“Pain is pain regardless as to who or what suffers it. X amount of pain in a dog or a cat matters just as much as X amount of pain in a human being. It is the pain that matters, not the species.” (psychologist Richard Ryder)
“I personally can see no reason for conceding mind to my fellow men and denying it to animals. I at least cannot doubt that the interests and activities of animals are correlated with awareness and feeling in the same way as my own, and which may be, for aught I know, just as vivid.” (neurologist Russell Brain)
Sentience involves the ability to sense (feel) pleasure and pain. Many nonhuman species have the capacity for subjective feelings, including (but not limited to) affection, distress, fear, grief, and the negative experiences (anxiety, sadness) and symptoms (lethargy, compulsive actions) associated with neurosis. Still, there are some who accord sentience only to humans. This decidedly Cartesian viewpoint allows for a virtual carte blanche in the laboratory.
The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage. Note: The inability to communicate verbally does not negate the possibility that an individual is experiencing pain and is in need of appropriate pain-relieving treatment. Pain is always subjective….”
The requisite physiological mechanisms (nociceptors, spinal cord, brain) for pain are present in many nonhuman species. This is precisely why animal experimentation for human benefit is defended as useful. Animal tests, in fact, are conducted for the study of pain itself (and pain-relief medications). In addition, pain or distress indicators (writhing, contorting, moaning, vocalizing, avoiding) in animals are patently obvious (as are changes in vital signs). While true that an empirical analysis of a lab monkey’s pain eludes us, it is equally true that we cannot know with certainty what another human’s pain feels like.
As for emotional pain (lack of tissue damage), Dr. Lynne Sneddon (Liverpool University) writes:
Are animals capable of feeling emotional pain? Humans can certainly feel pain without physical damage – after the loss of a loved one, or the break-up of a relationship, for example. Some scientists suggest that only primates and humans can feel emotional pain, as they are the only animals that have a neocortex – the ‘thinking area’ of the cortex found only in mammals. However, research has provided evidence that monkeys, dogs, cats and birds can show signs of emotional pain and display behaviours associated with depression during painful experience, i.e. lack of motivation, lethargy, anorexia, unresponsiveness to other animals. Nevertheless, even if animal pain may be distinct from human pain, is that a reason to consider it less important either biologically or ethically?
The American Veterinary Medical Association on animal pain: “The AVMA believes that animal pain and suffering are clinically important conditions that adversely affect an animal’s quality of life. Drugs, techniques, or husbandry methods used to prevent and control pain must be tailored to individual animals…” And the European Union added a Protocol on the Protection and Welfare of Animals to the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997: “…to ensure improved protection and respect for the welfare of animals as sentient beings…”
Society, through the Humane Slaughter Act, Animal Welfare Act, and state anti-cruelty laws, acknowledges that animals can experience pain and suffering. The USDA requires annual reports from laboratories on how many animals were used in pain-causing experiments and whether anesthetics and analgesics were administered (Column E). If pain were irrelevant, then why would contemporary science even bother with reduction, refinement, replacement? Clearly, then, pain, distress, and suffering exist in other beings. And if Dr. Ryder is right when he says that pain “is the great evil, and inflicting pain upon others is the only wrong,” then we have a moral obligation to stop causing animal pain, even if doing so may slow medical progress (a dubious claim anyhow).
