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Animals

Can Animal Experimentation Be Justified?

Zaid Shehryar compares two opposing views.

In his book Animal Liberation (1975), Peter Singer argues that the vast majority of animal experiments cannot be justified because they offer little new knowledge at a high cost of animal suffering. Singer also claims that such knowledge can be obtained by other means, without killing animals. By contrast, Carl Cohen offers a defense of animal experimentation. In his article, ‘The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research’ (available online), he argues that we have a strong obligation to carry out animal experiments in order to alleviate human suffering and extend human life. Here I will summarize both arguments, underscore potential weaknesses, and ultimately conclude that Singer’s position is more plausible than Cohen’s.

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