.

What about animal suffering? The intrinsic difficulty is that suffering is a subjective state and noperson can be sure that another would, in the same circumstances, suffer as he or she does. Theusual way of dodging this ancient philosophical catch is to rely on the similarities betweenpeople. So if I suffer when I am burnt, I assume that you too will suffer in much the same waywhen you are burnt. Undoubtedly this is the implicit assumption of most veterinarians whendealing with the issue of pain in animals. If the animal has the same neural equipment fordetecting damage and processing the information in its central nervous system as a human and ifit behaves in situations that humans would find painful in much the same way as a human, theintuitive rule is that the animal should be treated humanely (Bateson, 1991). Identical argumentsare mounted for other aspects of suffering by those concerned about animal welfare (Smith &Boyd, 1991). This general line of attack lies behind the UK Farm Animal Welfare Councilguidelines for maintaining the good welfare of animals on farms. The animals should be givenfive freedoms: freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from the inability to behave normally,freedom from discomfort, freedom from fear and distress, and freedom from pain, injury anddisease (Farm Animal Welfare Council, 2004).

Various alternatives to the human-centred approach have been offered.Some authors focus on the conditions that push an animal's capacity to adapt to changingconditions outside normal limits (e.g. Ewbank, 1985; Broom, 1986). The quality of an animal’swelfare is determined, therefore, by judging the animal's "state as regards its attempts to copewith its environment" (Broom, 1986). Animals maintain their internal state within certain limits.Movement outside those limits is countered by behavioral and/or physiological reactions thatoperate to bring the state, which might be body temperature, within the limits. Stress is thoughtto arise when attempts to return the internal state to the optimum persistently fail (Toates, 1995).The intention of those who advocate this approach is to avoid the anthropocentric approachadopted by those who simply focus on the similarities of the animal’s behavior and physiology tothat of humans. However, implicit in the coping definition of welfare is the notion that an

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animal that fails to cope suffers and, more centrally, that some organisms suffer more thanothers. The failure to cope by bacteria is of less concern than failure to cope by monkeys. Thehuman-centred approach based on notions of behavioral complexity enters via the back door.

A different approach is offered by a consideration of the animal’s goals (Rollin, 1998). If theanimal’s attempts to achieve certain endpoints are obstructed by human intervention, then itswelfare has been damaged. The superficial attractiveness of this Aristotelian telos position ismarred by the sheer difficulty of knowing what the particular goal of any one component of ananimal’s behavioral repertoire might be for. The behavioral ecologists have a hard enough timesorting out biological function in wild-living animals. What is one to make of the purposes forliving of domesticated animals with all sorts of characteristics artificially selected by humans?Painting on a much broader canvas, evolutionary biologists would argue that the only seriousgoal for an animal is reproductive success. Survival is necessary but it is not a sufficient goalbecause, without reproduction (or more broadly, the care of kin), the individual animal can makeno further contribution to subsequent evolution. On this argument animals kept in captivity andused freely for breeding are fulfilling their purpose much more successfully than animals livingshort lives in the wild.

Behavioral biologists who have entered the debate on welfare have argued that proper accountshould be taken of the special adaptations to ecological conditions in which the animal evolved(Barnard & Hurst, 1996; Bateson, 1991; Timberlake, 1997). When an animal does not behave ashumans would in the same circumstances, scientists should be sensitive to its requirements, itsevolutionary history and the details of its social life. Therefore, it is argued that assessments ofsuffering will also depend on good observational data about the natural behavior of the species inquestion, its normal requirements, its vulnerability to damage and the ecological conditions inwhich it lives and the decision rules by which it maximises its reproductive success in thatenvironment.

Some animals, when threatened by extreme danger, remain rigid and silent because that is thesafest thing to do. They do not look to the casual human observer as though they are in a state ofstress, because alarmed humans would not normally behave like this. Part of the problem is thatsome species can experience subtle odours, high-pitched sounds, infra-red light, ultra-violet lightor magnetic fields that humans are unable to detect and, therefore, do not regard as beingimportant. Few people have much fellow feeling for fish even though many fish are long-lived,have complicated nervous systems and are capable of learning complicated tasks. Awareness ofan animal's natural behavior, it is argued, can also provide great insight into what is and what isnot likely to be stressful. For example, isolation from other members of its own kind may betraumatic for an individual belonging to a gregarious species, such as many monkeys. However,isolation may be the preferred state for members of species that are habitually solitary, such asbirds of prey. Moreover, even social animals that have been kept in isolation for a long time maybe stressed when they are introduced once more to members of their own species. Barnard &Hurst (1996) argue strongly that undue attention to the human condition leads to a focus onhealth and survival. They point out cogently that both may be sacrificed by animals in theinterests of reproduction. Frustrating an organism’s attempts to ‘spend itself’ adaptively, on themistaken assumption that such expenditure reflects an inability to cope, could create a welfareproblem. Barnard (2004) gives as a possible example the housing of rats in single cages in

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which they show relatively low levels of physiological stress. However, when given a choice,rats prefer to interact with other members of their own species even though this may involvefighting and higher levels of stress.

