Life Sciences Commons^™

Animal Pleasure And Its Moral Significance, Jonathan Balcombe

Sentience Collection

This paper presents arguments for, and evidence in support of, the important role of pleasure in animals’ lives, and outlines its considerable significance to humankind’s relationship to other animals. In the realms of animal sentience, almost all scholarly discussion revolves around its negative aspects: pain, stress, distress, and suffering. By contrast, the positive aspects of sentience – rewards and pleasures – have been rarely broached by scientists. Yet, evolutionary principles predict that animals, like humans, are motivated to seek rewards, and not merely to avoid pain and suffering. Natural selection favours behaviours that enhance survival and procreation. In the conscious, …

Addressing Distress And Pain In Animal Research: The Veterinary, Research, Societal, Regulatory And Ethical Contexts For Moving Forward, Kathleen Conlee, Martin Stephens, Andrew N. Rowan

Experimentation Collection

While most people recognize that biomedical scientists are searching for knowledge that will improve the health of humans and animals, the image of someone deliberately causing harm to an animal in order to produce data that may lead to some future benefit has always prompted an uncomfortable reaction outside the laboratory. However, proponents of animal research have usually justified the practice by reference to greater benefits (new knowledge and medical treatments) over lesser costs (in animal suffering and death). Given that one of the costs of animal research is the suffering experienced by the animals, the goal of eliminating distress …

International Regulatory Definitions Of Animal Distress In Animal Research And Animal Production – An Overview., Jon Richmond

Laws and Legislation Collection

Various systems already exist to judge animal welfare - of which distress can be one component - in the laboratory setting (see Hendriksen and Morton 1998). Many rely on nonspecific measures; that is they may be manifestations of a number of states, not all of them necessarily indicative of poor welfare. Certainly, there is already good provision for methods to recognise some of the commoner manifestations of distress, arguably they are sufficiently meaningful to categorise various distress states, though to my mind they are for the present still not suited for use as means of strictly quantifying the negative impact/suffering …

Distress Or Suffering: What Should Be Measured To Determine Animal Well-Being?, Ian J. H. Duncan

Sentience Collection

It is generally accepted that all the vertebrates and some of the invertebrates (those with large neural ganglia such as the cephalopods) are capable of subjective experiences. Amongst those experiences are the subjective, affective states, sometimes called 'feelings' or 'emotions'. The strong negative feelings are often lumped together as 'suffering' and the positive feelings as 'pleasure'. I have argued for many years that animal welfare/well-being is completely dependent on what the animal feels (Duncan, 1993, 1996, 2002). An animal's well-being is decreased by experiencing suffering and increased by experiencing pleasure. It's as simple as that.

Distress In Animals: Its Recognition And A Hypothesis For Its Assessment, David B. Morton

Sentience Collection

This essay deals with the recognition of non-painful emotional experiences in animals, how they relate to animal wellbeing and animal welfare, and how they can be assessed, monitored and mitigated. While it is written often from a mammalian perspective, the general principles will apply to all animals that are sentient.

Concepts Of Distress, Suffering And Their Operational Interpretation, Marian Stamp Dawkins

Ethology Collection

The major concern of this paper is with the operational interpretation of animal distress and suffering – that is, with the issue of how we can measure the extent of an animal’s distress in practice. I shall probably make myself very unpopular by expressing the view right from the outset that I think it is neither possible nor desirable to try to discover universal ‘indicators’ of distress that will apply to all animals in all situations.

A Holistic Approach To Taking Research Animal Suffering Seriously, Martin Stephens, Kathleen Conlee

Experimentation Collection

It is widely agreed, and often legally required, that distress and pain in research animals should be minimized--for the sake of animal welfare, ethical obligation, and public concern, as well as scientific quality. As testimony to the importance of distress and pain to stakeholders interested in research animals, many countries compile and publish annual statistics documenting overall patterns and trends on distress and pain in research animals.

