Animal Experimentation: Lessons From Human Experimentation

This article is adapted from the author's presentation during the panel discussion Animals in Research: Pet Cloning, Patents, and Bioethics at the 14th Annual Animal Law Conference of Lewis & Clark Law School on October 14, 2006. Conventional wisdom tells us that animal experimentation is a relevant precursor to human experimentation. The failings of human experimentation to be more reliable, however, casts substantial doubt on the necessity and appropriateness of experimentation on animals. The federal government and medical community, since World War II, has used the Nuremberg Code and the “common rule” to determine how to ethically conduct human experimentation.

Due to political, economic, or simply unethical decisions, government entities, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies have continued to conduct human experimentation without the informed consent of their subjects. These human experiments have mirrored the form of animal experiments and have often achieved meaningless -- or worse -- devastating results. Because of the danger and unreliability of human experimentation, the federal and local governments, in conjunction animal advocacy organizations, should take a series of concrete steps to eliminate an experimenter’s ability to cause pain, suffering, and unnecessary death to animals.