Overview

Animal experimentation is one of the most controversial areas of debate on animal rights. Biomedical research is at the hard edge of these debates. It throws up fundamental questions of moral value, of whether human life is more important than that of animals. Much experimentation is defended by its apparent success in terms of increasing medical knowledge. Brute Science investigates whether biomedical research using animals is, in fact, scientifically justified. Hugh LaFollette and Niall Shanks show that in scientific terms using the models that scientists themselves use these claims are exaggerated, or even false. They argue that we need to reassess our use of animals and, indeed, rethink the standard positions in the debate. Their analysis reveals why research using animals might be a rich source of hypotheses about human biomedical phenomena, yet would never prove or establish anything about this phenomena. Brute Science represents an important new analysis for philosophers, public policy analysts, animal rights activists, medical students, and anyone involved in research using animals.

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9780415131131

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Reviews

'Innovative and ambitious ... it offers a good model of how philosophy can inform ethical and scientific controversies.' - The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 'Not only compelling, but exciting. The clarity with which the debate was outlined, the diagnosis of the problem ... and the role of models in science were masterly. Brute Science is a fine example of applied philosophy. It is well written and organised and should prove of immense value to those who sit on animal and ethics committees, as well as to teachers of applied ethics and to animal welfarists.' - Jane Azevedo, Sunshine Coast University College (review symposium Metascience) 'This book is a tour di force of the issue, and should be on the required reading list of every animal experimenter, bio-ethicist and animal liberationist, each of whom will learn something for their effort.' - john Forge, University of California (review symposium Metascience) 'Brute Science is an important book. It should be read by every medical student, the members of all Institutional animal Use and Care Committees, everyone involved in the administration of research grants in the biomedical sciences, everyone at the Food and Drugs Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, everyone in Congress involved in making legislation that concerns drug research, and even chemical and biological weapons. This is an unsettling book, a book that should force the defenders of animal experimentation to re-examine the assumptions upon which a century-old rationalisation of the experimental practice is based.' - Don Howard, University of Notre Dame Diego (review symposium Metascience)

Author Information

Hugh LaFollette is Professor of Philosophy at East Tennessee State University; he is the author of Personal Relationships: Love, Identity, and Morality (1995) and editor of Ethics in Practice: An Anthology ( 1996). Niall Shanks is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Biological Sciences at East Tennessee State University.

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