Justifying Animal Experimentation Policy in the 21st Century

Animal advocates are no longer the only voice challenging animal experimentation on grounds of ethics and efficiency. While animal-based research and the 3R principle continue to be a dominant modality for scientific research, a growing cohort of laboratory scientists have taken notice of the model’s poor results in contemporary times to advance knowledge about human disease or generate human-relevant drugs or treatment. Some have further questioned the mainstream scientific talking point that animal experimentation is a “necessary evil”. Concerns scientists critical of animal experimentation typically cite are the inefficiencies of the antiquated animal-based models given the field’s actual evidence-based impacts, the unnecessariness of animal models given new approach methodologies to replace them, and the ongoing ethical implications for animals of part or all of a life spent as an involuntary research subject. In this talk, Maneesha Deckha, Professor and Lansdowne Chair at the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria, demonstrates a different reason to further revitalize questioning of the ethical basis for contemporary animal-based research: its elitist nature in terms of the humans it stands to benefit and the interhuman global health inequities it exacerbates. Food will be provided!