The National Institutes of Health has announced that starting October 1, 2012, NIH funds may no longer be used to buy cats from Class B dealers. A similar prohibition in the purchase of dogs from Class B dealers takes effect in 2015.
Although dogs and cats constitute only small percentage of research animals, they have been used in American biomedical research for over a century for studies of cardiovascular and neurological diseases, and for other areas of research including recent studies that led to a gene therapy for the eye disease Leber’s congenital amaurosis, whose success was reported widely last week. The use of these animals is tightly regulated by the Animal Welfare Act, and they are only employed for studies where lower species do not provide adequate models.
Class B dealers are individuals licensed by the USDA under the Animal Welfare Act to resell animals they did not breed themselves. Class A dealers are breeders who do raise the animals themselves. Class B dealers may purchase dogs and cats from sources such as municipal pounds, from individuals who bred and raised the animals, and from other licensed dealers. They are required to keep records on where they got each animal and to hold pound animals for a minimum period so that if an unwanted animal was actually a stray, the owner has time to reclaim it.
Animal statistics in 2010 (US data) - Dogs account of 0.25% and cats 0.08% of the total number of animals used.
Class B dealers used to provide a large number of cats and dogs for research because they were virtually the only source for older animals and for some breeds. Regrettably, some Class B dealers used practices that violated the Animal Welfare Act both in terms of how they acquired animals and how they treated them. The National Academies of Science studied the specific areas of science where Class B dogs and cats were being used and concluded that NIH could develop alternate supply mechanisms to replace them. NIH decided the best way to facilitate the transition was to provide an initial outlay of funds so that Class A dealers could begin raising older dogs of the breeds required for scientific research. It is expected that these breeders will be able to produce the necessary animals by 2015.
After October 1, 2012, NIH-grant supported research can only use cats from the following sources: Class A dealers, privately owned research colonies, or client owned animals, such as animals that participate in veterinary clinical trials. The same policy will apply to dogs in 2015 when the Class A breeding program is in full swing.
The transition of NIH-funded research away from the use of Class B dogs and cats is an example of how measures can be taken to correct ethical problems regarding the treatment of animals. When ethical concerns exist, thoughtful and deliberate steps can address those concerns, while preserving important biomedical research projects.
Bill Yates and Alice Ra’anan.
Bill Yates is the Chair of American Physiological Society Animal Care and Experimentation Committee. Alice Ra’anan is Director of Science Policy for the American Physiological Society. The views expressed above are exclusively those of Bill Yates and Alice Ra’anan and do not necessarily represent those of their employers.
Take out a piece of paper and a sharpened #2 pencil.
Please read carefully the following story and answer all the questions.
You have 15 min.
One Saturday morning Dr. X was walking her dog thinking about some recent results in her field when it dawned on her that she might actually have the key to explaining all those findings. If she was correct, she could go on to develop a new therapy for a terrible disease.
Being a scientist, Dr. X rapidly turned that idea into a specific hypothesis with testable predictions. She ran back to her laboratory, gathered her students, told them the idea, and got to work. They were excited when their first test (T1) yielded a positive result. This simply meant that the implications of her hypothesis were corroborated by the experiment. Good job everyone!
The next day her students were up all night running the second test (T2). Dr. X arrived at the laboratory after dropping her kids in school to find very tired students, but with big smiles on their faces. The second test, she correctly guessed, gave them another positive result. Hurrah!
That night, at the dinner table, she shared the excitement with her family. Even the dog appeared to notice something important was going on. Next morning, one of her postdoctoral students came up with, what appeared to be, a direct test of the central idea. It was agreed at the Lab meeting that this would be the next experiment (T3).
It was a difficult experiment. Dr. X’s husband agreed to pick up the kids instead and let her finish her work. Close to midnight the results came in. Everyone in the lab ran to see the results. They stared at each other in disappointment. The result was clearly negative — what this meant is that the outcome contradicted a key prediction of the hypothesis.
Dr. X’s Lab had a difficult month. They went over the data over and over again — nothing was obviously wrong; but they decided not to give up. Instead, they brainstormed about how they could come up with a new hypothesis that may explain the data they had collected so far. And yes, Dr. X explained, this must include a reason for the outcome of the negative experiment as well.