We argue for a holistic approach to minimizing research animal suffering, with all relevant parties sharing in this responsibility. Researchers, laboratory personnel, oversight committees, and facility administrators are central to day-to-day animal care. …

Taking Animal Welfare Seriously: Minimizing Pain And Distress In Research Animals, The Humane Society Of The United States

ANIMAL RESEARCH

Pain and distress caused by specific research models and techniques raise serious concerns for those in the animal welfare community as well as in the scientific community. Yet good estimates of how much animal pain and/or animal distress is caused by particular techniques or methods are not yet available. The HSUS has compiled a preliminary list of research models and techniques that cause pain and distress. Analyses by the USDA and HSUS indicate that the majority of the animals reported in Column E are used in various testing procedures, with vaccine testing prominent among them. More data are needed to …

‘Pleasures’, ‘Pains’ And Animal Welfare: Toward A Natural History Of Affect, D. Fraser, I. J.H. Duncan

Animal Welfare Collection

In hedonic theories of motivation, 'motivational affective states' (MASs) are typically seen as adaptations which motivate certain types of behaviour, especially in situations where a flexible or learned response is more adaptive than a rigid or reflexive one. MASs can be negative (eg unpleasant feelings of hunger or pain) or positive (eg pleasant feelings associated with eating and playing). Hedonic theories often portray negative and positive MASs as opposite ends of a one-dimensional scale.

We suggest that natural selection has favoured negative and positive affect as separate processes to solve two different types of motivational problems. We propose that negative …

The Value And Utility Of Animals In Research, Andrew N. Rowan, Joan C. Weer

Validation of Animal Experimentation Collection

The Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, Center for Animals and Public Policy, sponsored an invitational seminar, The Value and Utility of Animals in Research, on October 14, 1993, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. This seminar was the second in a series of three organized by the Center for Animals and Public Policy and supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts to deal with issues relating to the use of animals in research. The first seminar, Biology Education and Animals: Opportunities and Issues, was held in the spring of 1993. The third meeting, at the National Press Club …

Ethical Aspects Of Animal Experimentation, Wolfgang Scharmann

Experimentation Collection

If inquiries are made of people regarding their attitudes towards animal experimentation, there will no doubt be various answers corresponding to the different ethical attitudes today. Three principle points of view are imaginable. The two extremes are: an unrestricted support of all animal experiments; and a radical rejection of any such experiment. These two positions, in all likelihood, are taken by only a minority of the population. The majority will approve of animal experimentation in principle, however, only insofar as it is really necessary to preserve human life. So, the point of controversy arises from the question: When is an …

Genetic Adaptation And Welfare, J. Van Rooijen

Genetics Collection

Beilharz says: "The evolutionary processes, if they are not obstructed or misdirected, must lead to such a degree of adaptation that welfare will have to be taken for granted, just as we can do no better than to take for granted the welfare of any wild animal in its natural habitat." From this statement, one might conclude all we have to do is wait, and the animals will eventually adapt to intensive systems. Concerning animals put into new kinds of environments, he states that, if individuals do not have the capacity to adjust phenotypically, "adaptation of the population will require …

The Problem Of Pain: What Do Animals Really Feel?, Dana H. Murphy

Sentience Collection

Much of the contention and confusion that seem inevitably to arise whenever the subject of pain in animals comes up appear to stem principally from problems with the word "pain" itself. When used to describe responses in humans, "pain" can mean any subset of an incredibly broad spectrum of sensations and emotions, ranging from the instantaneous, galvanizing effect of a dentist drill hitting the nerve in a molar, to more airy notions such as the "pain" of rejection or "painfully" embarrassing situations. Humans even use concepts as abstruse as the German term, weltschmerz, or "world pain," which denotes a vaguely …

Abnormal Behavior As An Indication Of Immaterial Suffering, Hans Hinrich Sambraus

Sentience Collection

Reactive abnormal behavior is the convincing proof of immaterial suffering for the ethologist. We consider abnormal that behavior which does not correspond to, or is without object, which appears with sharply increased or decreased frequency, or which is abnormal in its motor pattern. Moreover, much reactive abnormal behavior manifests itself in stereotypies, i.e., the movement is repeated continuously in the same way. Among wild animals and in traditional forms of animal production abnormal behavior is unknown. However, it is encountered often in animals in intensive husbandry systems, and it can be demonstrated that abnormal behavior is actually brought about by …

Protection For Animals In Biomedical Research, F. L. Thomsen

Laboratory Experiments Collection

Our conclusion from all of this work and study is that not just a small part, but that most of the suffering undergone by laboratory animals in "unnecessary" under the terms of the pain provisions of the Rogers-Javits bill. Granted, it will take some time and effort to bring about the necessary interpretations of these provisions. The Act, when passed, offers us the medium through which to obtain such interpretations.

This unnecessary suffering results mostly from the indifference, and from the inertia and the lack of proper scientific training and technical knowledge, of many of those conducting laboratory animal experiments …