Opinion

Animal welfare and animal studies - what scientists think

There is no doubt about it: info

animal studies are controversial. Are they compatible with the idea of animal welfare? Can they be justified at all? Scientists too have wrestled intensively with these questions.

Take Albert Schweitzer, for example: medical doctor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and cat lover. “It is man’s sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man,” he stated. In the same breath, he also declared that anyone who conducts animal studies with a view to using the results to help humans must keep a constant critical eye on what they do. According to Schweitzer, researchers “must have always considered first, in each individual case, whether it is necessary to sacrifice an animal’s life for the sake of humans. And they must take the greatest care to minimize the pain inflicted where possible.”

Or Professor Bernhard Grzimek. The renowned zoologist worked intensively for the Serengeti and other wildlife reserves in Africa. At the same time, he recognized that “our entire medical knowledge - the successful treatment of many diseases and plagues in humans and animals - has been made possible by animal studies. It is pointless to try and close your eyes to this.”

Or Albert Sabin. This medical doctor is also a proponent of animal studies. Preliminary studies on almost 9,000 apes and 150 chimpanzees were necessary, he wrote about his research. Without them, it would not have been possible to achieve the big goal - namely “to develop a safe vaccine against poliomyelitis.”

Or Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. The physiologist and Nobel Prize Laureate wrote: “When I start a study which ultimately leads to the death of an animal, I feel a deep regret that I am cutting short a life in full bloom..., that I, with my rough, uncouth hand, am destroying an indescribably elaborate mechanism. But I endure it in the interest of the truth, for the benefit of mankind.”