One night, Dr. X was awoken by the sound of the phone. She was startled, it was unusual that anyone would call at 3 am to her home. Understandably, Dr. X answered the phone with some apprehension. She was relieved to hear one of her students, which after calming himself down and apologizing for the time, described to her a new idea that, he said, came to him out of nowhere in the middle of his sleep. She grumbles, but listened… her sleepy eyes slowly widening as the student went on. When he was done Dr. X immediately knew that there was no doubt her student could explain the diverse findings.
Everyone gathered in the laboratory next morning and started to test again based on the new concept over the week. T4… positive! T5….positive! T6… negative… Negative?! Oh no… Again?!
Yes, again. But Dr. X gathered her students and explain to them that this is how science works. New ideas emerge from old ones in an effort to account for all the data their community gathered so far. And that negative findings were important for science too. They all felt a bit better as they went home… just a little bit. But more than Dr. X’s words, it was a group feeling that they were getting closer to the truth.
It took her Lab a few more iterations of this difficult game called science, but one day they knew they had nailed it. They had a new idea that not only explained all past results but stood many additional tests, including replications by her colleagues. Their work delivered a medical breakthrough that allowed them to develop a new medical treatment that saved uncountable human lives.
Questions:
Assume that in this story, from beginning to end, including her experiments those of her colleagues, scientists performed 20 experimental tests that yielded positive results, 15 experimental tests that yielded negative results, and that each test required the use of exactly one mouse.
Q1. How many mice were scientifically necessary to develop this medical breakthrough?
Q2. Which experimental tests were more important in developing this breakthrough? The tests yielding positive results or the ones yielding negative results? Explain.
Q3. Given the end result was that uncountable human lives are being saved. Which test was morally justifiable and which was not? Were positive tests in any way more justifiable than negative ones? Were experiments used in replicating Dr. X’s findings necessary and justified? Or is it only the final experiment directly preceding the development of the new therapy that was justified?
Q4. Five years after her discovery, and with the new knowledge acquired, one of Dr. X’s colleagues comments that it was obvious some of the ideas she had tried could not have worked. With 20/20 vision, Dr. X agrees. Does her admission mean the experiments testing those ideas were scientifically unnecessary or ethically indefensible?
Submit your answers in the comments section below!
In a recent poll conducted by Zogby, 2,100 adults in the U.S. were asked the following question.
Do you agree or disagree with medical and scientific research that requires lab animals?
The results showed a similar outcome to that of other recent polls.
About 52% of the population approve of animal research in various degrees, about 27% disapprove in various degrees, 15% are neutral and 6% are unsure about their position.
Despite the many polls done on the subject it remains unclear on what grounds do some people object to the use of animals in science.
Is it perhaps that they find the work morally wrong? Is it that they believe all living beings have the basic rights to liberty and freedom?
Some insight into these questions can be gained by asking the same group of people what would the do in the following scenario.
Suppose you suffer from a leaky heart valve, and that doctors say you have two years left. You could have a valve replacement surgery that might save your life. But, in order to obtain the replacement tissue necessary for a surgery, a pig must be killed.
Which of the following statements best reflects what you would do if faces with a similar situation?
Statement A: I would have the surgery. I think it is ethical.
Statement B: I would have the surgery, but I think it is unethical.
Statement C: I would not have the surgery, but I think it is ethical.
Statement D: I would not have the surgery because I think it is unethical.
Here are the results from the same poll:
Now, if one believes animals have rights they surely ought to be respected. If you believe a pig has the same basic rights to life and freedom as your neighbor, then you ought to refuse the surgery for the same reason that you would not kill your neighbor to save your own life.
However, only a mere 3% of those asked appear ready to act in a way consistent with such a position. It is interesting to note that also about 3% of the US population are vegetarian, although most of them do it for health reasons and not ethical objections to the use of animals as food.
Thus, those that oppose research do not appear to do so because of belief that all living beings have the same basic rights to life as that of fellow humans.
Another small minority, 2%, would not have the surgery despite the fact they think such surgical intervention is ethical. It would appear this group simply is uncomfortable with the notion that pig tissue would be implanted in their human hearts.
