Life Sciences Commons^™

Birds, Bats And Minds. Tales Of A Revolutionary Scientist: Donald R. Griffin. Volume One, Carolyn A. Ristau

eBooks

In this three-volume biography, we revisit the life and accomplishments of the revolutionary scientist, Donald R. Griffin. He encountered a lifetime of initial hostile resistance to his ideas and studies; now they are largely accepted. He and a colleague discovered the phenomenon of echolocation used by bats to navigate and capture insects, proposed that birds navigate guided by such cues as the sun and stars, and suggested that animals are likely aware, thinking and feeling beings. Forty interviews with his colleagues and friends help us understand the young emerging scientist and the mature researcher. We learn about his and others’ …

Post-Darwin Skepticism And Run-Of-The-Mill Suicide, John Hadley

Animal Sentience

Peña-Guzmán’s depiction of the opponent of animal suicide as a conservative is a straw man. It is possible to accept that animals are self-conscious and reflexive yet still reject the view that they have the mental wherewithal to commit run-of-the-mill suicide. That animal behaviour can be positioned on a continuum of self-destructive behaviour does not establish that animals can intentionally kill themselves.

Animal Sentience? Neuroscience Has No Answers, Yoram Gutfreund

Animal Sentience

Woodruff’s target article provides a detailed review of comparative studies on brain and behavior in teleosts. However, the relevance of the scientific data to the question of consciousness rests solely on the validity of a small set of so-called "requirements for consciousness." I use the target article to demonstrate that the neuroscientific study of animal consciousness in general relies on external, highly questionable and unfalsifiable criteria, and therefore fails to resolve the question of which animal species are sentient. Fish behavior can be remarkably complex, but whether fish are conscious remains a matter of belief.

Animals Aren’T Persons, But Is It Time For A Neologism?, Helen Steward

Animal Sentience

Mark Rowlands argues that at least some animals are persons, based on the idea that (i) many animals have a property he calls “pre-reflective awareness,” (ii) the capacity for pre-reflective awareness is sufficient to satisfy the traditional Lockean definition of personhood, and (iii) satisfaction of the traditional Lockean definition of personhood is sufficient for being a person. I agree with (i) and can see that there is a persuasive case for (ii), but I think the case against (iii) blocks the conclusion that animals are persons. I suggest that we may need instead to coin a neologism in order to …

Unconscious Higher-Order Thoughts (Hots) As Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness?, Rocco J. Gennaro

Animal Sentience

Rowlands argues that many nonhuman animals are “persons,” contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy which rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. He argues that self-awareness bifurcates into two importantly different forms — reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-awareness — and that many animals can have the latter, which is sufficient for personhood. I agree that there is good reason to think that many animals can have pre-reflective self-awareness, but I think Rowlands is mistaken about its nature. His account runs the risk of leading to an infinite regress objection, and his notion of pre-reflective self-awareness …

Are Animals Persons?, Mark Rowlands

Animal Sentience

It is orthodox to suppose that very few, if any, nonhuman animals are persons. The category “person” is restricted to self-aware creatures: humans (above a certain age) and possibly some of the great apes and cetaceans. I argue that this orthodoxy should be rejected, because it rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. Replacing this with a sense of self-awareness that is relevant requires us to accept that personhood is much more widely distributed through the animal kingdom.

A Moral Argument For Veganism, Dan Hooley, Nathan Nobis

Human Health Collection

In this essay, we argue for dietary veganism. Our case has two steps. First, we argue that, in most circumstances, it is morally wrong to raise animals to produce meat, dairy products, most eggs (a possible exception we discuss is eggs from pet chickens) and most other animal food products. Turning animals into food, and using them for their byproducts, causes serious harms to animals that are morally unjustified: that is, the reasons given to justify causing these kinds of harms – goods or alleged goods that result from animal farming and slaughter – are inadequate to justify the bad …

The Ethics Of Animal Research: A Survey Of Pediatric Health Care Workers, Ari Joffe, Meredith Bara, Natalie Anton, Nathan Nobis

Experimentation Collection

Introduction: Pediatric health care workers (HCW) often perform, promote, and advocate use of public funds for animal research (AR). We aim to determine whether HCW consider common arguments (and counterarguments) in support (or not) of AR convincing.

