Ethical Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research (HL IB Psychology)

Exam Tip

You may feel very strongly that any research which uses animals is abhorrent and should be banned but hold back from expressing such strong views in an exam. You need to be detached and objective in an exam, considering both sides of the debate, even if you don’t believe in the other side of the argument one little bit! Giving in to your own feelings will de-value your response and you will not score as highly as you would have if you had maintained a more neutral voice. Your feelings are valid but they are better expressed in other forums e.g. a classroom debate on ethics.

Worked Example

EXTENDED RESPONSE QUESTION (ERQ)

22 MARKS

The question is, ‘To what extent is research using animals ethical?’ [22]

‘To what extent’ requires you to consider a range of arguments regarding whether or not animal research is ethical so that you are able to form a conclusion based on the points that have been raised in the essay. Look at these exemplar paragraphs to give you an idea as to how to construct relevant arguments for this exam question:

Researchers must conduct a cost-benefit analysis weighing up the decision to use animals at all, even within the ethical guidelines, to minimise the cost to the animals. The benefits and costs have to be considered for each piece of research. However, sometimes the benefits for treatment of humans are not known until human clinical trials take place after the animal studies i.e. it is ultimately more ethical to test the treatment on animals first. However, this approach can backfire and lead to humans being harmed: Archibald and Coleman (2012) stated that, in 92% of medical cases, treatments that worked with animals failed clinical trials with humans. Bearing this in mind perhaps it could be argued that animal research should be abandoned as it does not serve a useful purpose.

Animal research may be unethical to a great extent in that we often cannot argue that the benefits outweigh the costs until many animals have been used in research and probably suffered as part of the process. Researchers have to believe that it is better to use an animal to potentially understand human behaviour and to develop cures for human disorders than it is to use a human, even if that human is a volunteer. Minimising the animals’ distress, using as few subjects as necessary, and housing them as humanely as possible makes the research ethical to a greater extent than it was before these measures were introduced. What cannot be ignored however, is the lack of generalisability to humans which means that such research is unethical as, really, what is the point of it? Where researchers have reasonable doubt as to the usefulness of using animals then alternatives, such as computer simulations or cell samples should be used. In this way the research would be fully adhering to the ethical guidelines for the use of animals in research.