About 12% of the group would opt to save their lives despite having ethical objections. It appears this group feels there is something inherently wrong in killing an animal to allow them to survive and yet, if faced with the situation they would nonetheless go ahead with the surgery. Arguably, this group realizes that the pig is a living being that we owe moral concern, but that when human and animal lives are at stake, opting to save the human is morally permissible. Alternatively, they may genuinely opt for behaving in an immoral fashion when it comes to saving their own lives.
Finally, the vast majority, 73% of them, will opt for the surgery without having any moral concerns whatsoever. None at all. That is roughly 3 out of 4 people in the US population.
A natural question is then why wouldn’t the same group, at the very least, be in favor of animal research that advances medical knowledge and human health?
One likely possibility is that they fail to see the direct link between research and the therapies and medicines that it produces. They fail to see that the medicine that will save their lives next time they visit the emergency room will be, in all likelihood, the result of animal research. They may wrongly perceive basic and translational research as two being completely different things. The contribution of basic knowledge to human health may be lost in translation.
So, what can be done?
Aside from scientists and physicians reaching out to educate the public on this matters, we could begin by labeling each and every single medication that resulted from basic research in animals with such basic information. Note that I am not talking about safety testing in animals — which is required by the law. Instead, I am referring to medicines developed through the identification of molecular targets or the discovery of specific mechanisms with the use of animals in basic research. In other words, I propose to label medicine as derived from animal research if it actually produced the knowledge that actually allowed scientists to understand how a particular therapy could be developed.
Shouldn’t the public be entitled to know where their medicines come from? Shouldn’t the public be entitled to understand the range of benefits produced by their tax dollars?
Animal rights activists may want to start cooling down their engines.
Apparently, by 2050 we can expect the complete elimination of animal use in science.
At least, this is the prediction made by Dr. Andrew Rowan, Chief Scientific Officer of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in a recent article that appeared in The Scientist.
The title of the piece was “Avoiding Animal Testing. Advances in cell-culture technologies are paving the way to the complete elimination of animals from laboratories”.
The first half of the article focuses on the development and adoption of alternatives to the use of animals in toxicology. Our public health officials and the FDA have long made the sensible decision to require any company that introduces new chemicals or drugs into the market to provide an initial experimental assessment of their potential toxicity to humans.
This use of animals for such safety screening is typically called animaltesting.
Dr. Rowan correctly points out that advances in the development toxicology methods may allow us eventually to relax the regulations that require the use of animals in testing. But he rapidly moves to insinuate such advances imply that by 2050 we could see the end of animal use in laboratories:
This overall decline in animal use can be attributed to the advent of novel technologies such as improved cell-culture systems and micro-analytic techniques; more sophisticated model systems; improved understanding of signaling and metabolic pathways; and a host of other new methods that allow scientists to answer important questions about the functioning of healthy and diseased tissues without subjecting whole animals to harmful procedures. With a 50 percent decline in animal research since 1975, we are roughly at the halfway point towards the complete elimination of animal research. Thus, we argue that, by 2050, we might finally see the last of animal use in the laboratory, particularly if all stakeholders put their minds to it.
First, the assertion that the total use of animals is systematically declining is not supported by the data. The slide below, for example, was taken from a recent talk Dr. Rowan gave at the University of Wisconsin. It shows the total number of animals used has been stable since the mid 80s, with the number of non-genetically modified (Non-GM, faint dashed line) animals decreasing and stabilizing in the 90s (see also data here), while the number of genetically modified (GM) animals, which are largely mice, has been systematically increasing.
Second, even if correctly asserting that we can expect a diminished need for animals in toxicology testing, Dr. Rowan’s generalization of such trend from a such narrow field to all of biomedical research is groundless and misleading.
Let us be clear, our universities do not engage in animal testing, but in animal research.
What’s the difference?
Scientists are largely concerned with elucidating the basic mechanisms of biological processes in health and disease. We want to study how cells in our bodies work, how they communicate, how they develop, how they age and how they die. We want to understand how the brain, our immune system, and internal organs work and how they fail. And so on…
Why is it critical we develop such an understanding?
Because without this knowledge there will be no hope to combat disease. Indeed, the mission of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recognizes this fundamental fact in its opening statement,
NIH’s mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life and reduce the burdens of illness and disability.