Design: After development and validation, an e-mail survey was sent to all pediatricians and pediatric intensive care unit nurses and respiratory therapists (RTs) affiliated with a Canadian University. We presented questions about demographics, support for AR, and common arguments (with their counterarguments) to justify the moral permissibility (or not) of AR. Responses are reported using standard tabulations. Responses of pediatricians and nurses/RTs were …

Annotated Bibliography: Attitudes Toward Animal Research (1998-2013), Erich Yahner

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of The Use Of Animal Models In Predicting Human Toxicology And Drug Safety, Jarrod Bailey, Michelle Thew, Michael Balls

Experimentation Collection

Animal use continues to be central to preclinical drug development, in spite of a lack of its demonstrable validity. The current nadir of new drug approvals and the drying-up of pipelines may be a direct consequence of this. To estimate the evidential weight given by animal data to the probability that a new drug may be toxic to humans, we have calculated Likelihood Ratios (LRs) for an extensive data set of 2,366 drugs, for which both animal and human data are available, including tissue-level effects and MedDRA Level 1–4 biomedical observations. This was done for three preclinical species (rat, mouse …

Wild Justice Redux: What We Know About Social Justice In Animals And Why It Matters, Jessica Pierce, Marc Bekoff

Ethology Collection

Social justice in animals is beginning to attract interest in a broad range of academic disciplines. Justice is an important area of study because it may help explain social dynamics among individuals living in tightly- knit groups, as well as social interactions among individuals who only occasionally meet. In this paper, we provide an overview of what is currently known about social justice in animals and offer an agenda for further research. We provide working definitions of key terms, outline some central research questions, and explore some of the challenges of studying social justice in animals, as well as the …

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, …

The Ethics Of Wildlife Control In Humanized Landscapes, John Hadidian, Camilla H. Fox, William S. Lynn

Ecology Collection

The 21st century is witness to an unprecedented and rapid growth of human settlements, from urban centers to wilderness vacation resorts. Concurrent with this has been the growing tolerance and acceptance of many wild animals and humans for one another. This has created an expanding ‘zone’ of human-animal contacts, some number of which invariably result in conflicts. While the vast majority of our interactions with wild animals are undoubtedly benign, it is the conflict between wildlife and people that draws particularly close attention from the public. Animals viewed as vertebrate “pests” range from the small to the large, the timid …

Medical Training Using Simulation: Toward Fewer Animals And Safer Patients, Jonathan Balcombe

Experimentation Collection

This paper presents the current status of computer-based simulation in medicine. Recent technological advances have enabled this field to emerge from esoteric explorations in academic laboratories to commercially available simulators designed to train users to perform medical procedures from start to finish. Today, more than a dozen companies are producing virtual reality simulators and interactive manikins for training in endoscopy, laparoscopy, anaesthesia, trauma management, angiography, and needle insertion. For many of these procedures, thousands of animals are still being used in training. Yet simulation has many advantages that can transcend scientific, ethical, economic and logistical problems that arise when using …

Research Fundamentals: V. The Use Of Laboratory Animal Models In Research, Brian J. O'Neil, Jeffrey A. Kline, Keith Burkhart, John Younger

Biomedicine and Animal Models in Research Collection

Animal research has provided important information about many aspects of the pathophysiology of human disease. Well-performed animal studies can determine the potential benefit of many proposed therapeutic interventions, and experimental results from animal studies have served as the basis for many landmark clinical trials. Many animal research models are described in the research literature, and choosing the appropriate model to answer a research question can be a daunting task. Even more challenging is developing a new model when none of the existing systems are relevant to the proposed question. This article was prepared by members of the SAEM Research Committee …

The Animal Research Controversy: Protest, Process & Public Policy, Andrew N. Rowan, Franklin M. Loew, Joan C. Weer

Experimentation Collection

The controversy today regarding the use of animals in research appears on the surface to be a strongly polarized struggle between the scientific community and the animal protection movement. However, there is a wide range of opinions and philosophies on both sides. Mistrust between the factions has blossomed while communication has withered. Through the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the animal movement grew in numbers and financial resources, and developed much greater public recognition and political clout. The research community paid relatively little attention to the animal movement for much of this period but, alarmed by several public relations coups …

The Ethical Judgment Of Animal Research, Shelley L. Galvin, Harold A. Herzog

Experimentation Collection

One hundred sixty subjects acted as members of a hypothetical Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and evaluated five proposals in which animals were to be used for research or educational purposes. They were asked to approve or reject the proposals and to indicate what factors were important in reaching their ethical decisions. Gender and differences in personal moral philosophy were related to approval decisions. The reasons given for the decisions fell into three main categories: metacognitive statements, factors related to the animal, and factors related to the design of the experiment.

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 …

History Of Animal Experimentation Control In The U.K., Judith E. Hampson

Laws and Legislation Collection

The legislative control of the use of animals in experiments in the UK lies in the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876. Animal Welfare groups and individuals in Britain have pressed for reform of this law almost since its inception 105 years ago, and the British government has recently agreed to bring this legislation up to date. Any new or amended legislation could have far-reaching implications, both for laboratory animal welfare and upon the scientific community and is therefore of considerable importance both in this country and overseas. No proper appreciation of the problem would be possible without reference to …

Sightings Of Moose, Deer, And Bears On Roads In Northern Ontario, D. Fraser

Anthropogenics and Population Decline Collection

No abstract provided.