Applied ethics in animal research : philosophy, regulation, and laboratory applications /

Harvested from a series of conferences on the ethics of animal research held across the United States during the 1990's, this volume contains seven voices from the "troubled middle" of a complex debate. These voices avoid the shrill rhetoric of the extremes, thereby opening a space to consider the bearing of ethics on a practice that has been changing considerably over the last 20 years. Two voices from ethical theory (Frey, Biller-Andorno) take the reader beyond familiar animal welfare arguments. A historian (Guerrini) fingers misreadings of Descartes, the influence of antisemitism, and the propagation of particular rhetorical strategies in the animal research literature. A cognitive ethologist (Beckoff) warns against species-level determinations of animal consideration, urging instead that individual researchers look at the particular relationships that they have formed with their research subjects. The last three essays (Rollin, Orlans, Morton) address specific aspects of US and international regulation, experimental practice, and protocol. Each essay contains odds and ends of interest, though the collection as a whole is too diffuse for readers to feel that they have learned much about any one part of the debate. The intended audience is unclear. General readers. C. J. Preston University of South Carolina