Implicit in such declaration is the acknowledgment that it is basic knowledge that drives advancements in human health and well-being. Basic knowledge of nature is what drives progress. This point is critical – translational or applied research would not exist without basic knowledge as the raw material. Without knowledge there would be nothing to translate nor apply.
Those that declare an imminent end to the use of animals in science are effectively implying that they envisage all basic knowledge needed will be acquired by a certain date, or that we will have methods that would allow us to proceed with studies non-invasively in human volunteers. Dr. Rowan’s statement that “Advances in cell-culture technologies are paving the way to the complete elimination of animals from laboratories” is nothing short of utter scientific nonsense.
Is it possible for Dr. Rowan to be ignorant of the role of animals in scientific research? Could he legitimately be confused about the difference between safety testing on one hand and the development of therapies and basic research on the other?
This seems highly unlikely giving his academic credentials and the fact that he has served on IACUCs before. In fact, another slide from his talk, shows him delineating these different uses of animals, and illustrating that animal testing for human safety accounts for merely ~25% of total animal use.
No, Dr. Rowan is not confused at all. He knows what he is talking about. This is unfortunate as one can only conclude his article is simply a misguided attempt to deceive the public about the fields in which we might realistically expect science to successfully replace animals in the near future.
And I emphasized science above for a good reason.
As difficult as it is for animal advocates to understand, scientists also believe we will see a day when we can eliminate the use of animals in all animal research. And the day will arrive because of the hard work, progress and achievements of dedicated scientists, such as this one, and not because of deception of those that want to oppose animal research at all cost.
For HSUS to suggest that all animal research could be eliminated by 2050 is flatly wrong from a scientific point of view, and utterly irresponsible from a public health perspective.
Humans can transcend their biological lives in ways that other animals cannot. Humans can study, understand and challenge nature by means of technological might, in ways other animals cannot. Humans can store knowledge in perpetual form and secure its benefits for all future generations, in ways other animals cannot.
Evolution resulted in our species developing the skills to be the stewards of our planet, its environment and all living creatures within it. This realization carries a tremendous responsibility that we must accept and face. It seem clear that both human and non-human animals stand to gain from such recognition.
Human abilities also challenge us with ethical dilemmas we cannot ignore.
When confronted with the incredible suffering caused by disease on one hand and faced with the ability to challenge such maladies on the other, humans can feel morally compelled to act.
Under normal circumstances nobody wants to cause unnecessary harm to animals. But anyone who has seen a loved one suffering recognizes that human patients and their families live extraordinary circumstances. In some instances, we do not see any other way to help without advancing medical knowledge and science through regulated and responsible research with animals.
To attack the acceptance of our differences and the associated responsibilities as discriminatory, or more specifically, as speciesist, is misguided.
As Bernard Williams wrote:
The word “speciesism” has been used for an attitude some regard as our ultimate prejudice, that in favor of humanity. It is more revealingly called “humanism,” and its is not a prejudice. To see the world from a human point of view is not an absurd thing for human beings to do. It is sometimes said that such a view implies that we regard human beings as the most important or valuable creatures in the universe. This would be an absurd thing to do, but it is not implied. To suppose that it is, is to make the mistake of identifying the point of view of the universe and the human point of view. No one should make any claims about the importance of human beings to the universe: the point is about the importance of human beings to human beings.
A concern for nonhuman animals is indeed a proper part of human life, but we can acquire it, cultivate it, and teach it only in terms or our understanding of ourselves. Human beings both have that understanding and are the objects of it, and this is one of the basic respects in which our ethical relations to each other must always be different from our relations to other animals. Before one gets to the question of how animals should be treated, there is the fundamental point that this is the only question there can be: how they should be treated. The choice can only be whether animals benefit from our practices or are harmed by them. This is why speciesism is falsely modeled on racism and sexism, which really are prejudices. To suppose that there is an ineliminable white or male understanding of the world, and to think that the only choice is whether blacks or women should benefit from “our” (white, male) practices or be shared by them: this is already to be prejudiced. But in the case of human relations to animals, the analogues to such thoughts are simply correct.