Politicians and administrators would like scientists to provide incontrovertible evidence forwelfare problems generated by human activity. Little in science is incontrovertible - even ifthose who controvert may be way out on a limb from the central trunk of scientific opinion.Many of the judgements about poor welfare in animals have been disputed by Bermond (2001)who argued that animals do not have the necessary neural equipment to suffer in the way thathumans do. My own view is that this attempt to adjudicate about what animals feel on the basisof a very incomplete understanding of the brain is treading on treacherous ground. In the pastmany surgeons took the view that the central nervous systems of human babies are so immaturethat they could not feel pain. Therefore, they argued that human babies undergoing surgeryshould not be treated with potentially dangerous analgesic drugs or anaesthesia. Wall (1999)described how endless philosophical musings were brought to an end by a rigorous empiricalexamination of the fate of babies who had been given analgesics or anaesthesia during surgeryand those who had not. Those who had not been protected from the pain of surgery were muchless likely to survive. That horrifying evidence should generate a measure of thoughtfulness inanybody who is tempted to pontificate on what animals do and do not feel.

One way to penetrate the motivation of an animal is to question it by behavioral means(Dawkins, 1980). Colpaert et al (1980) tested the responses of animals to analgesics when in astate that might be expected to be painful on the basis of what is known about humans. Theyknew that normal rats drink sugar solution rather than water containing an analgesic. Rats withchronically inflamed joints similar to those in an arthritic person preferred to drink the solutioncontaining the analgesic. Danbury et al (2000 used a very similar approach. Lame and soundbroiler chickens were taken from commercial flocks. The chickens were trained to discriminatebetween differently coloured feeds, one of which contained the analgesic drug carprofen. Thetwo feeds were then offered simultaneously and the birds were allowed to select their own dietfrom the two feeds. The lame birds tended to consume more analgesic than the sound birds. Inanother study they showed that the more afflicted were the birds with lameness, the moredrugged feed they took. Cooper & Mason (2001) made mink work for a variety of resources byrequiring them to push a heavily weighted access door. They varied the weight of the door to seehow much the mink would ‘pay’ to reach different resources such as extra space, an extra nestsite, novel objects, toys and a water bath. The mink pushed against heavy doors particularly toreach swimming water. Indeed, so keen were these smallish animals, weighing considerably lessthan a kilo themselves, they would push open a door with 2 kg of weight added to it. Whilepreference tests have their place in welfare assessments, M. Bateson (2004) noted that theoutcome depends greatly on how choices are presented. A preference can change when a third,less preferred option is added to a binary choice. The third option can change the relativepreference or, more surprisingly, the absolute preference.

The scientific approach to the problems of assessing suffering in animals has to be evidence-based and collecting evidence requires orderly methods. Many debates about what should andshould not be measured in welfare studies suggest that a variety of approaches are more likely tobenefit understanding than a single approach (Mason & Mendl, 1993). All of the following

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approaches contribute to an assessment of adverse welfare: (a) measurements of physical damageto the animal, (b) measurement of the extent to which it has been required chronically to operatehomeostatic mechanisms that would normally operate acutely; (c) measurements ofphysiological states that would be found in suffering humans; (d) measurement of the animal’spreferences; and (e) considerations of the ecological conditions to which the animal is adapted,its normal social structure and the decision rules it uses to maximise its reproductive success.When all these things are done, judgements about the quality of an animal's welfare are muchmore likely to win widespread agreement than if only one approach has been used.

