[What is "ethical weighing" in animal testing?]
Ethical justification of legally required testing procedures with respect to pain, suffering or harm inflicted on animals are frequently being trivialised to meaningless phrases with a predictable outcome. Most applicants will not realise what kind of burdens they are placing upon ethics as an instrument for justification. Also, in ethical theory "defensibility" of animal testing is much less rigorously contemplated as it is, or would be, in comparable human testing. For these reasons, the article presented is critically investigating judicial and legal interpretations of the term "ethical weighing". In cases where true progress for the cause of animals becomes evident it chooses a rather unusual route based on the ground work of other scientists. The centre of attention is not given to more or less fictions cost/benefit calculations or point-systems but rather to the moral self- examination or possible self-justification of the scientist, meaning: a true reflection on ethics.
Herzberg
G
D-Berlin.