Our arguments have to be grounded in a human point of view; they cannot be derived from a point of view that is no one’s point of view at all. It is not, as the strongest forms of ethical theory would have it, that reason drives us to get beyond humanity. The most urgent requirements of humanity are, as they always have been, that we should assemble as many resources as we can to help us to respect it.
In other words, being humane means, in large part, being capable of treating others in ways that other animals cannot. It means seeing the world through human eyes from a human perspective. It means accepting our role and responsibility as stewards of the animals and our planet.
Begin humane is to assume the responsibility endowed by our human condition.
In this holiday season Animal People reminds us all that we are privileged to live in a democratic society, where different points of view can be expressed, discussed and debated freely, and where violence has no place as a tool to advance social change.
Speaking of Research welcomes and applauds this statement. We hope the new year will only expand the circle of those open to civil dialogue and public debate.
The Animal People’s board resolution reads in its entirety:
The Animal People, Inc. Board Resolution on Activist Tactics
Arresting the cycle of violence in human affairs is of greater importance than the accomplishment of any single tactical objective–whether trying to stop the slaughter of animals for food, fur, sport, or religious rituals; addressing the scientific use of animals; or dealing with any other particular exploitation of animals. We enjoy the opportunity to address social injustices, inequities, and cruelties (toward animals, children, women, gay people, poor people, and racial and ethnic minorities) because we are privileged to live in a democratic society, which through the effort of generations of our forebears has (however tenuously at times) replaced the old paradigm of “might makes right” with respect for the rights of individuals, democratic process, public debate, freedom of expression, and divergent points of view.
Part of our social contract as civilized people is that we agree to trust in the ability of our ideas to persuade, and to operate within established systems until they can be improved by peaceful means.
We believe that no principle should be more inviolable than the principle that violence–including psychological violence such as intimidation, the invasion of familial privacy, and engagement with persons not responsible for or directly involved in issues (such as relatives of parties with whom there is a dispute)–must never be employed as means to achieve moral progress and advance social change.
Protesters have the right to express dissent, rally, and even agitate in order to arouse public concern in the hope of prompting action, but demonstrations, rallies, and actions involving civil disobedience should be held at appropriate sites, such as public areas including shopping malls, universities, government buildings, or office buildings connected to the issues of concern.
A recent paper in Science discussed behavioral data in rats suggestive of empathically motivated behavior. This is a potentially very important report for two major reasons. First, a deep understanding of the mental and psychological abilities of rats, and other species, is a crucial goal for comparative psychologists, evolutionary biologists and other basic scientists. Second, the autism spectrum disorders are characterized by atypical reciprocal social interactions, and difficulty with experiencing and understanding the emotions of others appear to contribute; therefore, an animal model system in which we can learn how the brain responds to and processes the emotions of others is crucial to progress in this area. For these reasons, the experiments address a very significant question.
The experiment consisted of having a rat placed in an arena (the free rat) who is able to see and interact with a companion that is trapped in a cylindrical restrainer with a door (the trapped rat). It was found that the free rat learned over time to free the trapped rat by intentionally opening the door. In control experiments, rats did not open empty tubes or ones containing an inanimate object. When given a choice between getting access to chocolate and freeing the trapped rat, they would often free the rat even before eating the chocolate, suggesting that the motivation to liberate its companion trumped even its desire for the chocolate, a potential sign of altruism.
The authors concluded that “the free rat was not simply empathically sensitive to another rat’s distress but acted intentionally to liberate a trapped conspecific.”
It appears that both the press, and perhaps even the authors, interpret the findings as implying the following:
The free rat has a mental state that represents the well-being of a conspecific.
This representation generates a distressful response in the free rat.
The free rat learns it can act in a way to relieve the distress of the caged rat by opening the door of the cage.
The rat intentionally acts to relieve the caged rat from distress even when there it has nothing to gain from the action.
Dr. Daniel Povinelli, in a Nature coverage of the paper, had a different view, saying that “This work is not evidence of empathy — defined as the ability to mentally put oneself into another being’s emotional shoes.”
Though the view that rats exhibit empathic behavior may be consistent with the data, we must ask if there could be alternative, simpler explanations that do not necessarily involve invoking assumptions 1-4, above.
