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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Animal Pain: What It Is And Why It Matters, Bernard E. Rollin
Animal Pain: What It Is And Why It Matters, Bernard E. Rollin
Animal Welfare Collection
The basis of having a direct moral obligation to an entity is that what we do to that entity matters to it. The ability to experience pain is a sufficient condition for a being to be morally considerable. But the ability to feel pain is not a necessary condition for moral considerability. Organisms could have possibly evolved so as to be motivated to flee danger or injury or to eat or drink not by pain, but by ‘‘pangs of pleasure’’ that increase as one fills the relevant need or escapes the harm. In such a world, ‘‘mattering’’ would be positive, …
Self-Harm In Laboratory-Housed Primates: Where Is The Evidence That The Animal Welfare Act Amendment Has Worked?, Jonathan Balcombe, Hope Ferdowsian, Debra Durham
Self-Harm In Laboratory-Housed Primates: Where Is The Evidence That The Animal Welfare Act Amendment Has Worked?, Jonathan Balcombe, Hope Ferdowsian, Debra Durham
Animal Welfare Collection
The 1985 amendment to the United States Animal Welfare Act (AWA) to promote psychological well being of primates in the laboratory represents an acknowledgment of an important welfare problem concerning nonhuman animals. How effective has this amendment been? Perhaps the best-known contributor to psychological distress in primates in the laboratory is nonsocial housing; yet, available analyses suggest that little progress has been made in avoiding single-caging of these animals. Another way to assess psychological well being is to examine rates of self-abusive behavior in laboratory primates. If the AWA has been effective, then post-AWA self-harm rates might be lower than …