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. 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.