One possibility is that the trapped animal is generating an alarm signal, either in the form of vocalizations or pheromones, that generates stress in the free rat. The free rat may then learn it can stop the distressing signal by opening the door (so-called negative reinforcement). In acting in such a way, the free rat would then be relieving its own distress rather than the perceived and shared stress of a conspecific.
Is this possible?
The authors did not measure chemical signals but did measure vocalizations during their experiments and found that “significantly more alarm calls were recorded during the trapped condition (13%) than during the empty and object conditions.”
So this alternative scenario is, in principle, a possibility. The authors dismissed this alternative explanation because the rate of alarm calls was relatively low and yet they remained open to the possibility when they concluded:
Thus, the most parsimonious interpretation of the observed helping behavior is that rats free their cage-mate in order to end distress, either their own or that of the trapped rat [...] This emotional motivation, arguably the rodent homolog of empathy, appears to drive the pro-social behavior observed in the present study.
This is a bit confusing and requires clarification.
There are at least two different interpretations of the data. Not one.
Either the rat is freeing the companion to end its own stress (caused by an alarm signal) or it is doing it to end the perceived stress of the caged rat. The interpretation of a pro-social, empathically motivated, altruistic behavior is only applicable to the second interpretation and not the first one.
To differentiate among these possibilities one can conduct some additional control experiments. One could, for example, just play alarm calls that are stopped once a rat presses a lever once placed in the arena. Or we could use chemical signaling if we learn the behavior is mediated by pheromones and identify the pheromone in question. One could have offered the free rat the option to leave the arena to a dark, quiet place, potentially ending its own distress and leaving the companion trapped. Or the free rat could be offered the possibility of a “personal sacrifice” (such as a mild shock) to free the other rat, thus paying a price to help his companion. These are all doable experiments that would help tease apart the different interpretations of these data.
Another potential explanation of the data is raised by video records of these experiments provided as part of the Science article shown below.
In this example, taken after the rat has learned to free its counterpart, we see the free rat going right into the restraint immediately after opening the door. Why would the rat enter the tube if it truly felt and understood the distress the other rat experienced by being confined?
If one has ever seen rats at the pet store, you know that you will often find them snuggled up together in tubes and tight spaces because they apparently enjoy the safety and security of these types of experiences. This view was raised in an online discussion of the data:
Rats enjoy access to tight enclosures. We routinely put plastic tubes in home cages for “environmental enrichment” and the rats are often found “snuggled” together in them, especially when resting – presumably an inherent protective response. In fact, if you try to grab a rat in a cage with a tube, the rat will immediately go for the tube and try to stay in it. Thus the “trapped” rat could also be seen by the “free” rat as enjoying a protected situation, and the free rat could in fact be displaying “envy” by freeing his companion so that he can enjoy the same protection and/or being motivated for social reasons to have a companion to “snuggle” with. Indeed, the first thing the free rat did in the video after opening the enclosure was to go right into the tube with the other rat!
So the basic question is, does the free rat want to get in, believing that his cagemate enjoys the privilege of a protected space, or does he fear for his cagemate and want to release him?
Again, only additional experiments can address this. Resolution of these alternative views is crucial in terms of both of the prevailing motivations for conducting the study. Either rats are acting to relieve their own distress, or that of another – the difference bears strongly on our understanding of their mental abilities. In addition, if the former, but not latter, phenomena is correct, the value of studying the biology of empathy using rats is significantly challenged.
Still, we are left with a provocative phenomena — rats freeing one another, invoking similarities with human behavior. There are plenty of other examples in nature where individuals of a species cooperate and interact in ways that could be described in terms of our own (human) mental states as altruistic or empathic behavior. The examples range from bonobos, to bats, to even single-cell organisms, such as social amoeba (see here and here.) The behavior is essentially the same across all these species and yet one would be hard pressed to argue that single-cell organisms have a notion of altruism and empathy in the same sense humans do.
Our brains (including those of scientists) are wired in such a way that they readily interpret the behavior of others in terms of our own mental states. Such ability is useful in many situations, form navigating daily social interactions and even in the description of scientific data. Care must be exercise in descriptions based on our own mental states when the outcome can have clear moral and scientific consequences.
