Michael D. Gurwitz (Spectrum Feedback, November 1, 1989) offers two criticisms of recent letters by myself and Joseph Spence defending the use of animals in University research, and poses a greater question, that of how one defines hurting animals. I should like to respond to his comments as well as to some of the recent remarks of Gary Ketcham in three campus publications.
     Mr Gurwitz correctly observes that about 90 percent of the animals used in research are rodents, and that these animals have no protection under the Animal Welfare Act. However this University's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee does include them under its review policies, and subjects the protocols for the use of rodents to virtually the same standards of humane care and treatment as required under the Animal Welfare Act and other laws for larger animals The one exception is that surgery on such animals is to be done under clean but not sterile conditions; this slightly more lax standard is sufficient to provide the same protection from post-operative infection as larger animals receive under sterile conditions because of the shorter operating times and smaller surgical incisions involved in rodents.
     Mr. Gurwitz also asserts that while animal researchers may use anesthesia during invasive procedures, this does not mean they will attend to factors such as post-operative pain. But our standards for the humane treatment of animals require analgesics be provided when needed for such pain unless the research objectives would be frustrated by chemical interaction or other side effects of analgesics. In the extremely rare case in which this is so, the Committee applies a much higher standard of justification to the proposed research so as to insure both that the benefits to be gained from it substantially outweigh the pain. Often, with the expertise of researchers and veterinarians on the Committee, such possible alternatives are identified, the research protocol is then disapproved and returned to the principal investigator with the Committee's recommendation for alternative methods. The researcher may resubmit the original or a modified protocol, but must speak convincingly to the Committee's concerns and suggestions.
     All researchers understand that an ill animal is not a normal animal, and that the data gained from an animal that does not function normally is suspect. So researchers have an inherent motive to keep animals comfortable throughout their experimental manipulations. Also, researchers have an economic motive to employ alternatives to whole animals when such exist in a form that will further their research aims. Thus, good science and the researcher's (and public's) interest in getting more "bang for the research buck," as well as standards for humane care and treatment, conduce towards minimizing of pain.
     Finally, both Mr. Gurwitz and Mr. Ketcham appeal to the version of the moral principle of beneficence known as the harm principle. This principle states, on their reading, an absolute prohibition against doing harm. Applying this principle to research, Mr. Gurwitz derives a moral prohibition against research which harms or hurts animals.
     But there is another version of the principle of beneficence to which the fast majority of researchers ascribe, and that is the injunction to produce the greatest balance of good over evil, pleasure over pain that one can, chiefly through seeking to minimize suffering. On this view, one's actions are justified even if evil or pain or harm or hurt is caused by those actions, so long as the net result is more positive on balance than any alternative.
     Thus, the researcher is willing to employ animals in research, even if doing so involves causing pain, if the result is that there will be a decrease in the net amount of naturally occurring pain and suffering in sentient creatures, provided that no alternative way of producing that result exists which does not involve causing pain.

     The causing of pain is an undesirable consequence of research and, where avoidable, must be avoided on this version of the principle of beneficence. But the banning of research would result in even more pain and suffering caused by diseases and injury.
     Persons my age (49) recall the scourge of polio that crippled so many of our young friends when we were growing up. The enormous cost in human suffering that polio inflicted is virtually over, as is the suffering created by small pox in earlier generations, thanks to the research done on animals and human volunteers. Nor are humans the only species to benefit from animal research. Even something so seemingly "speciesist" as the cardiac pacemaker, developed in the Buffalo area in research done on dogs, now is being implanted in dogs to enable them to enjoy longer and healthier lives.
     The fundamental issue which divides those who support animal research from those who oppose it lies in the version of the principle of beneficence to which they ascribe respectively. I believe that we must ask whether the pursuit of the knowledge that alleviates and avoids naturally occurring pain and suffering demonstrates a greater or lesser ability to empathize than does the simple acceptance of naturally occurring pain and suffering recommended by those who urge us simply to do no harm. He who is a steward has duties to act that go beyond simply empathizing with pain and suffering. It is entirely appropriate, for example, to oppose those who neglect the welfare of animals in their care when such neglect is avoidable. My position is that it is inappropriate to oppose those who seek to advance knowledge that may be of benefit to humans and animals alike when their research efforts have the promise of directly or indirectly reducing the total suffering at the unavoidable price of inflicting harm on a relatively small number of animals.
     If we are to decide which version of the principle of beneficence to accept as having the greater moral weight, I believe we must look to why the harm principle is so compelling. Two reasons emerge. First, harm or hurt, in the sense of pain and suffering and loss of function and death, is an evil to be minimized. Second, avoiding causing harm is, o first inspection, an obvious w ay of minimizing harm. To the animal rights activist, there is something deeply disturbing about deliberately causing harm: it seems like it involves deliberately increasing the amount of pain and suffering in a world already burdened, and its being done to non-consenting creatures who are helpless to resist adds to their degree of moral outrage.
     But the researcher has an eye on the net harm balance scale, and assesses the activities of researchers against their total net effects, including the positive effects of enabling us to minimize the harm of diseases and injuries as well as the immediate negative effects on the lives of laboratory animals. To the researcher, there is something deeply disturbing about not doing what one can to decrease the quantity of naturally occurring pain and suffering. Just as we cause a child pain briefly in vaccinating him against his will in order to prevent the much greater suffering of smallpox or diphtheria, so we can use the laboratory animal a relatively small amount of pain in order to eliminate the much greater amounts of suffering which would continue to occur if the research were not done.
     The opponent of research owes the researcher an account of how compassion can justify deliberately leaving unaddressed the naturally occurring pain and suffering of humans and other creatures, when research offers hope of alleviating it by replacing large, ongoing quantities of natural evil with small, temporarily restricted ones. The researcher acknowledges that the unavoidable amount of pain and suffering caused by research is an evil. But, in the researcher's view, it is a necessary one. Richard T. Hull is a professor in the philosophy Department