Animal Research

[JaBlue]

Is animal research ethical?

I have a specific case in mind here: pain research on rats. There are some experiments we do like run bunches of trials of showing rats a light, giving them a shock, measuring physiological indicators like heart rate, then giving it the light and no shock and measuring those things.

We would never do this to a child or a baby. I am not saying adult here because the studies probably wouldn't be so great on adults since they'd know that it was a study.

The reason we do the studies on rats in particular is because their neurological makeup is actually pretty similar to ours. Moreso than dogs and dolphins, believe it or not. Because their brain is similar to ours we think that they feel pain the same way that we do. This is what allows us to theoretically apply the results of rat studies to humans.

But what is it about babies that makes it OK to test rats and not babies? The first reason to not test babies is because we wouldn't want them to be in pain. But why do we care about babies and not rats? The distinction seems pretty meaningless and arbitrary to me.

I personally would be willing to test on a rat and not a baby. I just don't care about rats being in pain. For that matter I don't really care about babies being in pain unless they're my baby, but for that reason I wouldn't want to put the parents through that. Maybe we should just test on orphans.

Another question arises: would it be OK to specifically breed babies for science? For the sole purpose of testing them? If you maintain that its OK to do this with mice/rats and not babies, why?

Is it possible for one to maintain that one cares about rats being in pain but is still willing to perform the above experiment?

all opinions - and especially those candid ones with a bit of reasoning - appreciated.