Scientists must always keep an open mind. But before rushing to declare that humans must seek moral guidance from rats, we should pause and try to understand exactly what the data say. As new experiments are done and more information is available, we will surely be able to discern which of the alternative explanations is the correct one. If additional work confirms the (premature) conclusions of the authors, it will lay the ground work for developing new animal models for human psychological disorders, which will be a welcome development. For now, however, we must await that conclusive work.
There is a classical argument against animal research that surfaced in a recent conversation with Robert C. Jones. It is a thought experiment that can be traced back to science fiction work in the 50s, although its exact origin is unknown.
The story involves the landing of an aliens on Earth. Robert calls them “The Gorgons.”
The Gorgons are an extremely advanced civilization only a few light years away from Earth. It is nearly impossible for humans to grasp the vast cognitive gap that separates our species. Suffice it to say, our most magnificent cities are to them as ant mounds are to us. Our artistic masterpieces are to their sophisticated senses as dull and mundane as a blank wall is to our eyes. They consider our greatest achievements in mathematics and physics nothing more than child’s play.
The Gorgons also have a deep scientific interest in learning about the nature of the Universe. It is not surprising that, upon landing on Earth, they debate the use of humans in harmful invasive experiments as a means to learn more about aspects of galactic biology.
Would such experiments be ethically permissible?
What would a Gorgon think?
In order to answer the question we need more information than a statement about the Gorgons’ intellectual superiority.
Namely — Do the Gorgons have a moral society?
Perhaps not.
Perhaps the Gorgons are like the Borg in the Star Trek series — a race of cybernetic organisms designed to adapt and efficiently assimilate any other civilization they encounter, but considerate enough to warn their victims that “resistance is futile”.
An amoral, technologically advanced civilization (the Borg) attempts to assimilate humans.
The Borg is capable of acquiring the technological knowledge of other civilizations, but incapable of absorbing any of their moral principles. There is no doubt the Borg is highly intelligent and technologically advanced. There is also no doubt that the Borg is amoral.
The Borg sees the assimilation of a civilization as neither right nor wrong — assimilation is simply what the Borg does. It is its nature. The same is true for a lion killing a gazelle. The lion has no concept of his killing being right or wrong — that’s just what lions do.
If the Gorgons are an intellectually advanced but amoral civilization (like the Borg), then the question “What would a Gorgon think about harmful human experimentation?” is meaningless. Gorgons are simply unable to pose themselves such question and we cannot answer for them. What is certain is that if we were to run into amoral Gorgons the result would be the same as if we were to run into the Borg… or a hungry lion for that matter.
Of course there is another possibility. The Gorgons may happen to be a race with moral principles. In this case, one may argue the inferior intellectual capacities of our species would not be as important to them as the fact that we are share basic moral principles, such as the golden rule.
Basic rules of reciprocity among moral agents are expected to be shared among intelligent, rational life in the universe. If the Gorgons are a moral society, we would expect they will recognize us as one too and treat accordingly under the self-evident (and now expanded) principle that:
“All moral agents in our universe are created equal…”
This is a natural outcome in many fictional encounters with other worlds we read about in the science fiction literature, where different versions of a “prime directive” are at work — a binding principle of non-interference by humans with other less developed cultures and civilizations.
If mere humans can concoct such a prime directive, it is difficult to see how the more advanced, intelligent, rational and moral Gorgons would fail to reach the same conclusion. No; a moral Gorgon civilization would not experiment on a moral human species.
But lets consider for completeness the remote possibility that the Gorgons will actually be a malevolent species and attack Earth in what develops to be an Independence Day scenario.
Here, Bernard Williams, wrote there is only one question left to ask.
[...] hopes for self-improvement can lie dangerously close to the risk of self-hatred. When the hope is to improve humanity to the point at which every aspect of its hold on the world can be justified before a higher court, the result is likely to be either self-deception, if you think you have succeed, or self-hatred and self-contempt when you recognize that you will always fail. The self-hatred, in this case, is a hatred of humanity. Personally I think that there are many things to loathe about human beings, but their sense of their ethical identity as a species is not one of them.”
*I thank Robert C. Jones for pointing out the science fiction story “To Serve Man” and the work of Bernard Williams and Hugh LaFollette on this topic.
