Animal experimentation and the argument from limited resources.

Those with genuinely humane motives are most likely to prolong life or alleviate suffering by bringing existing medical knowledge to bear in those parts of the world where men and women are suffering and dying because they cannot afford any treatment Yet many scientists prefer Animal rights activists are often accused of showing to spend their lives in laboratories causing untold more concern for animals than for human beings. How, suffering to animals in questionable medical it is asked, can activists condemn the use of animals in research with a slrong commercial motive; these research that might eventually provide a cure for cancer, researchers are not convincing when they plead AIDS, muscular dystrophy, ordiabetes? C. R. Gallistel that hwnanity is their over-riding concern (22). speaks for many critics of the animal liberation movement when he writes: Ryder's point is that health care professionals have a choice between applying their knowledge and skills in It is an affront to my own ethical sensibility to laboratory research or devoting themselves instead to hear arguments that the suffering of animals is providing basic medical care to the poor. The first of greater moral weight than the advancement choice involves inflicting untold suffering and death of human understanding and the consequent upon any number of animals in research which may alleviation of human suffering (214). never yield beneficial medical results. The second choice involves helping people directly without any Gallistel's appeal to the humanity of the scientific harm coming to animals. It is this second choice, Ryder enterprise is not uncommon among apologists for urges, that is the truly humane one.1 vivisection. The argument is that animal research is an indispensable tool in the treatment of disease and, consequently, to condemn such research, as activists do, is to condemn indefmitely many people to misery and death. One shouldaccept restrictions on animal research, PHILOSOPHY Gallistel insists, "only ifone believes that the moral value of.. .scientific knowledge and of the many human and