Animal Testing Utilitarianism Essay

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Introduction Animals testing have significantly contributed to the advancement of scientific knowledge in general and to biomedical progress specifically. Many example showing that laboratory animals in medical development and other aspects have significantly influenced human health and reduced suffering, for example improved diagnosis of infectious disease ( Hau, J., & Schapiro, S. J. 2002). But since 1960s and 1970s, animals testing protests has gained prominence and strength, people start to argue it is moral to continue “cruel” animal testing. Animal Testing is a moral act In the rest of this article, I shall apply different concept under utilitarianism try to discuss animal testing are moral acts. It is important to notice that (1) …show more content…

The general idea and the foundation about utilitarianism are all about doing something to maximize the happiness and minimize the misery and pain. According to this theory, an act is moral as they tend to increase the happiness or pleasure and reduce misery or pain. This idea, is developed from the father of utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham’s axiom “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong” (Bentham J., 1776). Utilitarianism uses the aggregation of harms and benefits to determine the right course of …show more content…

From difference perspective animals are the most suitable research subject. For utilitarianism, everybody get counted equally in the calculation of happy and painful consequences, happiness is not only related to the behavior of that parties, in this case is the suffering animals, but also involve everyone affected by this act, (Banner, 1968), The case for animal experiments is that they will produce such great benefits for humanity that it is morally acceptable to scarify the lives of a few animals, this is where support animal testing is morally