Abstract

In this dissertation, I provide an account of the protections to which most captive non-human animals are morally entitled when they participate in health-related research. At least in the animal ethics literature, it is uncontroversial that the protections currently afforded to captive research animals are inadequate. This has much to do with the fact that most animals who serve as research participants are 1) sentient and, thus, have important morally considerable interests; 2) unable to provide informed consent to their research participation; and 3) seriously harmed as a result of their participation. Unsurprisingly, then, a number of authors have proposed alternative sets of protections that they take to be appropriately responsive to the morally considerable interests of research animals. However, none of the alternatives proposed ensures the ethically appropriate treatment of research animals because all are demonstrably more permissive than the set of protections governing research involving children. This seems problematic given that most animal research participants, like most pediatric research participants, are sentient and unable to provide informed consent for their research participation, and, furthermore, that these are the very characteristics that render children vulnerable — and so entitled to additional protections — in the context of research. I examine a number of reasons that might be thought to justify the discrepancy between the protections afforded to these two groups of research participants, and argue that no non-speciesist justification is forthcoming. Consequently, we ought to reflect upon how the protections currently in place for pediatric research participants might be extended to most animal research participants. I argue that most pediatric research protections, when suitably amended to account for relevant differences between most children and animals, can and should be extended to most animal research participants. I also demonstrate that doing so would require that substantial changes are made to most extant animal research studies. Since this, in turn, would require a radical transformation of the research enterprise as we know it, I also gesture towards how we might get from where we currently are to a truly just research enterprise.