Given that no royal road to making a judgement about welfare exists, ideally some overallassessment should be reached from the various perspectives that are used (behavior, body stateand behavioral ecology). The very different approaches used by the psychologists, thebehavioral ecologists and the veterinarians all lead to separate assessments of the severity of thewelfare problem (say from zero to two) and the overall score might be used as an indication ofthe severity of the problem (from zero to six). A separate issue is that the harms of research havemany different facets. Smith & Boyd (1991), representing the views of a remarkably disparateworking party, argued that in making an overall assessment, most attention should be focussedon the greatest harm to the animals that would be used in the research. If equal attention were tobe given to low, medium and high assessments in response to the various questions about harm, aproject involving an excruciatingly painful procedure preceded by husbandry conditionsinvolving very little stress or anxiety might be assessed as having a lower overall cost to theanimal than one involving a set of conditions that were only moderately severe in their effects.Once the assessment of the welfare problem has been made, this assessment can then be puttogether with the independent assessments of likely scientific importance and expectedtherapeutic benefit of the research to make a concluding judgement of the acceptability of aresearch programme.

Some of the moral tensions are not easily resolved in the abstract since the position that a personadopts will be swayed by the choices they are offered. Social psychologists have often noticedthe contextual effects that can arise when different forms of assessment are used. For instance,on academic appointment committees Candidate A may be preferred to Candidate B because hisresearch is more extensive, Candidate B may be preferred to Candidate C because her workshows more promise, but Candidate C may perform most impressively at interview and beappointed by the committee, with seeming amnesia of what went before. The committee focusesunduly on the personality characteristics of the candidates because the vividness of their recentface-to-face experience dominates the context for making a decision (Tversky & Simonson,1993). The human weakness can be met in part by ensuring that the different dimensions onwhich the final choice depends are made independently and only then are brought together forthe overall decision.

VII. CONCLUSION

The well-known philosophical positions, based on principles of animal liberation and animalrights, leading to criticism of the use of animals in research have been seriously questioned.Thoughtful writers such as Petrinovich (1999) have argued for a pluralism that honours bothutilitarian treatments and concerns about basic rights and freedoms. I have suggested,

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furthermore, that these positions do not embrace all the ethical views of people who care stronglyabout animals and the natural world. Scientists who care about animals, accept responsibility forthe good stewardship of the animals they study. If they also believe that the moral case for doingtheir research is strong, they are forced into accepting that their scientific behavior is influencedby more than one ethical position.

A lot of one desirable outcome does not have to mean a little of the other. It is possible toreconcile a strong moral commitment to understand biology and benefit from such understandingby using scientific methods with an equally strong moral desire to minimise animal suffering.Alternatives can be found to the destructive opposition between the morality of advancing theunderstanding the natural world through science and the morality of eliminating the sufferingthat science sometimes brings with it. When the assessments are put together, the overalljudgement depends particularly on the quality of the benefits and the severity of the costs. Thedebate about the ways of bringing different ethical positions together continues and, in the UK,the Animal Procedures Committee has recently published a long report on the so-called ‘cost-benefit’ approach (Animal Procedures Committee, 2003). The aim of the whole process is toencourage scientific research that brings maximum benefit with minimum suffering to theanimals. None of this is especially easy, but I think that, because they care for both animals andtheir science, behavioural biologists are well placed to help the process of resolving the tensionbetween seemingly opposed moral positions. A lot of fair-minded people, who often start withutterly different views, are finding ways of reaching agreement. Not everybody is fair-minded,alas. Bigotry and fanaticism in all their forms may never be eradicated, but they can, at least, bemarginalised.

VIII. SUMMARY

The ethical positions, on which attacks on the use of animals in research are based, havedepended most commonly on treating the preferences of non-human animals as worthy of equalrespect to those of humans. More radically, animals are believed to hold the same rights ashumans. Such simplistic views are readily criticised and do not capture all the reasons whymany people believe that animals, particularly complex ones, should be treated responsibly andwith consideration. Moreover, strong moral arguments can also be mounted for using animals inorder to understand the fundamental problems of biology and help to alleviate the suffering ofhumans and other animals. The tensions may be eased in practice by making every effort tominimise the suffering of those animals while ensuring that research is focussed on importantbiological problems and, where possible, takes into account the likely benefits to health and well-being that may derive from the research. Assessments along these different dimensions of themoral dilemma are not trivial, but the assessment of welfare has, in particular made big strides inrecent years. Behavioural biologists are well placed to advance discussion so that any one moralissue does not dominate the debate.

Acknowledgments

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I am grateful to a number of friends and colleagues for their comments on an earlier version ofthis article. I thank warmly Robert Hinde, Halvard Lillehammer, Georgia Mason, Michael Reiss,Tim Roper, Peter Slater and Chuck Snowdon.

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